The Tudor United Sportscar Championship kicked off its annual visit to the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (better known as Mosport) under sunny skies on Friday. Amid all of the off-track announcements and chatter around the 2017 P2 changes, there was a race to run on track at this round of the 2015 season.
The field features 23 cars across the prototype, prototype challenge and GTLM classes. The GTD class skips Mosport and will run again at Lime Rock. The Tudor series shares track time for the weekend with the Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge, the Prototype Lites, and the Porsche GT3 Cup USA series.
Unfortunately, the #70 gas-powered Mazda prototype was withdrawn despite a positive test on Tuesday. A last minute move will see the drivers in the Continental support race so it’s again a single Mazda. Similarly, the Starworks prototype is not running for lack of funded drivers.
There were two one-hour practice sessions on the Friday schedule. All runners posted times in both sessions.
The first session was interrupted with two red flags which cost about 20 minutes of green running.
The first was brought out by the #24 BMW of Lucas Luhr which slid into the tires after missing his braking point only 13 minutes into the session. The BMW returned to the paddock on a flatbed truck, more because it couldn’t be restarted than the left front damage.
The second was caused by Mikhail Goikhberg in the #85 JDC/Miller Motorsports prototype challenge car. Left rear suspension damage halted progress at turn 5 as a result of hitting the curbing at the prior turn. Both cars were repaired and ran in the afternoon session.
Ricky Taylor in the #10 Corvette was fastest in the first session with Ozz Negri in the #60 Shank Ligier Honda P2 only a touch behind. The afternoon saw the positions reversed as Negri took the top spot. Taylor partially credited a good test session at the track on Tuesday saying: “The car is very good. We tested here on Tuesday, so we’re fresh.”
Jordan Taylor set the early pace in the second session, but Dane Cameron in the #31 prototype leapfrogged him and then proceeded to go faster on each of the next successive three laps. Ricky Taylor returned the favor toward the end of his running eventually slotting in second fastest toward the end of the hour.
Cameron commented after the first session: “We’re in the ballpark but with a little bit of work to do on the car. It’s a lot of fun around here. It’s my first time in a prototype her; it’s pretty fast and we have a good car so it should be a good race.” Team-mate Eric Curran likewise doesn’t have experience at Mosport: “I did the second half of practice and was just out there going around and getting laps in the Whelen Engineering Corvette. For me, every lap is a new lap since I don’t have any time in a prototype here. It’s about getting comfortable with the high speeds.”
Ozz Negri took over mid-way through the afternoon session and immediately claimed his spot atop the charts with a 1:109.984 – the first time of any runner below the 1:10 threshold. To show it was no fluke, he found more and more pace and set the best overall time for the session and day of a 1:09.216. Ricky Taylor and Negri were the only drivers to run below 1:10 on the day. By way of comparison, pole time in 2014 was a 1:09.167.
After strong laps mid-session, Cameron ended up almost a second adrift of Negri’s time which gives another indication of Negri’s pace.
The VisitFlorida Daytona prototype of Richard Westbrook and Michael Valiante comes to Mosport looking for their third win in a row. In both sessions, birthday boy Westbrook set the fastest times for the car which consistently ran fifth or sixth fastest. Likewise, the #01 Ganassi car was lurking, but not claiming headlines in practice.
The lone Delta Wing and lone Mazda each turned laps, but still struggled several seconds off the pace of the prototype class in each session.
The seven prototype challenge cars put on a show. In the morning, Colin Braun set the fastest time in the #54 CORE autosport car, with Renger van der Zande less than four tenths off in the #8 Starworks car.
Sean Rayhall was fast in the #16 BAR1 Motorsports entry which runs at Mosport with a completely different line-up than scored a podium finish at the last round in Watkins Glen. Rayhall rejoins the team after a bit of Indy Lights racing alongside John Falb who ran earlier in the season with the team at Laguna Seca.
Colin Braun took the controls of the #54 from Jon Bennett about halfway through the afternoon session and promptly set a fast lap and then took half a second off of that time. Braun and van der Zande exchanged fast laps during the session – separated by hundredths of a second, until Conor Daly, Tom Kimber-Smith and Bruno Junqueira decided to join the party. Braun ended up with the fastest time in class and seventh fastest overall, setting the stage for a tight qualifying session and stellar race.
There were no red flag stoppages in the second practice session, but two separate minor incidents caught out the #8 of Micro Schultis and the #16 of John Falb. Schultis went off briefly after missing his braking point and Falb spun coming out of turn 5, ending up facing the wrong way on the racing line.
In GTLM, Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber were stronger than might have been expected in the dry. Their Porsches were first and third in the morning surrounding the #3 Corvette. The #4 Corvette claimed the top of the charts in the afternoon with Ollie Gavin at the wheel and Patrick Pilet only hundredths behind. Tandy’s strong time in the morning stood as the fastest of the day in class.
The Falken Porsche was the last to emerge in the morning and ended up with the slowest time of the first session and only climbed a few rungs in the afternoon standings on the strength of Wolf Henzler’s last timed lap. Regardless, GTLM field was covered by under half a second in the afternoon session, so gap between fastest and slowest is slim.
The Risi Ferrari team was hoping for a good run at Mosport, but thinking that the Balance of Performance air restrictor adjustments would help the BMW and Corvette teams and the ample downforce of the Porsches would make for tough competition. Despite all of that, Giancarlo Fisichella set times in both sessions only a sliver off the class lead.
During the afternoon session, #25 BMW Bill Auberlen had a close call losing a front right wheel nut on pit lane. After a crew member on #4 Corvette team spotted it at pit exit and sprinted down pit lane to let the BMW team know, Auberlen nursed the car around for a lap and back to the pits. Gold star for that member of the Corvette team.
Saturday will see a third practice session in the morning before each class gets its own 15 minute qualifying session late in the afternoon.
Kevin Ehrlich
