The victory wasn’t lost on Cameron for the importance of winning a race that their manufacturer sponsored.
“Obviously, it’s a super important day,” he added. “It’s great to see Acura so involved in our sport and this series, and this type of racing. Everyone wants to win the big marques enduros, but before that, it’s just as important to win the title sponsor races. Hopefully, they can continue to grow their involvement in motorsport, and we can continue to work with them.”
Mazda Team Joest swept the final two spots on the podium led by Nunez and co-driver Oliver Jarvis in second aboard the No. 77. Jonathan Bomarito and past IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay – standing in for regular driver Harry Tincknell – came home third in the No. 55 Mazda DPi, duplicating the team’s 2-3 performance at last year’s season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani retained their WeatherTech Championship DPi points lead with a fourth-place run in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R. With 120 points, the No. 31 teammates now have a four-point lead over No. 7 Acura Team Penske ARX-05 DPi co-drivers Castroneves and Taylor, who finished fifth Sunday.
In the LMP2 class, No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA co-drivers Eric Lux and Matt McMurry scored a dominating victory, their first of the season in the WeatherTech Championship, after the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA driven at the time by Cameron Cassels encountered difficulties on the opening lap of the race.
It was McMurry’s first victory in IMSA competition, and was the fifth IMSA win – but first WeatherTech Championship victory – for Lux.
“It feels good to have luck on our side this time, McMurry said. “I’ve had a couple of unlucky races before with a couple failures and incidents. So it was nice just to have a clean race where we could just put down laps and stay clean and end up on the top step of the podium.”
For Lux, it was his basically his first time in a prototype in more than five years, and the feeling of winning wasn’t lost on him.
“Except for Daytona last year, it’s been five years since I’ve been in a prototype,” he said. “So it was quite a steep curve jumping back into it. But I couldn’t have asked for a better team to get back into it with. I’m happy to make this the weekend I came back and to end up on the top step of the podium.”