Though he was born in Vancouver, thousands of kilometres west of the Greater Toronto Area, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (Mosport) is still Chris Cumming’s home race. The Canadian Bronze driver took on his home track this weekend at the Chevrolet Grand Prix in his second season with Pratt Miller Motorsports as the full-time Bronze driver of its #73 ORECA 07-Gibson LMP2.
Racing in front of Canadian fans as one of the eight Canadian drivers on the entry list for the one round north of the border gave Cumming extra motivation behind the wheel going into Sunday’s race.
“It’s so cool to have a home race, even though it’s thousands of kilometres from home, it’s still home, and I love this track,” Cumming said during the weekend. “For me, it just brings me extra motivation being at home. I actually think about it when I’m on track.
“Especially with these LMP2 cars, it’s a track that highlights the performance of these cars. We do some of the highest speeds and the highest G-forces all year here, and so it’s just really fun to drive.”
Combined with the physical, high-speed nature of the undulating 3.9-kilometre course, LMP2 has been the headlining class at Mosport since 2024, giving LMP2 drivers one less thing to worry about with the absence of GTP cars rushing from behind. “It’s the only time of the season when we get to be kind of the headline class, and we don’t have to look in our mirrors and be worried about the GTPs,” he continued.
Last year, Pratt Miller Motorsports tested at CTMP and got a good feel of their setup around this track, which paid off when they secured season-best finish of sixth place. A handful of LMP2 teams tested here leading up to the race, but Pratt Miller elected to use their 2025 data this weekend, putting them slightly on the back foot.
“We did extra testing here last year, and we felt that we had a pretty good handle on the setup, so we just chose to not do it this year,” Cumming said before Qualifying on Saturday. “Part of the benefit of testing is that it also obviously gets the drivers up to speed quickly. So I think in FP1 yesterday, probably maybe a little bit behind, just because we were not fresh like the teams had tested a few weeks ago.”
As newcomers to the class, Pratt Miller is still playing catch-up with LMP2 machinery that some of their competitors have been working with since 2017. “I think we’re still learning,” admitted Cumming, who’s been there since Pratt Miller returned to prototype competition last year.
“I think that we would like to be higher up on the grid. We’re competing against teams that have run this car for many seasons, some over a decade, and some that have experience running two cars and running them in Europe and Asia.
“Like anything, you can learn a lot, but it takes a while to gain that experience to get that extra little bit. And I think that’s what we’re still trying to achieve.”
On Sunday, the #73 Pratt Miller Motorsports squad finished sixth for the second season in a row. Cumming and his teammate Pietro Fittipaldi ran in the mid-pack most of the race but ultimately finished a lap down on the victorious #43 Inter Europol Competition car.
With Corvette Racing, Pratt Miller has won six IMSA GT class titles in the last ten years, not to mention eight consecutive American Le Mans Series championships from 2001-2008 and nine 24 Hours of Le Mans class wins. While the past season and a half has not seen their new prototype programme immediately soar to the top of the standings, this team still has the resources needed to take that next step in LMP2.
Before joining the team in 2025, Chris Cumming had not raced in IMSA since the 2017 Rolex 24 At Daytona. Cumming chose to make his return to the series with Pratt Miller specifically because of its proven excellence. “I needed an environment where I could come in and knock some of the rust off myself. And Pratt Miller has an amazing reputation as being a top-notch organisation for running a good car. I’ve found that the level of professionalism is incredible, and it’s just a good group of guys to be around, and it’s a good environment,” he said.
Cumming acknowledged that there is still much room for improvement, as he and Fittipaldi sit ninth in the LMP2 Drivers’ standings, eighth in the Teams’ standings, and out of contention for a championship. However, the trouble lies in identifying exactly what the #73 is missing compared to the rest of the field.
With the championship-winning team behind him and a strong lineup of drivers, Cumming and the #73 Pratt Miller crew are hopeful that a breakthrough result is close, with Road America, Indianapolis, and Road Atlanta still to come in the latter half of the calendar.
“I think that we still need to figure out what we’re missing, and when you don’t know what you’re missing, you don’t necessarily know the path to get there,” he admitted.
“So, I do expect the programme to get better year by year [in general], and I would hope to be challenging for podiums by the end of this season.”
Images © IMSA
