TCR / 17 March 2025
Spanish victory and US podiums for Civic Type R TCR
The Honda Civic Type R TCR scored a record-breaking victory in TCR Spain last weekend while the JAS Motorsport-built touring car secured six podium finishes across two continents in three hotly-contested races.
TCR Spain
It was Mike Halder who made history aboard his TPR Motorsport Civic; the German winning the opening race of the season at Barcelona to break the all-time record for wins in the series - each one recorded at the wheel of a Civic Type R TCR.
An issue in qualifying restricted him to fifth on the grid but he took just over two laps to overtake the Auto Club RC2 Valles Civic of Felipe Fernandez for the lead and pulled clear to victory.
It took just half a lap for Halder to lead a wet Race Two, but his race was over one corner later after contact from a rival car.
That opened the door for Michael Markussen - making his series debut - to climb into third place and he mounted a determined challenge for victory, eventually missing out by just 0.801s after briefly taking the lead on the final lap.
Behind him was Fernandez, who made it two Hondas on the podium. His brother Ruben Fernandez won the 'Master' class for drivers aged 45 or over, with Rene Povlsen second in class for TPR.
Povlsen won the category in Race One from class polesitter Ruben Fernandez while brother and team-mate Victor Fernandez - who spun out of the earlier encounter - completed an all-Honda Master podium.
Ruben Volt took pole position with ALM Motorsport team-mate Sten-Dorian Piirimagi third, but both lost their times due to not having the required 3kg of fuel in their cars for post-session checks - a legacy of both completing more laps than planned (and burning off more fuel as a result).
Volt recovered from the back of the grid to third and fifth (second in the Junior class on both occasions) while Piirimagi was sixth in Race One and spun out at the end of Race Two. Demir Eroge spun out of both races in the third ALM car.
IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge
The Civic Type R TCR scored a double podium at Sebring thanks to Montreal Motorsport Group and HART; the latter outfit achieving their first rostrum finish in the category.
Louis Philippe Montour qualified the MMG car third and ran inside the top three through the first half of the two-hour race.
His co-driver Karl Wittmer dropped back to sixth at the mid-race driver changes as the Canadian team opted to fill the car up while several others short-fuelled in anticipation of a Full-Course Caution that would help them reach the finish with an economy run.
That caution period never came, enabling Wittmer to climb from fifth to third in the final two laps as others either ran out of fuel or were forced to take on more, and then to a season's-best second when the on-the-road winner was disqualified post-race.
Right behind them, HART = a team run by Honda employees in their spare time - scored their first TCR podium thanks to a similar late-race climb by Chad Gilsinger and Tyler Chambers, who started seventh and ran in the top six throughout.
KMW Motorsports with TMR engineering made consistent forwards progress throughout the race; William Tally climbing from 12th on the grid to eighth by the halfway mark and Tim Lewis Jr continuing that trend.
Like the MMG and HART Civics, Lewis benefitted from his car's fuel efficiency and post-race disqualifications to finish a season's-best fourth; the race results moving Honda up to second in the Manufacturers' points table.
