Honda keeps qualifying first. Winning from there is another matter. LP Montour put the #93 MMG Honda Civic Type R TCR on pole at Road America for the third consecutive round, stretching the manufacturer’s qualifying streak to four straight in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge competition, and then spent the Road America 120 running fourth while a drying track and a string of caution periods kept a podium just out of reach.
The #5 KMW Motorsports with TMR Engineering Honda completed a front-row lockout, making it an all-Honda front row for the second time in recent rounds. What followed was two hours of weather-driven improvisation that neither entry fully survived.
The MMG car ran into braking trouble in the opening stint, losing positions before regaining three of them in a single pit stop near the one-hour mark, moving from seventh back to fourth. From there, Wittmer and Montour ran nose-to-tail with the leaders, but a succession of full-course cautions froze the order and denied them the clean air needed to attack. The race ended under caution, officially fourth for MMG.
TMR’s afternoon was sharper in its misfortune. The #5 moved into the race lead initially, then reclaimed the top spot during an early pit cycle, only to take tires on a subsequent stop when most of the field chose fuel only. The extra service time gutted their track position, and the caution-heavy final third of the race left them no path back. They finished sixth.
Wet-to-dry transitions reward risk-takers and punish anyone who reads the conditions wrong by even one lap. At Road America, where the long straights and sweeping corners already create unusual tire-wear patterns, a damp surface at race start followed by progressively better grip produced the kind of strategic minefield that sorted the field more than outright pace did. Honda had the speed on both ends of the session; what it couldn’t control was timing.
The brighter story came from the back of the Honda contingent. Riley and Larry Pegram, running the #72 Pegram Racing Civic Type R TCR as a father-daughter pairing, completed a clean, incident-free race to take seventh, a season-best result. The #89 HART Honda entry of Chad Gilsinger and Tyler Chambers crossed the line eighth, giving Honda four cars in the top eight overall.
The manufacturer’s qualifying dominance is real, and the race pace the MMG car showed while running down the leaders suggests the gap between pole and the top step of the podium is not mechanical. At VIRginia International Raceway on August 22, Honda will have another chance to find out if its qualifying form and its race strategy can finally arrive at the same time.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
