Ruscitti and Cirone take TCR win with late-race pass

The IMSA season was closed by a non-championship race, the inaugural, four-hour Michelin IMSA SportsCar Encore at Sebring International Raceway.
A seesaw battle for the TCR class victory between the Mark Motors Racing Audi RS3 LMS of Canadian co-drivers Remo Ruscitti and Marco Cirone and the JDC-Miller Motorsports Audi of Stephen Simpson and Michael Johnson ultimately went in favour of the former team, but not until the very end.
After he and Cirone had spent a considerable amount of the race in the class lead, Ruscitti found himself chasing Simpson in the closing minutes. He finally got around Simpson with a lap-and-a-half remaining and cruised to a relatively easy victory as Simpson came into the pits as he had run out of fuel.

“It was a tough race,” Ruscitti said. “The cars are so even and Simpson was braking just as late as I was. It was really difficult. I think our gap never got bigger than five seconds between the two cars, so that was really, really entertaining.”

“From the first time we got this TCR, we knew it was going to be a fantastic car,” added Cirone. “I was out there for two hours, but I think the most exciting part of the race was the last two minutes by Remo.”

Simpson and Johnson, who scored their first victory together in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge in July at Lime Rock Park, closed out the year with yet another podium result. Luke and Tanner Rumburg completed the TCR podium with a third-place result in the Rumcastle LLC Volkswagen Golf GTI.