Dane Cameron in the #96 Turner Motorsport M235i Racing won the Saturday Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car race at Lime Rock Park.
Cameron took the lead about thirteen minutes into the forty-minute race when Friday winner Elivan Goulart’s Lotus Exige slowed. Goulart recovered and challenged Cameron for the lead, but went off course when he and Paul Holton in an Audi RS3 LMS came together. The off-course excursion brought out the yellow flag. Cameron held on through the caution period, and then fended off a challenge from Cody Ellsworth in a Porsche Cayman and Nick Wittmer in another M235iR. After another caution period Cameron led a four-car pack that also included Ellsworth, Wittmer, and Holton. Holton found his way into second, but was unable to get by Cameron for the win. Ellsworth finished third and Wittmer was fourth. M235i racer Anthony Magagnoli was fifth, and Mason Filippi, who had won at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in an M235iR on the previous weekend, was sixth. Defending TC champion Toby Grahovec was eighth in another M235iR.
Cameron got back on track in the sixty-minute SprintX race that followed the Touring car sprint. He won again in a Magnus Racing Audi R8 LMS that he shared with Spencer Pumpelly.
In another nose-to-tail battle in Friday’s TC race, Goulart in the Lotus Exige held off Holton for the win. Cameron was third, leading a three-car BMW 235iR contingent across the line that also included Grahovec and Filippi. Three more BMW racers finished in the top ten; they were Nick Wittmer in eighth, Anthony Magagnoli in ninth, and Randy Pobst in tenth.
There were eighteen M235iRs in the 33-car Touring Car pack at Lime Rock. It was Cameron’s first race in the car, and the Turner team’s first appearance of the season in the series. Will Turner drove the team’s second car, finishing fifteenth in race one and thirteenth in race two.
The TCA and TCB classes, which had run with TC in the season opener at VIR and on the series’ second weekend at CTMP ran in their own races at Lime Rock. TCB Mini racer Taylor Handwerk, running on his first race weekend at Lime Rock Park, finished on the podium in third in race two. Travis Washay was fifth in a second Mini. Washay and Handwerk finished fourth and fifth in class in race one. Canaan O’Connell won both races in a Chevrolet Sonic.—Brian S. Morgan
