Crash costs Taylor brothers chance to win

Points leaders knocked out of contention at Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix

BOWMANVILLE, ONT.— For the second week in a row, a crash prevented IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship points leaders Ricky and Jordan Taylor from driving their Cadillac Dpi-V.R into Victory Lane — this time after starting from pole in the annual Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

A week ago at Watkins Glen, Ricky Taylor collided with another car and by the time repairs were made he was six laps behind the rest of the field. Sunday at CTMP, a.k.a. old Mosport, it was way worse in that brother Jordan Taylor had a 25-second lead with less than 30 minutes to go in the two-hour, 40-minute race when he turned in too quickly while making a pass and the ensuing cash ruined his and the team’s race.

In the end, defending series prototype class champion Dane Cameron, co-driving another Cadillac with fellow champ Eric Curran, won the race that finished under caution as the result of a spectacular, upside-down crash by Toronto-area driver David Ostella, who was not hurt.

Second-place went to Toronto driver Mikhail (Misha) Goikhberg and Stephen Simpson in an ORECA LMP2 with Scott Sharp and Ryan Dalziel third in a Nissan Dpi.

In their sixth win in six starts, Patricio O’Ward and James French won the Prototype Challenge class in an ORECA FLM09, Alexander Sims and Bill Auberlen won the GT Le Mans class driving a BMW M6 and Lawson Aschenbach and Andrew Davis were first in GT Daytona at the wheel of an Audi R8 GT3.

The race was interesting, but ordinary, until about the halfway mark when a rain shower more-or-less turned everything topsy-turvy. Many teams opted to change to grooved rain tires while others stayed with dry-weather slicks. And then it dried up, which brought another round of pit stops for tires, and then it rained again.

Jordan Taylor, who was leading when it started to rain the first time, stayed with slicks while the secondthrough-fourth-place prototypes changed to wet tires. Taylor’s slick tires were no match for the conditions and he quickly lost position, sliding back behind the leaders by 14 seconds.

But then it started to dry up, and his gamble appeared to be working. Very quickly, he was back to being only seven seconds behind, then he was leading, then he was 24 seconds (and change) ahead, then disaster struck.

While trying to power past the GT Le Mans Corvette of Tommy Milner, Taylor — on the extreme inside and running four-cars-wide—turned in before he was completely past and the ensuing collision sent both cars careering off the circuit. Again, no one was hurt but Milner (co-driver Oliver Gavin) was done for the day and Jordan’s Cadillac had rear suspension and body damage.

Cadillac hasn’t lost a WeatherTech race this season, winning all seven to date. And Cameron and Curran have now won two straight CTMP Mobil 1 Grands Prix.

Although the Taylors have missed the podium at the last two races — they’d won the first five races of the season—they will head for the site of the next WeatherTech race, Road America in Wisconsin in four weeks, still very much in the points lead.

While they fell from 30 points to 20 as a result of last week’s incident, their official seventh-place finish Sunday still leaves them 19 points ahead of the field with only three races remaining.