VARAC 46th Vintage Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park – June 18th to June 21st Race Report

The Enhanced Performance, Good Cars Only, Gabo Solutions #77 Formula Mazda Team had an unfortunate race weekend at the VARAC 46th Vintage Grand Prix, held at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP). We were placed in the Formula Classic Race group. There was a total of 33 cars in our race group including, Formula Fords, F1200’s and several Formula Mazda’s as well as many other historic open wheel cars.  The weather was beautiful with sunny days and temperatures ranging from 20°C to 25°C. 

Over the course of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we were on track a total of times; 4 on-track practices during the Thursday test day, followed by one practice and on qualifying session and the on Friday. Our race group included some beautiful open wheel race cars.

On Thursday test day, the weather very nice.  Our best lap for the test day was a 1:24.00 – a pretty respectable lap time as we were breaking in a new engine, however off from our typical lap times in the 1:22’s. 
Friday morning, the weather was quite nice – we set a time of 1:30.783 (way off our normal lap times because of the number of cars in our race group). This lap time was the best time for the session of all the other cars. During our qualifying session, we ended up with a qualifying time of 1:29.568- once again way off our normal lap times due to the large number of race cars on track coupled with our inability to put together a clan lap. Luckily, everyone else in our race group had the same problem- as a result we qualified P3 in our race group and class. Unfortunately, during the Ludwig Heimrath Open Wheel Challenge, we experience what we thought was a rotor seal failure – the engine lost power on the back straight at high RPM. We medially pulled into the pits and went into our paddock area where we heard quite a noise from the engine will we shut the engine off. Sadly, that was the end of our weekend.
For the balance of the race weekend, I worked in scrutineer and helping to tech cars and working on pit lane. Although it was lots of fun, it was not nearly as much fun as I would’ve had in the racecar.
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Only afterwards, when we got back to our shop after the race weekend, did we realize that we had a bad plug which caused the same effect as having lost a rotor. Once again, our Formula Mazda teaches us a lesson on how to be more thorough in our problem-solving.

Always lessons to be learned at the racetrac,!!!

And a big thank you to my very patient family for putting up with my fun at the racetrack……….