Some great racing ahead near Bowmanville
The domination of the Konica Minolta Cadillac team in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, was stopped last week at Watkins Glen, N.Y., and the team, which had a five-race winning streak, hopes to return to the podium during this weekend’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park near Bowmanville.
The weekend features the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with its exotic prototype and GT race cars, the series’ only Canadian stop.
Driving their Cadillac DPi-V.R, brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor of Florida qualified fourth in the series’ Prototype class at the Glen, but an early shunt sent the car to the pits. The team lost six laps repairing the front end damage, but managed to get three of those back and finish sixth.
“It’s unfortunate that we had the incident at the beginning of the race, but the team did a great job recovering from it,” noted brother Ricky Taylor.
Younger brother Jordan said after the race it was just one of those racing incidents, and the team was focused on doing its best in the upcoming CTMP race.
“Obviously, it was a disappointing day,” he said. “With strategy, we were able to get three of those back. So, from going from last to sixth due to other guys having reliability issues and making mistakes isn’t the worst day. I think we salvaged good points considering how we started and I think we can look to Mosport next week still with a healthy lead continue chasing our championship there and continue running for more race wins.”
This weekend’s event is round seven of the 12-race series, and the Taylors maintain a healthy 20-point lead in Prototype, which features the pure racing machines Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Corvette, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes, Lexus, and Porsche driven by teams from 15 countries.
Along with the Cadillac teams, other front-runners include Toronto’s Daniel Morad, who was part of the GTD-class winning Porsche team at the Rolex 24 earlier this year, as well as over 20 full-time IMSA drivers and four teams, including Corvette Racing and Chip Ganassi’s Ford GT team that competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The four-day event also includes exciting action from the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge, IMSA Prototype Challenge presented by Mazda and the F4 United States Championship series.
This year fans will be able to take part in the Open Grid Walk session, which allows them to get close to the drivers and race cars with excellent chances for speaking with the teams and getting autographs.
Ticket prices range from $35 for single day passes to $80 for a weekend pass. Children 16 and under are free, and camping is available. Weekend winners: Four-time Super Dirt Week big-block Modified winner and part-time NASCAR Truck racer Stewart Freisen, formerly of Niagara-on-the-Lake and now living in New York state, scored his first DirtCar race last week, winning the New Yorker 100 on the Rome-Utica Speedway for his 24th career win in the series . ... Adam Racine of Elmira won his fifth Lucas Oil Can-Am Midget feature of 2017 at Varney’s Full Throttle Speedway over the weekend.