Michael Marsal Finishes Seventh at Lime Rock Park
Lakeville, Conn. (23 July 2016) – While Michael Marsal wasn’t able to fulfill his ambition to return to victory lane at Lime Rock Park, the Turner Motorsport pilot was still able to card another solid IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship finish with the No. 97 Alvarez & Marsal/IHG Rewards Club BMW M6 GT3 on Saturday as he and Markus Palttala came home seventh in the Northeast Grand Prix.
Marsal, who qualified 12th on the GTD class grid on Friday, started the two hour, 40 minute race from behind the wheel as the Lime Rock Park hillsides were packed with faithful fans who braved the high July heat. The Connecticut event is a big one for the entire Turner Motorsport family and Saturday’s race was no different as a healthy crowd of Turner fans in the yellow and blue were on hand for the seventh round of the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The track is also an important one to Marsal, who put his head down and made immediate progress in the early stages of the race, moving up to run sixth before a Lap 42 full course caution.
That bunched up the pack once again, but with both the clock and fuel consumption to consider, the Turner team called Marsal in to pit lane just a pair of laps after the race went back to green.
A good stop and driver change saw Palttala return to the field 25th in the order, and deep in the GTD class traffic. The Finn had an uphill battle, but was able to keep chipping his way forward to run sixth 100 laps later. Lap 150 saw him cede the spot to the sister No. 96 Turner entry as he held on to come home seventh at the finish.
“We were hoping for a little bit more in the race, but overall this was a solid weekend for us,” said Marsal. “With the pit stop timing, Markus came back out into a lot of traffic to work through. The aero on these cars is very good, but the flip side is if you are in traffic it makes it a lot trickier to have that forward bite without clean air. So it was not the result we wanted but it was a good weekend overall—it’s always good to be up here at Lime Rock and now we can all look forward to Road America.”
The Turner Motorsport squad will be back in action in a fortnights time as the IMSA circuit heads to Wisconsin for the annual visit to the flat out fast Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
