The season long patience of the OAK Racing squad was finally rewarded at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on Sunday with a TUSCC race win after back-to-back podium finishes at Detroit Belle Isle and Watkins Glen International.
Gustavo Yacaman and Olivier Pla took the honours as they drove the team’s #42 Morgan/Nissan to a convincing victory, leading every one of the 133 laps in the two-hour and 45-minute Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance.
“We came here and did our job, which was to drive around without mistakes and stay out of trouble,” said Yacaman. “The team has been working really hard this whole season to make the tires work with the car. We’ve just developed it and gotten better and better each race.”
Richard Westbrook was able to shave the deficit to Pla from 24 seconds to 7.886 seconds in the closing minutes, but finally had to settle for second place in the #90 Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP started by co-driver Michael Valiante.
Ricky and Jordan Taylor fought back to finish third after an early-race slide through the grass resulted in an unscheduled pit stop to clean the grille. The drivers of the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP now lead the Prototype driver standings by five points (218-213) over the #5 Action Express Racing co-drivers Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa.
Action Express Racing volunteered to run the team’s Whelen decals on the front and side panels of the #5 Corvette DP after the pre race accident for the Marsh Bros #31 car but the sporting gesture did not prove to be a luck charm after Christian Fittipaldi, running second early in the race, cut a tire in encounter with lapped traffic.
After a slow lap back to the pits, the team dropped to eighth place. The team battled back to finish fourth. “Unfortunately, there were no yellows and we were off sequence,” said team manager Gary Nelson. “But that’s what championship efforts are – when you have a bad day, you get all you can out of it.”
Yacaman meanwhile moves to third in the unofficial point standings with the win, 10 points out of first, while Westbrook and Valiante sit fourth, 11 points back. OAK Racing and the #90 Spirit of Daytona team each have scored three consecutive podiums and alternated the top two spots in the last two races.
“We’re absolutely rivals now and it’s great for the championship,” said Westbrook. “We’ve been racing hard with them since day one, but we’re delighted for them. These are two very different cars, but the lap times are very close. We’re quicker in different areas in the track, that’s it, if you want us to race close to each other that’s how it’s going to be.”
It was another frustrating day for the ESM Racing team, their #1 Dalziel/Sharp HPD briefly assumed the lead at the start, thereafter getting involved in a scrap for second place as the OAK Morgan made good its escape.
But with less than an hour remaining, Ryan Dalziel was forced to pit the car with a broken exhaust header pipe. While repairable, the limited time remaining in the race meant it would not be possible to regain any additional positions, so the car was retired.
In the #2 HPD, an early spin put the Brown/van Overbeek car a lap down to the leaders, but it quickly resumed without damage. Later in the race though , an alternator cable chafed through its insulation, causing a short-circuit and damaging the battery, leading to a long pit stop for repairs. Shortly before the finish, voltage levels aboard the HPD-Honda again dropped, and the #2 car was also retired.
The race ran once again without a full-course caution but whilst the race itself was clean on Sunday, the race weekend wasn’t short on attrition in the Prototype class leading up to the event, and the dramas didn’t finish with the elimination from the event of the #31 Whelen/ Marsh Bros Corvette DP and #0 DeltaWing DWC-13 in separate car damaging incidents that left bot Boris Said and Andy Meyrick needing medical treatment.
The pre-race recon lap saw Memo Rojas hit a water puddle in the # 01 Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Ford EcoBoost powered Riley spinning him hard into the wall.
The team missed the start of the race, but returned to the track shortly after the one-hour mark to ensure Rojas and co-driver Scott Pruett could earn the minimum 20 minutes of track time to receive points for the event.
GTLM
Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia gave the #3 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R its fourth consecutive TUSCC GTLM class victory, carrying Corvette Racing to its 11th victory in 14 years at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Magnussen took the lead 54 minutes into the race when Kuno Wittmer’s pole-winning #93 SRT Motorsports Dodge Viper SRT GTS-R drove through the grass to avoid another competitor.
Magnussen turned the Corvette over to Garcia one lap after taking the lead. Garcia led the rest of the way, taking the checkered flag 11.024 seconds ahead of Jonathan Bomarito in the still chasing Viper.
“It’s by no means easy what we’ve achieved with the four wins,” Magnussen said after his 41st career victory in North American competition and fifth at the circuit once known as Mosport International Raceway.
“It’s difficult out there. You have to be so precise and really work the traffic – that’s where big gains can be made.”
“It was really hard for me, because I was expecting some safety cars,” Garcia added.
“I couldn’t really be conservative; otherwise the Viper would have caught me.”
SRT Motorsports meanwhile took two podium positions with Marc Goossens and Dominik Farnbacher finishing third in the #91 Dodge Viper GTS-R, coming from the seventh starting position.
Wittmer led the early laps, shadowed all the way by Magnussen.
Wittmer had to go through the grass in Turn 5 to avoid the #56 BMW Team RLL BMW Z4 GTE of John Edwards on the 42nd lap, hitting a sign in the process. While the incident caused minimal damage to the Viper, the team spent the remainder of the race chasing the Corvette.
Bomarito managed to close the gap during the closing minutes, and was only 1.818 seconds behind Garcia with 12 minutes remaining. “I made one final charge, but I just didn’t have enough,” Bomarito said. “Antonio got caught up in traffic, and I closed in. Unfortunately, then I got held up in the same traffic and Antonio got away.”
Behind the leading trio came a frustrated #56 BMW crew, the Z4 GTE just not on the ultimate pace:
Dirk Müller: “We had good starts, very good stints and John and myself had a car that we could push with. We ended up fourth, and I think that was our maximum result, so that is why we are happy, although it is true I really wanted to be on the podium. We had a clean race, and there were not any scratches on the car apart from some knocks from behind, as usual. I had fun in the car and so did John. We were pushing like crazy and that was the maximum we could have done.”
All 10 GTLM cars were running at the finish.
GTD
Jeroen Bleekemolen passed Kevin Estre in traffic with two laps remaining and went on to win the GT Daytona (GTD) class, giving the polesitting #33 Riley Motorsports/ViperExchange.com Dodge Viper SRT GT3-R started by Ben Keating its first victory.
It was the eighth lead change in the class that saw Bleekemolen beat Estre to the checkered flag by just a single 1.038 second.
“I felt bad for Kevin, because I saw it all happening in front of me,” Bleekemolen said. “It looked like we were going to be second, but we got a little bit lucky at the end.”
“This is not only our first win, but our first podium,” Keating said. “We have had our share of tough luck this season, so to a certain extent we felt like we were due. We’ve always been down on top speed, but the sweeping corners here really suit out car.”
Estre and Patrick Lindsey were looking to give Park Place Motorsports its first GTD class victory in the #73 Porsche 911 GT America, before getting hung up in late-race traffic.
Lindsey started seventh and moved up to second before his pit stop, with Estre passing Bleekemolen for the class lead with 57 minutes remaining.
After winning at Watkins Glen two weeks ago, the #94 Turner Motorsport BMW Z4 of Markus Palttala and Dane Cameron led in the early going.
A stop-plus-20-second penalty when equipment rolled outside the team’s pit box dropped the team from second to seventh but a charge back from Cameron managed to salvage a third-place finish.
Fourth was a breakthrough result for the GB Motorsport Porsche with regular full season man Damien Faulkner joined in Canada by Brit Ben Barker, standing in for an absent Michael Avenatti.
