Cameron: “Aggressive Call” Didn’t Pan Out for MSR

Photo: IMSA

Dane Cameron said he was proud of Meyer Shank Racing for making an “aggressive call” on strategy even though it didn’t ultimately pan out Sunday at Road America.

Cameron and co-driver Olivier Pla settled for a fifth place finish in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship round after an off-sequence pit stop put the No. 60 Acura ARX-05 out front for 26 laps.

The 2019 DPi champion, however, was forced to pit from the lead for a splash of fuel with less than four minutes remaining, handing the win to the No. 31 Action Express Racing duo of Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani.

The final 1 hour and 39 minutes ran caution-free, in a race where the Ohio-based team was hoping for a late-race yellow.

“We’ve been struggling a little bit throughout the week, so we took a shot at it with a different strategy today,” said Cameron.

“We made the car a little bit better this morning and it was good in the race.

“There has been a lot of weather around so we thought, you know, we just kind of need to take a shot here, and kind of roll the dice a little bit.

“So we were a little bit off sequence there and needed a little bit of help to be able to make it work, just came up a little bit short.

“But I’m proud of the guys for an aggressive call and glad we had a good fast car.

“They did a great job in the pits and it was a good strategy. You know we just kind of rolled the dice and needed a little bit of help and didn’t get it.”

Derani, who picked up his second consecutive WeatherTech Championship win and closed the points gap in the DPi title race, said he wasn’t focused on what the No. 60 MSR Acura was doing strategy-wise.

The gap had expanded to 15 seconds prior to Cameron’s late pit call.

“When I was in the car, the 60 car was completely out of my hands, whatever was going to happen to them,” the Brazilian said.

“So I was just hitting my marks, focusing on making sure that we could make it to the end with a fuel-save. And then whatever happened to the 60 was out of my control.

“By hitting my marks, and not having a yellow I think that helped us and the 60 eventually had to come into the pits with that off-sequence strategy. That allowed us to just focus to bring the car home.

“I’m really happy, a fantastic weekend. We didn’t put a foot wrong in any practice.

“We even skipped Practice 1 because we thought it was too risky to go there with the amount of rain. But yet, without testing in the rain we went there and put it on pole, so that’s fantastic.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John