Robby Foley and Cameron Lawrence finished 2-1 for Turner Motorsport at Sebring Int’l Raceway on Thursday. (IMSA photo)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Robby Foley took the lead after a restart with just over 20 minutes remaining in the Alan Jay Automotive Network 120 at Sebring Int’l Raceway while his No. 96 Turner Motorsport teammate, Cameron Lawrence, followed him home followed to complete a 1-2 finish overall.
The teammates compete for Turner in the new BMW M4 GT4 (G82) in the Grand Sport (GS) class.
Vin Barletta drove the first 47 minutes of the two-hour competition in Turner’s No. 96 BMW before handing over to Foley at a green-flag pit stop. The timing of the pit stops played to his advantage. As other teams’ strategies were played out during a series of bookings throughout the course, Foley found himself in second place and in position to attack leading Christian Szymczak.
“Brilliant strategy from our guys,” said Foley after his fourth career win in the Michelin Pilot Challenge competition. “It looked like we strayed from strategy during the first couple of yellows but that was all to play later. You can never predict them exactly, but there is a high probability of yellows here. This race was like many before and it’s a testament to our guys in the pits.
“They’ve been doing this for so long, they’ve seen these scenarios a hundred times.”
Foley passed Szymczak with 22 minutes remaining on the race clock, then held out for a final restart and won by 0.601s over Turner’s number 95, shared by Lawrence and Robert Megennis. Robin Liddell improved from seventh to third in the final laps in the #71 Rebel Rock Racing Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R.
It was the first Michelin Pilot Challenge race win for the G82 generation of the legendary BMW M3 and the second for Barletta, for whom Foley serves as mentor and driving coach.
Barletta noted that he benefits from also competing for Turner in the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, a series of sprint races for GT4 sedans and LMP3 prototypes. The VP Racing Challenge was in action at Sebring last weekend.
“Where I am, with Robby coaching me, every lap is important at this point to gain experience and improve as a driver,” said Barletta. “It’s very valuable. I was just trying to stay clean. I feel like I did my job and we had great pit stops from the team. It was a busy day out there and Robby ended up having the pace when it mattered.”
Foley went back to the old adage that position on the track is king.
“I’m not sure if we had the fastest car, but I know we had a fast car when it mattered,” he said. “The new car for us takes a little longer to get in and you have to be really aggressive with your tires under yellow. So I was prepared for every restart. I don’t think I had a lot of pace on the guys behind, so it was all about opening up a little gap on the first lap. That was the difference for me.”
Late pass puts Lewis and Block back in victory lane
Victory in the Touring Car (TCR) class went to KMW Motorsports from Florida with TMR Engineering.
Driver Tim Lewis took the lead in the No 5 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce TCR RS3 after several corners of intense racing alongside Bryan Herta Autosport driver Robert Wickens – he prevailed just before the final precaution of the race came out – with a little more than 10 minutes remaining in the two-hour event.
Wickens had taken the lead with about an hour to go when his No.33 BHA Hyundai pitted ahead of a yellow period near the middle of the race. While the rest of the TCR class lined up for a driver change at the subsequent yellow, the No. 33 had already completed its service and driver change and took the lead.
Wickens held Lewis and the 15-car TCR field back by almost a second at one point, with Lewis hitting back and eventually advancing to challenge Wickens corner after corner as the warning flag came out.
“I don’t think it was side by side,” Wickens said. “To be honest the visibility in these cars is pretty difficult and I could see he was close and wasn’t sure if I was exactly clear so I gave him some space and then I saw the flashing light [signifying a caution flag] in my car, so I raised. And he continued to overtake me.
“So he definitely wasn’t in front of me in my opinion.”
Wickens said IMSA told the Bryan-Herta team that the overtaking was “in progress ahead of yellow”, allowing Lewis to retain the position and ultimately claim a 1.671 second win. The #98 Bryan Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian Hyundai Elantra N finished third with drivers Mark Wilkins and Mason Filippi.
“Two laps ago there was a disabled car on the side of the track and speaking to my team they said, ‘Hey, if you want to try it, you have to do it now”’, Lewis said: “And that’s where Robbie made the smallest mistake and we went side by side for three laps.”
Lewis said there was no question he made the pass before the yellow flag, noting that his team had also called race control during the yellow period to check his position up front.
This is the sixth victory for the No. 5 driver pairing – Boca Raton’s Lewis and his co-driver Roy Block from Winter Park – and their first at the famous Sebring International Raceway.
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