Herta Hyundais Go 1-2 in TCR with Team Achieving Fifth Win at Track
It took just three races for the new-for-2026 driver pairing of Dillon Machavern and Luca Mars, two past IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge champions, to taste victory for Turner Motorsport and BMW as a collective unit.
Machavern and Mars topped the Grand Sport (GS) class of the WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway 120 on Saturday at the famous California circuit of the same name. They drove the No. 95 BMW M4 GT4 EVO to a 4.083-second triumph over the No. 2 CSM Porsche 718 GT4 RS CS shared by Gordon Scully and Morgan Burkhard, with Motul Pole Award winner Nate Cicero and co-driver Robert Noaker taking third in the No. 13 McCumbee McAleer Racing Ford Mustang GT4.
Machavern qualified eighth fastest but had moved up to third place behind the No. 13 Ford and the No. 12 RAFA Racing Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2 when almost the entire GS field pitted under caution 56 minutes into the two-hour race. Mars exited the pits as the effective race leader, pursued by Noaker and Michael Cooper in the No. 44 Ibiza Farm Motorsport McLaren Artura GT4 that he took over from Moisey Uretsky.
The three cars circulated in close proximity for most of the final hour as the race ran caution-free to the finish. In the closing stages, Mars was able to slightly progress away, and the pressure eased when Noaker eased his pace to save fuel and Cooper was forced to make a splash-and-go stop. Burkhard then passed a slowing Noaker for second place on the last lap.
Mars was also conserving fuel, but it was not an issue in the end as he, Machavern, and Turner Motorsport scored BMW’s 50th race win in GS class competition and 92nd overall in the Michelin Pilot Challenge. The victory was the eighth in IMPC for Machavern and the fourth for Mars.
“It’s a big day for the Turner yellow and blue and we couldn’t be happier,” said owner Will Turner after his team earned its first win at Laguna Seca since 2009, 31st in GS and 34th overall as the winningest team in series history. “I think back on all the years of trying here. This is obviously very special.”
Machavern said fuel management allowed the No. 95 car to have a slightly faster pit stop at the crucial juncture.
“We knew there was the possibility of a one-stop race, so that’s what got the process going,” said Machavern. “We were saving fuel from the start, which ended up paying off in a huge way on pit lane. That little bit of conserving from the start allowed us to jump a couple cars, and of course, we have the best crew in the business.”
“After I got through those first couple laps with the Mustang on me, I was able to maintain that one-second gap for a while,” Mars added. “I was just saving fuel and saving those rear tires for the end of the race. I was able to slowly build and build that gap, and in the end, stretched it to where I didn’t have to worry about the guys behind me.
“I kind of knew it was going to be a fuel race and we were all going to be scrambling, but I was still able to turn fast laps, so huge thanks to the Turner Motorsport crew for a great car and an unbelievable pit stop.”
TCR: Herta Hyundais Rule
Bryan Herta’s memories from WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca can tend to be bittersweet. The Valencia native won a pair of Indy car races back-to-back at what is essentially his California home track (in 1998 and 1999), but also famously came out on the wrong side of “The Pass” in 1996 when Alex Zanardi slid through the dirt at the Corkscrew to steal victory on the last lap.
Now a team owner in Michelin Pilot Challenge, Herta got to take home another Laguna Seca memory on the positive side of the ledger as Mason Filippi and Bryson Morris co-drove the No. 33 Hyundai Elantra N TCR to win the Touring Car (TCR) class of the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca 120.
In fact, it was a 1-2 finish for BHA, as Preston Brown and Denis Dupont rebounded from an early spin and a puncture to claim second place in the No. 76 Hyundai, a full lap behind their teammates.
The Herta team now has five wins at three different tracks, the first team in history to do so. At WeatherTech Raceway, the 2026 win joins its four previous triumphs in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2025.
The victory – which was the 10th in Michelin Pilot Challenge competition for 2025 TCR champion Filippi and the second for Morris – was nowhere as easy as the result would indicate despite the fact that the No. 33 basically led from the start to the checkered flag. Filippi took the Motul Pole Award and held the top spot through his first stint before handing off to Morris just prior to the halfway point of the 120-minute race.
The biggest challenge to Morris came from the No. 99 Victor Gonzalez Racing Cupra Leon VZ TCR, but Tyler Gonzalez (who shared the car with Franco Girolami) sustained a punctured left rear tire with 37 minutes remaining while running within a second of the lead and fell to seventh. Celso Neto and Rafael Reis then looked set to take second place in the No. 77 Stallion Motorsports w/GOU Cupra Leon VZ TCR, only for the car to stop on course with just two minutes to go.
That left Dupont and Brown to collect the runner-up laurels, followed in third place by Karl Wittmer and LP Montour in the No. 93 MMG Honda Civic FL5 TCR.
“This track has always been really good for our Elantra N TCR cars, but this is awesome,” said Filippi, a Northern California native who now lives in Nashville. “It’s fun to win at Laguna Seca – definitely special. Bryson crushed it and we extended our points lead.
“It’s always a challenging battle out there, so it was about keeping focus through the restarts. And working with the other traffic class traffic is huge here. Managing that is really big, so it wasn’t as easy as it looked.”
“I knew it was a really heavy tire deg (degradation) race, so I was just praying at the end because I know we were running for a long time,” Morris added. “But the Michelin tires held on.”
The IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge serves as the headliner for its next event – the O’Reilly Auto Parts 4 Hours of Mid-Ohio, June 5-7 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
