Perhaps the wildest race of the 2024 season was the second in Mid-Ohio on 8 June, when young hotshot Marco Butti started from the reversed grid pole position in his GOAT Racing Honda. The team had turned around a major set-up flaw which saw him go from completely uncompetitive in the first race, to a genuine contender for victory.
Butti launched into the lead as the lights went out, while teammate Dušan Borković got too much wheelspin alongside him and was quickly passed, leaving Butti vulnerable to attack from Yann Ehrlacher’s Lynk & Co. Further down the order, it was the pace of Race 1 winner Thed Björk which saw the Swedish driver charging through the order, scything his way through from the back of the top ten, and he was up to fifth by the end of lap two.
Teammate Santiago Urrutia gifted Björk an easy pass on lap 6 and the Swede was then able to overtake Borković for third in a daring move which the Serbian tried his best to cover off, closing the door at the last moment, leading to a bit of touring car rubbing.
Now released after passing Borković, Ehrlacher let the clearly faster Björk through to let him put pressure on Butti. It didn’t take long for Björk to catch the Italian, and the race erupted on lap 11 as Björk first tapped the rear of Butti’s Honda, before diving past at the same spot two laps later, edging Butti wide. This allowed Björk to assume the lead with Ehrlacher coming through to second as well. Butti tried to fight back, but Ehrlacher covered him off and the Frenchman was let past for the lead by Björk in a coordinated move by the Cyan Racing team.
Butti then came straight back at Björk with some fight and had a good look up the inside to try and at least regain second, but Björk was able to keep ahead with some more side-to-side action. This allowed the next Lynk & Co of Urrutia to try his luck on Butti, but their battle actually allowed the fourth Cyan Racing car of Ma Qing Hua to get past the pair of them and up to third. Butti now had clearly had enough, diving on Urrutia’s car to try and reclaim fourth, and from thereon, the two drivers actually eliminated themselves from contention for the podium in brawling on-track dogfight, falling down the order.
It was Ehrlacher’s race to win, and it’s worth noting Björk didn’t keep his podium result as his move on Butti was ruled too aggressive by the stewards, and he was given a post-race time penalty.
Re-live the race on the official TCR TV YouTube channel here.
Picture: WSC/MotorSportMedia
