Spencer Pumpelly, a Virginia native, finally scored his first career win at VIRginia International Raceway. Pumpelly was victorious in Saturday’s Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge win, but was unable to repeat the performance in Sunday’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship race.

In CTSC, Pumpelly’s Rennsport One teammate, Luis Rodriguez Jr., qualified the No. 17 RS1 Porsche Cayman 10th on the ST grid in a qualifying session with limited green time. Pumpelly knew the starting spot was not representative of the car, nor his teammate’s speed, since Rodriguez Jr. was blocked on his best qualifying lap.

In the race, Rodriguez Jr. patiently picked his way through the ST field and was able to hand the car over to Pumpelly in fifth. The strategic timing and quick work of the RS1 crew enabled the No. 17 to pick up three spots on pit lane, moving him to second. He then passed the Mazda MX-5 of Christian Szymczak for the lead.

After the final pit stop it was only a matter of keeping enough distance between himself and the team’s sister car.

“He kept me honest,” Pumpelly said of Rennsport One teammate Remo Ruscitti. “There was a time there that he was eating into my lead a little bit and I was getting nervous. I was trying to nurse the tires, but it got to the point where I thought I might need to give it everything we had. Fortunately, we were able to manage the gap at about a second and a half. It was a tough stint, because every tenth I would throw away, he would gain.”

Naturally, as the clock ticked down and fuel strategy became the hot topic, Pumpelly’s mind couldn’t help but drift back to Road America, where an inevitable win was thwarted by a fuel pickup issue with two turns to go.

“I was thinking about Road America for sure,” laughed Pumpelly. “I wasn’t worried so much about fuel as I was worried bad luck would come and bite us.”

Bad luck bit several cars that ran out of fuel before the end. One even caused a full-course caution with one lap to go, but that only secured Pumpelly and Rodriguez Jr.’s third win of the season.

“The whole win really started with Luis and his drive,” Pumpelly said. “He was super smart. He managed traffic really well and drove a brilliant stint. Then, the RS1 crew gained us several positions on pit lane with their incredible stop. I can’t even put into words how proud I am of everyone on this team.”

The CTSC race from VIRginia International Raceway will air on FOX Sports 1, Sunday, Sept. 6, at 11am ET.

In Sunday’s TUSC race, Pumpelly and co-driver Patrick Lindsey were in a strong position for another GTD podium finish after Lindsey qualified the No. 73 Park Place Motorsports Porsche GT America in second place.

However, mechanical gremlins reared their ugly head early in the two-hour and 40-minute race.

“Early in Patrick’s first stint we had a low water level alarm come up on the telemetry,” Pumpelly explained. “We didn’t see any water coming out of the back of the car, so we believed we had a sensor problem. A couple laps later we noticed a rise in oil and gearbox temperature simultaneously, so we had to bring the car in.”

The Park Place team made some repairs on pit lane, but when that didn’t do the trick, the team was forced to bring the car behind the wall and into the paddock for repairs. They were able to get the car back out, but needed to keep Lindsey in the car to ensure he achieved minimum drive time to collect points.

Pumpelly rarely makes mistakes, but he made one on Sunday when he figured the team would bring the car back in once Lindsey had hit the minimum drive time. After changing into his street clothes and packing up his suit and helmet, a crew member arrived at the truck to tell him they needed him in the car immediately.

“So I ripped my clothes off and changed right in the middle of the paddock,” Pumpelly laughed. “I jumped on the pit cart, put my shoes on while we were driving to pit lane and threw my helmet on as the car came in.”

Adding insult to injury, Pumpelly only made two laps before the engine stumbled and the team confirmed that now was a good time to save the car and call it a day.

“It was a tough day, because our Park Place guys are always really sharp and we had a great car,” Pumpelly said. “We’ll figure out what happened, work on it and move on. Everyone is still in good spirits. We’ll still be competitive in the final two races.”

The final two TUDOR races are at Circuit of the Americas, Sept. 17 – 19 and Road Atlanta, Oct. 1 – 3. Both races will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 2.