Thaze Competition continued their strong start to life in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge with a fourth-place finish in a tense race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on Saturday.
The team from Detroit, MI, were only formed this year and incredibly finished on the podium on their competitive debut on the streets of their home city last month, but looked set for a repeat result this time at the legendary road course in Ontario.

Drivers Michael di Meo – who lives in nearby Toronto – and Marc Miller were one of the outstanding pairs in the race, but were denied a third-place finish when their #78 Mercedes-AMG GT4 cruelly ran out of fuel with one corner to go and dropped to fourth.
Both di Meo and the experienced Miller showed well in free practice as a set-up breakthrough between FP1 and FP2 brought a major improvement in laptime. Sadly a red flag in qualifying prevented Michael from showing what he was truly capable of.
Instead he did it in the race, gaining a spot at the start to run sixth and then holding station before picking off his rivals one by one during as he approached the halfway point of the two-hour race.

Pitting from third place he handed over driving duties to Marc, but a discrepancy between the rate at which the fuel hose was delivering fuel to the car at the pitstop and the time calculated for the process meant that seconds were lost as extra fuel was required.
Buoyed by the consistent race pace of the Mercedes-AMG, Marc battled back from seventh and was up to third by the time he called in for a second stop – this time a short ‘splash and dash’ fuel top-up – with five minutes to go.
Rejoining without losing a place, Marc looked set for third spot until the car ran dry during the final half-lap; the Michigan native agonizingly seeing two cars flash past between the final corner and the finish line.
Regardless, third and fourth-place results represent an excellent start to life in the IMPC and the #78 Mercedes-AMG will surely be a contender for more trophies when it next appears later in the year.
Michael di Meo said: “My mindset going in was not to overdrive or overthink because my stint was going to be a long one. Once the lead pack was caught in TCR traffic I closed in and made my moves one by one. When I pitted we were already on the podium and that reflects how hard everyone’s worked to make the car fast and, in the case of Marc especially, to make me fast. The fact we lost a podium on the last lap is kind of unsettling, but the fact we were there shows everyone what we’re capable of.”
Marc Miller said: “The story of the race is Michael’s stint, which was fast and consistent and meant that I had a podium car when I took over. Grant – our engineer – said we looked like we had a slow fuel-fill number so we had to keep the hose on for extra seconds. We didn’t really know we had an issue until later on. That, ultimately, led to us running out on the last lap, and I could have saved more if I’d needed to and think I’d still have been okay for third. We’ll get to the bottom of it and have a really big go at our next race.”
Grant Barclay, Chief Engineer, said: “We had almost an all-new crew here compared to Detroit, but everyone’s done an outstanding job, even down to the drivers, who haven’t put a scratch on the car. Running out of fuel is ultimately down to me, but when you haven’t had time to practice fuel drops, there’s always going to be some fine-tuning required. What’s exciting is how much Michael has developed in such a short space of time. If he can keep that up then he and Marc will be a potentially championship-winning pairing.”
Faisal Ahmad, Co-Team Principal, said: “Our focus is squarely on next season. Testing our processes, coming together as a team, pushing ourselves and our equipment, these are our goals. To have a podium slip through our fingers definitely stings, but what we’ve learned and how we’ll improve is invaluable data. In the end, I’m extremely proud of our entire organization. We went to circuits that are polar opposites, the streets of Detroit and then a historic high speed road course and showed we can perform at either end of the spectrum. I couldn’t be happier being the top finishing Mercedes-AMG and it’s testimony to our program that we’re not content, we’ll learn, we’ll improve, and we’ll be back.”
Brian Makse, Co-Team Principal, said: “Third and fourth in our first two races… We’re almost in fantasy territory, except that I always felt we were capable of doing something like this. It’s so easy to be disappointed with how the race went at the end, but to have these two results for a brand-new team is pretty amazing; championship-winning form almost. In two races we’ve proved what we can do and I can’t wait for our next race so we can challenge for another podium and even a win.”