$50,000-to-win clash attracts cream of racing crop
Zacharie Robichon was unbeatable at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Anybody who reads my stuff knows I adore all facets of the automotive industry — the competition side in particular. And I don’t discriminate when it comes to subject matter: I follow, admire and write about everything.
Which explains today’s three-parter — short separates on this weekend’s Canadian Short Track Nationals, a Porsche road racer’s dream season and 500 career feature starts made by one of circle-track racing’s greatest stars. First, the nationals.
I love people who Think Big. My favourite politician of all time was the late Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau because, for him, nothing was impossible: Expo, the Summer Olympics, The Grand Prix of Canada. No money for a subway? Build it anyway, he said. And they did.
So Sunday, at Jukasa Motor Speedway, outside Hagersville, the highest-paying asphalt oval race ever held in Canada (and one of the top-paying, if not the top-paying, in all of North America) will get the green flag with — wait for it — a whopping $50,000 going to the winner.
More than 50 late-model race cars are expected from all over North America and 40 will start, with last place paying $2,000.
NASCAR Cup-racing legend Sterling Marlin has entered and will haul in from Columbia, Tenn. Short-track terror Bubba Pollard of Senoia, Ga., has also entered as have Canadian hotshoes Jason Hathaway, D.J. Kennington and the Lapcevich brothers, Cayden and Treyten.
Jukasa General Manager Alex Nagy (he used to run the NASCAR Pinty’s Series) told me in conversation this week that the speedway’s new owners, Kenny Hill and Jerry Montour, gave him a mandate: establish the absolutely biggest event for each type of race promoted there.
“We initially announced a $25,000-towin event,” Nagy said.
“In July, Jerry said to me, ‘Nobody’s paying more for that type of race, are they?’ and I said, ‘Well, there’s a race in California that pays $30,000,’ and he said, ‘Well, you‘d better get to work because we want to pay the highest purse here.’ So that’s when we raised it to $50,000-to-win.”
Nagy said that besides thinking big to put Jukasa back on the racing map — it opened in the mid-1960s as Cayuga Speedway, attracting the likes of Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison and other big-name NASCAR stars before going out of business in 2009 — Hill and Montour wanted to give Canadian racers a big race of their own.
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“We have so much Canadian talent but to go after the big money, they usually had to go south of the border to race for it,” Nagy said. “So it’s important for Canadians to have a race to hang their hats on and say to the Americans, ‘OK, come up here and see what you can do in our yard.’ ”
Marlin, who still races for fun after retiring from the Cup circuit as a millionaire — he suffers from a degenerative nerve disorder similar to Parkinson’s and credits racing with helping him to fight it off — said in an interview that he’s thrilled at the prospect of racing at Jukasa.
“Our team is always excited about getting out on the road and taking on a new race track,” he said. “There was never any question about whether our team was going to be supporting this deal, or not. As soon as we heard about it, we knew we’d be making the trip to Canada.”
The nationals weekend starts Saturday with the APC Late Model Series sharing a program with the Ontario Outlaw Super Late Models. Sunday, there’s a $5,000-to-win Super Stock showdown to be followed by the headline event, the $50,000-to-win Pro Late Model 200.
I had just one last question for Nagy, as we wound down our conversation.
“Alex,” I said, “where are you going to put all of those race cars?” And he said: “I expect it will be a logistical nightmare — but we’ll be okay. And I think this race will grow as the years go by — although it became a monster real quick.”
For the weekend schedule, price of admission, and so-on, go to jukasamotorspeedway.com OK, last weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Zacha- rie Robichon of Toronto — he’s really from Ottawa, but he lives in the Big Smoke now — won the last two races of the 2018 Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Yokohama series. In total, he won 11 of the 12 races in the Canadian series, the four most recent races in the American version of the championship, the Sebring race last spring that was a combined Canadian-American effort, plus he’s raced an LMP3 car in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship series.
At this very moment, I cannot think of a more successful young Canadian racer.
I sat down last Sunday at Old Mosport for a quick chat with the 26-year-old who holds a Master’s degree in international finance and has a racing record that includes wins and championships in karting, Formula 1600, Formula 2000 and now the Porsche series. McDonald: Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think you would ever have a season like this one?
Robichon: In my wildest dreams, maybe; but not in my realistic dreams. It’s been a pretty special year. I think the trick for me has been just trying to keep it simple. I’ve always had the tendency to think about too many things when I’m driving, to overthink. This year, I just took a step back and said, ‘Believe in yourself and have fun.’ You were with the right team, had the right car, were in top physical shape and were mentally and emotionally prepared. What did you do to get ready for this year?
It’s funny to say but I think the last few years, I was always questioning where I was going to go, where I was going to race. I think I decided this year to just enjoy it. You’re lucky to be where you are and make the most of it. Make the most not just of every race but every lap and every corner.
Every single time I’m on the track, I’ve got a smile on my face, whether I’m leading or I’m not. Maybe my life outside of racing is starting to make more sense with where I’m at and I’m enjoying myself more at the track because I have that extra little bit of confidence. And all the people who have been supporting me have been so supportive — they believe in me more than I believe in myself. Where do you go from here?
I don’t know. I’m going to do two more weekends with GT3 USA and one more weekend in the LMP3 car at Petit Le Mans. Going forward, I’ve talked to some teams in various championships to see if there’s any interest and what people are looking for. I’m lucky to have the mentorship from the people at Porsche; they are very supportive, they’re like an open book and they’re here to help. I’ll lean on them and everybody from Porsche Canada and Porsche motorsports and hopefully I can be back in a Porsche for next year. What is your goal? Where do you want to go?
I want to race in the WeatherTech championship full-time. I love sports car racing and I love the Porsche brand. If there was any way I could get into a Porsche in the Weathertech Series, that would be a dream come true. We all know what racing’s like and what it takes to get there, so we just have to keep working and hopefully we can find a way in. What do you do in real life, as distinct from this artificial life?
I don’t have a real life. I help to run the Porsche Driving Experience. I’m right back out here tomorrow morning to take delivery of some cars and we have eight days of events coming up. Back in the 1990s, I remember telling my friend, Brian Stewart, about a supermodified racing driver from Oswego, N.Y., named Joe Gosek. I was convinced he was good enough to run the Indianapolis 500 but needed some seasoning in a rear-engine car. “That good, eh?” said Stewart. That good, I said.. So team owner Stewart, who was the King of Indy Lights at the time — the list of drivers who raced and learned from him is impressive (Paul Tracy, Christiano da Matta and on and on) — arranged for Gosek to do a test at Willow Springs International Raceway in Texas. Gosek blew everybody else away that day; he was oneto two-seconds faster a lap.
And that was on a road course; Gosek was — and remains — an oval-track driver and that Willow Spring outing was his one and only roadcourse appearance. Which says this: enormous talent.
Stewart, who’s retired now, said they didn’t do a deal for several reasons.
“The guys I worked with in racing were rich guys who didn’t want to do the work of getting a car ready to race, so I did it for them and they paid me a lot of money,” said the Sutton resident, who never pulled a punch about the realities of racing in all his life.
“Joe had loads of talent but he wasn’t in a financial position where we could do business. I told him that he had a good crew for his kind of racing and that he should just try to buy a car and do it himself. He didn’t need a guy like me.”
Gosek never went Indy Lights racing but he did make it to Indianapolis in 1996, starting 31st in the 500 and finishing 25th. He could have done better but his car developed mechanical problems and he had to park it.
“I was just getting comfortable, too,” he told me after the race. “I could have raced that thing.”
Sunday at Oswego Speedway, Gosek will line up for his 39th Budweiser International Classic 200 race. He’s won three of them. But the story this weekend is that Joe Gosek has now started more than 500 feature events in a career that goes back to the early 1980s.
At last count, he’d started 460 supermodified features at his home track, 29 International Supermodified Association/ Midwest Supermodified Association features, six midget features, five in the modifieds, one ASA stock car feature and, of course, his start in the Indy 500.
And I will leave you with this statistic: every 11:36 starts, he’s won.
He’s more than 60 years old now so there aren’t too many years left. I suggest here and now that if Joe Gosek wins that International Classic at Oswego Sunday, he might just announce his retirement.
It would be a wonderful way to bow out, wouldn’t it?
You go, Joe!