Fall-Line and Turner M3s finish first and second
Fall-Line Motorsports' team manager, Michael Harvey, made the right call on tires, and John Edwards and Trent Hindman stepped up on the track, moving the #46 Fall-Line M3 up from a ninth-place position on the grid to score overall and Grand Sport wins in the 2½-hour Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race at Circuit Of The Americas.
The race started in dry conditions, and immediately went into a prolonged yellow flag period as Tim Bell’s Nissan 370Z lost its brakes and plowed into a tire wall at speed. Bell walked away, and the repairs to the tire wall were done in about 30 minutes. After that the rest of the race was run under green.
When the rain that threatened eventually came, most cars stayed on dry-weather slicks. But Fall-Line team manager Michael Harvey rolled the dice, putting the #46 M3 on rain tires with 43 minutes left while competitors stayed on slicks. Edwards, who had pitted from the lead, returned to the track and moved up quickly, using the lap time advantage of the tires to get by the Camaro of Robin Liddell. He then took the lead from Tom Kimber-Smith, who was driving the Turner Motorsport M3 that he shared with Michael Marsal. Near the end, with the track drying, Edwards’ lap time advantage lessened, and he looked for wet spots on the circuit. But he held on for a convincing win. Kimber-Smith finished second, Billy Johnson and Ian James finished third in a Mustang, and Liddell finished fourth.
As a result, Trent Hindman moved into the Grand Sport drivers’ points lead with one race remaining, five points ahead of Liddell and his co-driver Andrew Davis, and fifteen points of Edwards, who did not score points at Kansas Speedway earlier in the season because he fell six seconds short of the 45-minute minimum time required in the car. The finale will be run at Road Atlanta on October 3.
Ryan Eversley and Kyle Gimple won the Street Tuner class in a Honda Civic. Eric Foss, who finished second in the Murillo Racing Porsche Cayman, took over the class points lead going into Road Atlanta. Foss and his co-driver Jeff Mosing had begun the season in a 328i, switching to Porsche at Indianapolis. The best BMW finisher in ST was the fourth place Burton Racing 128i driven by Connor Bloum and Jeff Westphal.—Brian S. Morgan
