Honda left Canadian Tire Motorsport Park with a second-place finish it earned on a fuel gauge and a nerve, not clean air. Montreal Motorsports Group’s #93 Civic Type R TCR held P2 through a caution-compressed, fuel-saving final act to give Honda its third TCR podium of the 2026 IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season.
The weekend opened with more good news on the qualifying sheet. LP Montour put the #93 on pole, extending Honda’s run to three consecutive TCR pole positions. KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering made it a Honda front-row lockout, with Rocco Pasquarella slotting the #5 Civic Type R into second. On paper, a 1-2 Honda finish looked realistic. The race was less cooperative.
Twenty-five minutes into the two-hour event, a major incident triggered a lengthy full-course caution that scrambled the entire TCR strategic picture. The extended yellow compressed the pit window, forcing every team in class to take a short fuel fill. MMG slipped from the lead to second during the stops. TMR lost more ground, dropping from second to fifth after a longer driver change. With limited green-flag laps left once the field went back to racing, the event became a fuel economy contest dressed up as a sprint.
MMG managed that contest well. Karl Wittmer, who inherited the car from Montour for the second stint, kept the #93 in second while nursing the fuel load to the finish. Wittmer was direct about how demanding the task was. “It was one of the hardest races in terms of fuel management. It’s a physical track and you have to deal with tire degradation, which is tough over the course of more than an hour. Once I noticed the cars in front starting to save, I got on the radio and the team confirmed it was a full fuel saving race.” Montour credited Wittmer with pulling the result together: “Hats off to Karl who did an amazing job in the second half.”
TMR’s day ended on a harder note. The #5 had clawed its way back to fourth when a GS-class car made contact in the final corner with 20 minutes left. The impact dropped KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering to sixth at the checkered flag. Rocco Pasquarella and Tim Lewis had done the work to recover from the caution-period setback, only to lose the reward to a late collision from outside the class. Pegram Racing’s #72, piloted by Riley and Larry Pegram, avoided the day’s chaos and finished 11th.
The championship picture is still open. Honda now sits 50 points back of the TCR Manufacturers’ Championship leader, with multiple rounds remaining on the 2026 schedule. The three-race podium run and the three straight pole positions suggest the Civic Type R TCR package is quick enough to compete for the title; closing a 50-point gap requires converting that pace into wins rather than runner-up finishes.
Honda’s next opportunity comes August 1 at Road America, a high-speed circuit where straight-line efficiency and late-braking stability matter as much as fuel management. Given what the brand showed in Canada, the #93 should be a factor. Whether the championship math tightens depends on what happens to the points leader that weekend, but MMG and KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering will not be making it easy for the rest of the field.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
