Patrick Long swept the weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, winning Race 2 comfortably to bookend his debut event with Wright Motorsports perfectly in the #58 Porsche 911 GT3 R. Long’s new teammate Michael Schein took the GTA win, resulting in the team going four for four in the two classes across the weekend.
“Not may times when I’m lost for words,” Long said after the race. “But this is one of them. That was knife-edge stuff.”
The damp conditions prompted race control to add an extra three formation laps, with a start under single file conditions, but it didn’t prevent incidents.
When the race finally started, the green running wouldn’t last long, as JD Davison tried to pull a bold move around the outside of Ryan Eversely and Adderly Fong at Turn 3 to take third.
But it would end in disaster, as the trio would end up running three-wide down the Mario Andretti Straight, with Davison and Aversely moving across on Fong, sending Eversley’s Acura into the wall.
Fong’s left-front tapped the rear of Eversley’s car, and after both made sizeable contact with the barriers would be forced to retire. Davison continued unscathed however, and moved up to second behind pole-sitter Long, and ahead of Andrew Palmer’s Absolute Racing Bentley in third. Kyle Marcelli sat fourth with Davison’s teammate Bryan Heitkotter fifth.
After lengthy barrier repairs, the race resumed with just 26 minutes remaining.
Like Race 1, the rest of the race ran with little action at the head of the pack. In the end the top five would stay in the same order, despite the K-PAX Racing McLarens of Alvaro Parente and Austin Cindric in sixth and seventh trying to disrupt proceedings after the full-course caution.
Further down the order the Cadillacs of Michael Cooper and Johnny O’Connell struggled and finished up eighth and tenth.
Behind Schein in GTA, Martin Fuentes and Frankie Montecalvo provided the best action of the race. Montecalvo in his return to the series, took second in GTA in his Mercedes SLS shortly after the restart, before losing it once again in the final minutes when Montecalvo went on a charge.
The championship leader made multiple moves in the Hublot Ferrari on his way to thirteenth overall and second in the class.
Chris Green took his first win of the year in GT Cup, ahead of points leader Alec Udell.
Next up on the PWC calendar is a trip to Lime Rock Park next weekend.
