BEMC Late Summer Trophy Races at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park – September 17 to 19 Race Report

The STANMECH Technologies, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions #77 Formula Mazda Team had an awesome race weekend at the BEMC Late Summer Trophy Races held at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. We were entered in the Formula Libre race group. There were a total of 7 cars in our race group including, four Formula 4’s, one Formula Renault and one Reynard F2000. The weather was absolutely stunning with temperatures ranging from 20 to 25° C with the humidex.
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Over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of 9 times; 4 on-track practices during the Friday test day, followed by practice, qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday, Race 2 & 3  on Sunday. Our race class had some beautiful open wheel race cars including Jim Morton’s unbelievably fast Gamma Tercero F4.

Our best lap for the test day was a 1:24 flat on Pirelli radial tires that were left over from the CASC-OR Summer Classic Race weekend at Calabogie Motorsports Park. We had lots of fun learning to drive the Pirelli’s on the high speed Grand Prix track at CTMP.

Saturday morning, the weather was perfect – about 20°C and a clear sky. We scuffed in our race tires during practice. We set a reasonable P1 qualifying time of 1:24.128. During Race 1, the track became oiled down due to an engine failure with Mike MacNeil’s car, necessitating black flag all ending the race at lap 6.  We finished in P1 with a lap time of 1:24:054.
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The weather on Sunday was sunny, beautiful and perfect for racing at about 21°C.  We had a terrible start at the beginning of Race 2 due to improper gear selection dropping us to 3rd place. Fortunately, we were able to regain the lead by lap 5 and finish the race in P1 with a best lap time of 1:24.109. Clearly, we were working our tires hard, so we flipped them on the rims. 

We started Race 3 in P1 and diced with Jim Morton for the first 3 laps. We cleared Jim on lap 4 and led the remaining 15 laps in P1 with a best lap time of 1:24.092 with a 40.5 second lead over Bob Long.

​A special thank you to guest Crew Chief, Jack Brokenshire, who learned what is was like to work on a real race car

​And a big thank you to Bill and Shirley Vallis of Vallis Motor Sport for their trackside support during the BEMC Late Summer Trophy Races and to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park for hosting such a fantastic, safe event!!  And last, but certainly not least, we want to thank our long suffering family which allows us to continue to race……….