Good afternoon, Race Fans!
Friday, July 9
Greetings, Race Fans!!
It is a busy day at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. CSM is fielding three cars this weekend, two in IMSA's Michelin Pilot and one in IMSA’s VP Racing Sportscar Challenge. in MPC, Morgan and Gordon carry on in the #2 GS Porsche 718 GT4 RS Club Sport while the #3 GS Porsche has Zach Veach and Jonathan Browne at the wheel. Both MPC practices are on Friday with qualifying and the 2-hour race on Saturday. Ismaeel Ellahi in the VPRC #25 debuts an Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo this weekend. This is his first run at this track which includes two practices and qualifying on Friday, and one 45-minute race each on Saturday and Sunday. It’s a long day of jumping back and forth between the paddock at the bottom of the hill and the pit lane at the top to keep up with activities in both series. There’s never a dull moment here!
The track walk Thursday night was wet, but we don’t expect further rain this weekend. CTMP is 2.5 miles of road course laid over the natural hills and slopes in the Ontario forest. It’s a beautiful and fast track that requires attention and commitment to do well. The iconic Moss Corner is one of the most challenging turns on the entire calendar. It has a long, fast, left-curving downhill entry leading to a short, but very steep uphill brake zone for a double apex hairpin to the right. Video coverage doesn’t do justice to the elevation changes here. It’s action packed and dramatic! Today, it’s around 80 degrees and sunny with almost enough breeze to keep us cool. The next couple of days will be much like this one. With declining humidity, it should be quite nice for racing. Especially if we get a few clouds to shade things.
All the cars had two practice sessions today and the VP car also had qualifying. VPRC driver coaches are permitted to take a few laps in their driver's cars during the first practice session. It helps the coach improve the feedback and advice for the VP driver for this track and current conditions. Since Morgan is Ismaeel's coach, he got to have a go in the Aston Martin.
MPC has a full grid and pit boxes are tight with 29 GS cars and 13 in TCR. CSM’s boxes are located close to pit out where the lane slopes downward and begins to curl around inside Turn 1 to rejoin the circuit. Pit stops could be tricky with two GS boxes right in front of us. Hopefully stops will be staggered so the GS cars don’t obstruct each other too much.
For Practice 1, Morgan has the first stint. It does not take him long to get his bearings again after a year away. There is one stop for a small tweak and then a few more laps. When he hands it over to Gordon, he’s set a time that that will stick for 4th in the session. Air temperatures are in the mid-70’s and track temps are upper 90’s, both rising quickly under bright sunshine.
Practice 2 is the last session on track for the day and we have peak air temps and high (but falling) track temps. Gordon gets about 2/3 of the available time in this session. We lose 20 minutes in the mid part of the session with a red flag for a lengthy repair to the tire wall. With hotter conditions, Morgan’s time is good for 12th.
Saturday, July 10
We open the day early with the MPC Qualifying session rolling off at 8:00. The TCR cars go out first and their qualifying times are eye opening! That class has lots of downforce in their aero packages and it makes a huge difference at a track like CTMP. Ultimately, they are fast enough here to go 2nd, 4th and 6th overall, all in the 1:22 range for lap times. That will guarantee traffic challenges to today’s race.
As for the GS qualifying, about five minutes into the 15 minute session, just when most have reached the point where they are ready to lay down the real flying laps, a red flag comes out. On the approach to Turn 5 (Moss Corner), the #23 slid off to the right, caught a bump, and launched into the air. It landed heavily on the nose and slid into the tire barrier on the left. Fortunately, the driver is ok and the car is being repaired for the race. It took only about six and a half minutes to get back to the green flag, but there’s only three and a half minutes remaining - not much time to get in a good lap. That puts extra pressure on Gordon to get it done quickly. He managed to go fast enough for 19th in GS.
The skies are clear this morning - beautiful of course - but it seems that there will be few clouds to help keep things cool. The air temperature and humidity are lower than yesterday and the breeze is breezier, both making the peeps more comfortable. There is the usual flurry of activity ahead of the race, with final checks and preparation being done on both cars and drivers practicing the change. Of course we also have Ismaeel’s first race of the weekend immediately following our qualifying session. Check that out on YouTube - he grabs a podium finish! (And a spoiler alert added post-weekend - Ismaeel did even better in Race 2 on Sunday.)
The Grid Walk
Canada is a great place for motorsports fans. They flood the place to find their preferred niches all over the circuit. Tents and campers fill the woods and hillsides offering great views of the racing. IMSA is great for fan access and they are enjoying the heck out of it! Of course, the fan walk was full of enthusiastic people, happy to be close to the cars and drivers, pick up a memento and get autographs.
It’s warm and sunny this afternoon with some very welcome big puffy clouds. We like clouds - their shadows make a noticeable difference in track temps almost instantly. Cooler is always better for both tire and engine performance. Odds are that the clouds will tease us instead of sticking around all day. Watch on Peacock or YouTube.
We always hope for a clean start and today goes well. At least it did until the entry to Moss Corner. There, 2nd and 3rd come together and spin. Everyone scatters to find a path through the chaos and several cars lose a lot of positions. In the pits, we all hold our breath hoping to see our cars stay clean - thankfully, they do! Though it brings out a full course yellow, eventually all cars get going again, keeping it quite a short delay. Gordon did a great job getting through the mess and he picked up 8 spots at once!
Over the next nine laps, the top of the order stays fairly steady, but those who were involved in the first lap incident and dropped positions are rapidly making them back up again. A couple of other cars have mechanical issues and one makes the strategy call to pit very early for a short fuel fill, so Gordon’s position overall falls and rises a bit during this stage.
On lap 12, about 20 minutes in, Gordon is in 11th when the full course yellow returns. A GS and a TCR car make contact dropping out of Turn 3 and go into the wall on the right side of the track. Both cars and the wall are damaged and it takes a long time to clear up. So long in fact, that we cross the threshold of the first 30 minutes of the race during which the pits stay closed under a yellow flag. That converts this yellow from pits closed to pits open. Alternative strategy calls open up for the gamblers, but it’s not yet to the 40 minute minimum drive time requirement. There are no takers early in the yellow period.
At the 40 minute mark we are still yellow. CSM calls Gordon to come in next time by. He pits with 21 laps down and about 42 minutes elapsed, still under yellow. Now it gets very hectic in the pit lane, with most of the GS field diving in to make their driver change and full service stops under this extended yellow. This is a solid strategy call that commits these teams to a two-stop strategy, assuming the race stays green once it gets going again. However, with this long a yellow, a few teams opt to stay out now and bank on enough fuel saved to extend their first stint deep into the race, hoping they can manage to do this on only one stop. Their risk is running out of fuel if it does stay green the rest of the way.
Pit lane is very tightly packed and getting in and out of the pit box is tricky. Gordon gets in cleanly, right on the marks and the crew leaps over the wall to service the car - full fuel and four new tires. He jumps out and Morgan climbs in. Rejoining is a bit tricky with the car in the box in front of us at an awkward angle and lots of traffic streaming by. When the service and change are done and we get a break in traffic, Morgan gets back in the queue in 23rd. He gets a further three yellow laps to settle himself and start to get the tires warmed up.
When it does go green on Lap 25, Morgan has a good restart, passing a couple cars. A couple more cars get drive through penalties, helping us move up the order to 18th. The burst of activity is short lived though with the yellow coming back out again when a couple cars bump together and one does not continue from Turn 5. That’s two free spots for us, but another four laps and eight minutes under yellow. It’s a hair over an hour to go when the green returns on Lap 30. Again, Morgan gets a decent restart, staying clean and moving up a spot or two.
This is where the running order gets rather muddled. There are so many different strategies in play by various teams, that it’s tricky to guess who will need to stop again and when. Some still need to do the driver change in the next 20 minutes so their other driver can meet minimum time. Probably most will need another stop for fuel, but when and how much time in the pits will that take? Then there’s the wild card - more yellows? It takes a lap or two to neutralize the field and then open the pits, but the pits stay closed under a yellow in the last 30 minutes. Either of those can catch you out badly. So… What do you do?? How’s your pace, fuel burn and tire degradation? Will there be more yellow or not? The strategy calls can be quite stressful to make. Added to that, cars keep spinning or falling off the pavement randomly. We watch closely to see if they can get going again - when they do, it stays green.
We are legitimately running around 12th to 15th and it’s still green when we get to the period where many teams start to make their final pit stops. This goes on for about 15 minutes and the running order gets quite jumbled during this time. It’s hard to tell where anybody really is placed until all the stops are finished. Almost all are done with about 40 minutes to go. With green flag stops by others, we run as high as 3rd before we pit. While that looks good, we know it isn't a true reflection of our position. We pull Morgan in on Lap 44, with 40 minutes remaining. He resumes in 17th and the real work of the race is at hand.
From here, Morgan needs to run clean, patient laps. Other cars have a few more incidents, penalties, and retirements, all of which help us out. Also in play is the interaction between the fast TCR cars and the GS cars. They are all racing and trying to use each other to advantage to get by their in-class competition. Battling and running side-by-side makes the cars slower and lets following cars catch up, bringing both opportunity and risk. Throw in a couple front runners who need a splash of fuel in the last few minutes while Morgan also makes several passes outright and we end up in 9th place when the checker comes out. We really had no idea where we’d end up until that point and it feels pretty good!
Now we get a couple weeks to catch up on between-race activities before heading north again. Next time we also go a bit west to be at Road America July 30-August 1. And as a further heads up - our “home” race at Virginia International Raceway is August 21-22. Get your VIR tickets now!
Check out the Schedules.
Photo credits to Jason Ramirez, Beth Burkhard.
