CASC-OR: BEMC Summer Trophy Races a Blast!

Special to Inside Track

BOWMANVILLE, ON – Perfect weather greeted another packed paddock of enthusiastic racers and fans at Mosport on Sept. 16-17 for the Annual Indian Summer Trophy Races.

ONTARIO TOURING GT CHAMPIONSHIP
The weekend festivities included the three-hour War Bonnet Enduro which was a great success filled with excitement!

Qualifying saw a full field take to the track but several retirements, including the #254 BMW of Christian Sorensen, kept the tow trucks busy. An impressive 30 cars took to the mock-grid for the race at the end of the day on Saturday.

Less than five laps in, Allan de Wolfe in the #31 Eurotech BMW went stuttering by the start/finish and pulled off on corner 1 in the gravel. A full-course yellow resulted and the pace car made an appearance for a few laps.

In GTD, the three Mazdee’s Sentras – #201, #202 and #203 – were literally bumper to bumper for half of the race with the #203 car shared by Dave Diedrick and PJ Groenke ending victorious. The #201 of Ian Phillips and Eddie Wong was second and #202 Shep and MacAlpine third.

The #222 of Perry Iannuzzi and Martin Gray initially had an issue with a bolt that was fixed in the pits, but then the car went missing. Radio transmissions revealed that the car had gone off at turn 5 and the engine was cooked, literally, being on fire but driver Martin Gray was fine. Later, the yellow #109 Porsche was clipped and spun in 5 as well. Ventidelli managed to get around the spinning Porsche, but car #194 was not so lucky and T-boned it. Next, Frank Blanchet in his #248 Sentra couldn’t go anywhere and tapped #194 as well.

The #38 Camaro of Steve Kent and Gunter Schmidt came in on the flatbed as well with frontal damage.

The T1 class was won by Nicol and Lejbjuk in the #41 Velocity Motorsports Civic followed by Wojteczko and Trahan in the AutoAnalyser Lexus #64. T2 was won by Ian Madden in his #126 VW with Capowoski and White in second in their BMW while points leader Alain Lauziere in the #47 MINI Cooper S JCW finished third in class.

Lauziere led Madden in the overall championship by 315 points heading into the event and has now locked down the title for the season! Congrats to the Octane Motorsports/SPI Racing Team!

GT class was won by the #301 BENQ BMW of Gray, Hanson, Gray and Skinner with the Xiropodis team second and the Rance, Dolan team third.

ONTARIO FORMULA FORD CHAMPIONSHIP

This season the race has been to get to the Brian Stewart Racing IRL test, and this weekend kept the drivers all on their toes!

Shane Jantzi led the Championship coming into the weekend with Matt White hot on his heels. Jantzi qualified P1 on Saturday and won with White second. Sunday Jantzi again took victory with White finishing sixth, resulting in Jantzi locking in the Class A Championship!

Ian Scott, Brian Neilsen and Rick Doktor all put in valiant efforts.

Class B was hard-fought between Saturday’s winner Gord Lowe and Sunday winner Glyn Walters. Lowe was unable to defend Saturday’s win because of fluid leaks and Walters had to hold off Tony Cove and Ross Smith for Sunday’s win.

A last-lap crash at turn 10 saw Bruce Kitchen go upside-down over the tire wall. Crews got him out and reports are that he is sore but ok.