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The STANMECH Technologies, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions #77 Formula Mazda Team had an awesome race weekend at the 2021 CASC-OR/CTMP Celebration Of Motorsport Races held at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. We were entered in the Formula Libre race group. There were a total of 20 cars in our race group including, a Formula Atlantic, one Formula Renault, one Reynard F2000, three Formula 4’s, six historical Formula Fords and seven F1200’s, . The weather was sunny and beautiful on the 1st and 2nd of October and absolutely dismal on the 3rd with mist fog and light rain. Temperatures ranged from 15 to 25° C during the event. Over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of 9 times; 5 on-track practices during the Friday test day, followed by combined practice/qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday, Race 2 & 3 on Sunday. Our race class had some beautiful open wheel race cars including Marcel Lafontaine’s stunning 2002 Swift 014 Formula Atlantic.  Our best lap for the test day was a 1:23.5 flat on tires that were left over from the BEMC Late Summer Trophy Race weekend at CTMP two weeks before. Saturday morning, the weather was perfect – about 23°C and a clear sky. We scuffed in our race tires during our last session of the Friday test day. We set a reasonable P2 qualifying time of 1:24.421, however we had to take a two grid position penalty because we passed a car in a yellow flag zone – a dumb mistake – so we started in P4. During Race 1, we quickly cleared Jeff Watson, but Jim Morton managed to scoot away at the start and we could not catch him with all of the traffic from the 20 car grid. As a result, we finished in P3 behind Marcel and Jim with a fairly reasonable lap time of 1:24:525. The weather on Sunday was misty, cool and wet – the track was slick for the majority of the day.  A number of cars did not race due to the challenging track conditions. Additionally, a Radical was placed on our grid to obtain some additional track time. We started Race 2 in P1 and tip toed around the slick race track searching for grip. We finished in P2 behind the Radical with an incredibly slow lap time of 1:30.055.  During the day on Sunday, the track improved somewhat – it varied between dry and intermittent. We started Race 3 in P2 and passed the Radical on the second lap when he came into the pits for a mechanical issue. We led the remaining 12 laps in P1 with a best lap time of 1:27.502 with a one lap lead over second place Murray Burkett.  And a big thank you to Bill and Shirley Vallis of Vallis Motor Sport for their trackside support during the 2021 CASC-OR/CTMP Celebration of Motorsport 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……….
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