The IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series traveled north of the border to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP) for round six of the championship, in what was also the unofficial start of the second half of the 2025 season. BMW teams had a strong race, with CarBahn with Peregrine Racing led by Steve Dinan taking the win, Auto Technic Racing finishing second and Turner Motorsport in fourth.
Carbahn by Peregrine Racing driver Sean McAlister has been one of the fastest drivers in qualifying all season and was in top form again at CTMP, putting the #39 M4 GT4 EVO (shown in top photo) into second on the grid behind the pole-sitting Mustang. Austin Krainz put in a strong performance in the #27 Auto Technic Racing BMW by qualifying seventh, followed by the two Turner Motorsport cars in ninth and sixteenth. There were twenty cars in the GS class, including the BMWs.
Austin Krainz and Stevan McAleer finished second – their first podium of the year.
In what was unusual for a Michelin Pilot Challenge race, the first half of the contest ran without any caution periods, with McAlister holding steady in second place behind the leading #13 Mustang, with the Turner cars and the Auto Technic entry also running in the top ten at times. A crucial point in the race came when the CarBahn team was able to put in a fast pit stop that put Jeff Westphal out in front in the #39 BMW, ahead of the #13 Mustang that had been leading up to that point but had a slower pit stop.
The first caution came with around forty minutes left in the race, in a dramatic high-speed accident that took out the #95 Turner BMW driven by Francis Selldorff, who had no fault in the incident. Selldorff was at full speed down the back straight when two TCR class cars got into each other and then ran into Selldorff, forcing him off the track and into the barrier, which launched him into the air and back down into the middle of the track. Jeff Westphal was right behind this group but managed to get through the carnage unscathed in the #39 BMW. Selldorff was OK but the #95 BMW had significant damage.
Robby Foley and Vin Barletta finished a solid fourth.
With the cleanup work needed after the accident, the race didn’t go green again until there were just seventeen minutes left, with Westphal at the front, Stevan McAleer in fifth in the #27 BMW and Robby Foley in tenth in the #96 Turner car. Westphal held onto the lead to take the win, while McAleer worked his way into third and then finished second after the second place Mercedes was penalized. Foley worked his way into fourth and had a great battle with a Mustang for third place but ultimately had to settle for fourth. The win for Westphal and McAlister was their second of the year. “We had a really tall task to save fuel and it went from push to save back to push,” said Westphal. “It was one of those stints that had a little bit of everything. I can’t thank the team or Sean enough. He did a killer first stint and put us in a position to be able to do what we did.”
The second-place finish for McAleer and Krainz in the #27 Auto Technic Racing BMW was their first of the year and the first in IMSA for Auto Technic Racing, though they are a championship-winning team in the SRO GT4 America series with the M4 GT4 EVO. “This is an important result and it’s awesome,” McAleer said. “First podium, it’s a massive day. I don’t like finishing second, but we’ve been finishing fourth or fifth all season. We’ll take a third or a second. We’ve been building momentum all year and were just on the cusp of getting one of these podiums.”
Next up for the Michelin Pilot Challenge series is a race at Road America in Wisconsin on August 1st-3rd.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy LAT Images]
