A McLaren 570S GT4 competes in British GT at Snetterton in 2018. Photo by Philip Nottingham via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Frankie Muniz picked up his first professional racing win on Friday at Road America. He picked up a second one on Saturday, in the rain, less than 24 hours later. Neither one happened because he was the fastest car on track. Both happened because somebody running ahead of him crashed.
That’s not an insult to Muniz or his TechSport Racing co-driver Tyler Stone, who handled the closing stints of both races. It’s simply how the Am class works in Pirelli GT4 America, and the mechanics behind it explain more about this weekend than the trophy does.
Race 1: A Three-Way Shuffle Ends in a Late Crash
Kris Wilson jumped into the early Am lead in the No. 413 Colorado Motorsport w/ Flying Lizard BMW, with Muniz working the No. 30 TechSport Racing Ford Mustang GT4 up to second in the opening laps. The mandatory driver-change window flipped the order: ACI Motorsports’ Alex Garcia and Colorado Motorsport’s Zach Lumsden came out of their stops locked together for the class lead, while Stone, now in the Mustang, recovered from a moment running wide to hold third.
Garcia had the class lead with under 15 minutes to go when he put the BMW off track and into damage, ending his day and handing first to Lumsden. Stone had the pace to reel him in, made the winning move in the closing laps, and delivered TechSport Racing its first win of the season. “Absolutely incredible to experience that here and have to fight like we had at the end to keep it,” Stone said afterward.
Muniz, who had handed the car to Stone at the stops, still got to celebrate a first professional win in a two-driver format where both names go on the trophy. “You only get one life, and that’s one thing I’ve always lived by,” he said. “To be here, Road America, my favorite racetrack ever, and get a win with Tyler, with Ford in the Mustang GT4 car, I’m so beyond thrilled.”
Race 2: A Wet Restart and Somebody Else’s Contact
Saturday’s race started behind the safety car in the rain, single file, and stayed messy for most of the hour. TechSport lost time in its mandatory stop, and Muniz, running his first wet race since 2009, had ground to make up when he rejoined. He didn’t have to make up all of it himself. Championship contender Alex Garcia was eliminated after contact with Marc Miller at Turn 5, and minutes later Anthony Geraci made contact with Kris Wilson, spinning Wilson and slowing Geraci enough for Muniz to inherit the Am lead outright. From there, Muniz and Stone simply had to keep the Mustang pointed straight to complete the weekend sweep.
“The whole time after the checkered flag came out, I was literally crying in my helmet,” Muniz said. “I made the sacrifice to my family to go racing and to be an inspiration for my son. I’m so grateful to Ford Racing, TechSport Racing and my entire team.”
Why Am-Class Racing Rewards Survival First
None of this is a coincidence. GT4 America runs three classes together, Pro-Am, Silver and Am, in 60-minute sprints that require a mandatory driver change and pair a professional-caliber driver with a Silver- or Am-rated teammate depending on the class. Cramming three skill tiers, a mandatory pit window and changing weather into one hour of racing produces exactly what happened twice this weekend: incidents up front reshuffle the running order without anyone behind them needing to turn a particularly heroic lap. It is a different sport than a long Truck Series race on an oval, where track position gets earned over hours, not handed over in a five-minute window. Road America has a habit of settling races this way. Earlier this season, a gravel trap decided a championship there just as decisively as any pass for the lead.
The Other Side of Muniz’s Schedule
Winning twice at Road America is a bigger deal than it looks given what Muniz’s other job looks like right now. He runs the No. 33 Team Reaume Ford full-time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, where he sits 25th in points this season with zero top-10 finishes and an average finish outside the top 25 through 16 races. He ran full-time in the ARCA Menards Series for Rette Jones Racing in 2023 before moving up to Trucks. Stacking a GT4 America Am-class campaign on top of a full Truck Series schedule is its own logistics problem, the kind of multi-series juggling that has become increasingly common for drivers trying to build, or in Muniz’s case prove, a career across more than one discipline at once.
It is also a reminder that GT racing’s amateur ranks have become a legitimate landing spot for drivers who do not fit neatly into one series. Professional and semi-professional drivers dropping into GT3 and GT4 machinery for one-off or part-time programs has become a regular subplot around the paddock, and it usually ends with somebody outside their usual lane finding speed they did not know they had.
What It Means for the Championship
The sweep pushed Muniz and Stone to second in the Am Teams standings with 141 points, 14 behind championship leader BimmerWorld, with four rounds remaining. Ford Performance’s factory backing of the Mustang GT4 program, the same manufacturer push that is now stretching to a WEC Hypercar effort, gives TechSport Racing reason to believe it can close that gap before the season ends.
GT4 America heads to Barber Motorsports Park for a doubleheader on September 25-27, the penultimate round of the season. Muniz and Stone will need more than survival instincts to close a 14-point gap, but after this weekend, nobody should bet against them being in the right place when the field in front of them starts making mistakes.
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