Mars, Machavern Deliver Turner’s First GS Win in Nearly A Year

It took just three races for the new 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 GS class of Saturday’s WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway 120.

They drove the No. 95 BMW M4 GT4 EVO to a 4.083-second triumph over the No. 2 CSM Porsche 718 GT4 RS Clubsport shared by Gordon Scully and Morgan Burkhard, with pole-sitter 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 Mustang 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 scored BMW’s 50th race win in GS class competition and 92nd overall in Pilot Challenge.

The victory was the eighth in the series for Machavern and the fourth for Mars and the first for the team in series competition since Mid-Ohio last June.

BHA Hyundais Rule in TCR

Mason Filippi and Bryson Morris co-drove the No. 33 Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai Elantra N TCR to the TCR class win.

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 Laguna Seca, the win joins its four previous triumphs in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2025.

The victory – which was the ten in 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 car basically led from the start to the checkered flag.

Filippi took the pole 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, 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.

RESULTS: WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca 120