ONA FAST TRACK
Kelowna teenager competing at Canadian Grand Prix weekend in Montreal
It might not have the star power or profile of the heydays of the 1990s, but there’s a quiet Canadian openwheel racer renaissance taking place on the world’s top race tracks.
Montreal’s Lance Stroll is competing in his sophomore season in the sport’s ultimate series, Formula 1; Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe is one of the most recognizable IndyCar racers in the world; 29-yearold Robert Wickens of Toronto is having a sensational rookie season in IndyCar; and Montreal’s Zachary Claman DeMelo, also a rookie, finished 19th in the recent Indy 500.
Of the four, only Stroll will be on track this weekend at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Montreal’s Notre Dame Island. But many eyes up and down the pit wall will be on another Canadian racer, Marco Kacic.
As much as the above-mentioned competitors represent the current generation of Canadian open-wheel stars, the Kelowna born-and-raised 15-year-old is firmly in the driver’s seat of representing the next.
Kacic is in his first season competing in Toyo Tires F1600 Championships, which holds two races during the Montreal F1 weekend. He’s one of five drivers entered by Montreal’s Exclusive Autosport team, and is driving a car sponsored by Vancouver-based electric vehicle builder Meccanica, Guayaki Organic Bread, HUB, ORG, New Balance Vancouver, Area 27 and Siemens.
Like most if not all of the drivers on-track in Montreal this weekend, Kacic cut his teeth in go-karts, beginning for fun at age five then in organized racing at age eight.
“My dad had a team so I thought it would be cool,” the Grade 9 student said on the phone from his West Kelowna home earlier this week. “When I first started it was just more for fun, but when I started getting older I became more serious about it.
“And when I went to cars, about a year ago, it got a lot more serious, knowing that that’s what I wanted to do.”
That’s what his father wanted to do too.
Danny Kacic grew up in Vancouver before moving to Kelowna, which he has called home for the past 20 years.
“I did the typical route of most race car drivers. Started in karts, went to cars, ran out of money and went back to go-karts,” Danny said. “As I got older and a career out of racing was getting less and less likely, I got into the business end of karting. I started importing a specific brand to Canada and I did that as a business for about 10 years.”
It was a relationship Danny forged during his racing years that has put his son on track to the possibility of a much bigger open-wheel career than his father enjoyed.
“The owner of the Exclusive Autosport team, Michael Duncalfe, and I used to race together about 15 years ago. And when Marco was having some success in karting, Michael contacted me and said he’d noticed Marco and had his eye on him,” said Danny.
When Marco was 14 Exclusive Autosport set up a development program for him — he was too young to race — where he tested with the team in order to get ready to run with the team this year.
“So they have a decent investment in Marco,” Danny said. “They’ve put a lot of time and energy into him as they saw something there.”
That belief was certainly underscored at the opening race weekend at Mosport last month when Marco qualified first out of 25 cars on a track he had never raced on.
Said team owner Duncalfe of that performance: “Marco has demonstrated how quick he can be and how naturally talented he is by securing pole position and by setting the fastest lap time that any driver of Exclusive Autosport has put down at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.
“That said,” he continued, “there is still a steep learning curve for Marco this year as he continues to acclimate himself with our Spectrum Honda chassis, the various race tracks and the large grids that come out for F1600 racing.”
That learning curve was evident in Marco’s 13th-place finish in the season opening race, and he did not finish the second race after getting taken out by a spinning car, resulting in his car unable to start the third race of the weekend.
Marco cites F1 wunderkind Max Verstappen as one of his favourite racers — “You can see the go-karter in him from his style” — so he will no doubt be wide-eyed during this weekend’s races, the first time he has competed in a support race of a Grand Prix event.
Yet like Verstappen, Marco exudes the exuberance, and confidence, of youth when asked about his expectations in Montreal during the two F1600 races.
“Obviously, I’d like to win, but worst case scenario, a topthree finish.”
With F1 teams in attendance, Montreal is a showcase for Marco’s talents, his father notes.
The Montreal F1600 races take place at 5:40 p.m. today and 9:05 a.m. tomorrow.
Obviously I’d like to win, but worst case scenario, a top-three finish. Marco Kacic