BARC Canadian Touring Trophy Races at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park – July 22 to July 24 Race Report

​The Enhanced Performance, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions, STANMECH Technologies, Melanoma Canada #77 Formula Mazda Team had disappointing weekend at the BARC Canadian Touring Trophy Races, held at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP). We were placed in the Formula Libre/Formula race group. We had registered our #77 Formula Mazda in the VARAC Formula Classic 90 class. There were a total of 14 cars in our race group including, Formula 4’s, F2000’s and F1200’s.  The weather ranged was very nice with beautiful sunny days and temperatures ranging from 20°C to 27°C. 

Over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of 7 times; 4 on-track practices during the Friday test day, followed by practice, qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday. Unfortunately we did not start for Race 2 & 3 on Sunday as we had an intermittent oil pressure problem and did not want to damage our race engine. As always, our race class had some very nice open wheel race cars including the blazingly fast Formula 4 racecars.
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On the Friday test day, the weather was beautiful with a sun cloud mix and a high of 21°C.  Our best lap for the test day was a 1:23.0 – pretty respectable lap time with practice tires.  

​Saturday morning, the weather was bright and sunny, we set a best practice P2 time of 1:25.239. Just after lunch, we set a qualifying P3 time of 1:25.667 – we were P1 in our class. In the afternoon on Saturday, we finished P3 in our race – P1 in our class with a best lap time of 1:24.904. All during the race we notice that our red oil pressure light was coming on during periods of low RPM and slow speed corners, especially corner 5A and 5B. We commend the paddock after the race, we spent quite a bit of time talking with her crew chief Bill Vallis about whether we should go out on Sunday for Race 2 and 3. We decided that we did not want to risk ruining our race engine so we decide to park the car for the rest of the race weekend. Better safe than sorry!!

A special thank you to Bill & Shirley Vallis of Vallis Motor Sport for their trackside support during the BARC Canadian Touring Trophy Races and to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park for hosting the event!!  On a positive note, we raised more that $560 for our charity sponsor, Melanoma Canada. Click here for photos from the race weekend. 

​And last, but certainly not least, we want to thank our long suffering family which allows us to continue to race……….