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The Enhanced Performance, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions, Melanoma Canada #77 Formula Mazda Team had great 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 varied greatly during the race weekend. It was very hot on the Friday, wet and rainy on the Saturday and absolutely beautiful and sunny on Sunday with temperatures during the weekend ranging from 20°C to 35°C. Over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of 7 times; 3 on-track practices during the Friday test day, followed by qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday and Race 2 & 3 on Sunday. As always, our race class had some very nice open wheel race cars including the blazingly fast Formula 4 race cars.  On the Friday test day, the weather was very warm with a sun cloud mix and a high of 35°C. Our best lap for the test day was a 1:23.0 – pretty respectable lap time on new who’s Hoosier RB35’s. Saturday morning, the weather was wet and very rainy (see this link on our YouTube channel) We decided to skip practice to preserve our rain tires for qualifying. We set a best practice P2 time of 1:47.472. In the afternoon on Saturday, the weather brightened up considerably provided us with a dry track for our race. We started in P2 and pursued the leader for the entire race passing on the last lap to finishing P1 with a best lap time of a 1:24.021. The weather on Sunday was beautiful with a mix of sun cloud and a temperature of 25°C. We started Race 2 in P1 and soon lost that position to the F-4 of Mike McNeil and Jim Morton. We finished Race 2 in P3, P1 in our class, with a best lap time of 1:23.797. We started Race 3 in P3 and began to track down the leaders, Mike McNeil and Jim Morton, catching them by lap 5. In corner three, Mike and Jim came together on the race track, making contact with the barrier on the inside apex of the corner. This put me in P1 – the race track went full course yellow for the 5 remaining laps. Consequently, we finished P1 with a best lap time of 1:24.566!! A great result!!  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 such a great event!! And last, but certainly not least, we want to thank our long suffering family which allows us to continue to race……….
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