ALMS
Oliver Gavin extended his championship lead at Mosport
Courtesy of the American Le Mans Series
When I look back now at the weekend’s event in Mosport, they didn’t turn out too badly - certainly not from our Championship point of view as we extended the lead in the Drivers’ title chase. It didn’t look as positive at the beginning of the weekend though, and from the first moment we took to the track in Canada I was a bit worried we might be struggling in the race.
Mosport is one of my favourite tracks as it’s fast and challenging. It’s a bit unique in that it hasn’t changed in years and it’s probably not the safest one we go to as it doesn’t have the large run off areas of more modern tracks, but I like it. It’s fun and Olivier and I have good memories of the place as it’s here we took the lead in the Drivers’ Championship last year – the first time the #4 car had ever been ahead of the #3.
I don’t want to go on and on about the performance differences between our Corvettes and the Aston Martins, but they can’t be ignored. Another big factor this weekend, however, was the weather which we knew could play into our hands. The tail end of Hurricane Ernesto arrived, as forecast, in Mosport on Saturday and that shook things up a bit for practice and what should have been qualifying.
The Astons were undeniably quicker than us in the dry but on a wet track we gained back some advantage and we were all hoping for a wet race in terms of being able to take the fight to the opposition. Qualifying, as you know, was a washout for everyone in general and our #4 car in particular and, having not had a great practice day on Friday, Olivier and I ended up starting from the 4th spot on the GT1 grid. We knew though that Mosport, wet or dry, is such a quick and demanding track that there are always some yellow flag caution periods so I’d have to say we weren’t overly concerned about where we started.
Olivier did a great job at the start, avoiding any incidents and getting us into a solid second behind the 009 Aston. Although we led at some points in the race, we were fairly realistic about our chances of victory as we couldn’t match the Aston on speed and we knew that a win would be rather ambitious (or lucky!). As it turned out, the result was probably the best we were going to achieve and we now go into Petit Le Mans with a bit more of a cushion in the points. The longer races are far less easy to predict and pit strategy can play an even greater part in the outcome so we are more optimistic about the next race that perhaps we were coming to Canada. Jan the Man is also back with us and we haven’t lost with him yet. Wish us luck!