Third victory in the TC America weekend for Maxson

Tyler Maxson continued to dominate the TC America championship with embarrassing easiness. At Virginia International Raceway the Copeland Motorsports teenager and his Hyundai Veloster N claimed their third victory of the weekend, increasing their invincibility to five races out of five. The Honda Civic cars of Victor González and Scott Smithson took the remaining podium places, encoring Race 2 result.
It was quite an uneventful race, with Maxson sprinting from pole position ahead of the rest of the field and pulling away from lap 1. Behind him González passed Smithson in turn 1 for P2 and Block did the same with Olivia Askew for P4.
During the first laps, González defended his position from Smithson, while Block looked set to close in on the Honda duo; however, the Argentine lost contact and found himself chased by Alex Papadopulos instead.
With 14 minutes to go, the safety car was deployed after a car of the TCA class crashed. The field got regrouped, but just like in yesterday’s Race 2 action did not resume and so Maxson, González, Smithson and Block crossed the line in procession behind the safety car.
Because this was a make-up race for the Lime Rock event that had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the new entries – Tristan Herbert, Vinnie Lima and Luke Rumburg – were not allowed to join and so the TCR field shrank to seven cars.
The next event of TC America will take place on 7/9 August at Sonoma.

Race 3
1. Tyler Maxson (Copeland Motorsports, Hyundai Veloster N), 17 laps
2. Victor González (VGMC Racing, Honda Civic Type R), 0.434 
3. Scott Smithson (DXDT Racing, Honda Civic Type R), 1.945
4. Roy Block (KMW Motorsports-TMR Engineering, Alfa Romeo Giulietta), 2.777
5. Alex Papadopulos (Copeland Motorsports, Hyundai Veloster N), 3.699

Championship standings
1. Tyler Maxson 125 pts; 2. Scott Smithson 64; 3. Victor González 54

Picture: SRO Motorsports