The No. 96 BMW M6 GT3 of Turner Motorsport captures the fourth consecutive podium of the season at Road America in the two-hour and forty-minute IMSA Roadrace Showcase marking round eight of the 2019 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The third place finish comes just two weeks after the team’s heroic third place finish at Lime Rock Park to capture valuable championship points to move up to second in the championship standings. Drivers Bill Auberlen and Robby Foley pushed to finish on the GTD podium to close the points gap to the GTD championship leader.
The podium marks Turner Motorsport’s fifth podium at Road America in the last seven years.
Robby Foley started from his sixth place qualifying position to quickly find his pace after a strong start on the 4-mile 14-turn National Park of Speed.
Foley completed his solid opening stint making up several positions before bringing the blue and yellow BMW to pit lane to perform a driver change and full service pit stop.
“We had a pretty good car here this weekend but it took a lot of work to get there,” said Robby Foley. “There were a lot of strong cars out there so Bill and I had our work cut out for us in this one, but we are super happy with the results. It’s been a crazy season for us so it’s pretty cool that we have been able to work our way up to second in the standings with this string of success.”
Auberlen continued on from pit lane working to maintain the gap to the GTD leaders while attempting to execute a fuel savings strategy to save time on the final stop of the race.
Despite the savings in the fuel, the No. 96 of Auberlen was not able to get around the third place Lexus in the pits.
Auberlen pushed to chase down the No. 14 on track with several unsuccessful passes finally making the pass for third in turn one with twenty minutes remaining in the two-hour and forty-minute race.
“I hung in there until I could make my move to get around that 14 car for third, said Bill Auberlen. “That thing was quick making it super difficult to get around him but, finally I was able to get by and build in a little safety gap to finish on the podium. This one did not come easy so we are very thankful for all the work the team put in this weekend to get us there.”
The team’s fourth consecutive podium closes the gap to the GTD championship leader to just 24 points with three races remaining.
“It’s been a roller coaster season for sure,” said Will Turner. “The first three or four races were super frustrating so it’s been very nice to have a string of success like this to balance it out. The team has been flawless all year so we knew the results would come. Now we have three races remaining and we are in the hunt for the championship.
The team heads to Virginia International Raceway in three weeks for round nine of the 2019 WeatherTech Championship season.
