Good afternoon race fans!
This week finds us in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (aka Mosport) for IMSA’s Michelin Pilot Challenge. Morgan is in the VGRT #99 with Tyler Gonzalez this time. It’s the same red/white livery so he still will be easy to find.
It was a long ride Wednesday, around 10 hours before stops. Except for some stormy remnants of Hurricane Beryl around Syracuse, it was pretty easy going. Today and tomorrow looks to be sunny and warm - 80-85 degrees.
FRIDAY NOTES:
Morgan’s Grandmother (Abuelita) is with us this time and she’s enjoying her first MPC event! Also along for the ride we have good friends and long time course marshals Gary and Christina Thomlinson (whose home track this is). We have pleasant weather with a decent breeze and excellent guides with inside info to Mosport.
Practice 2 went to plan and was free of drama. We were in 4th in class, and the 1st Hyundai for much of the session. The #33 popped a fresh set of new race slicks on right at the end and laid down a lap quicker than ours so we ended the practice in 5th. That’s completely fine and both Morgan and Tyler seem to be happy with the car and the set up.
Tomorrow will kick off insanely early. In fact, it’s barely 9:30 PM and we have all retreated to our beds even as the last light from the sunset fades. The alarms will go very early in the morning. With a 45 minute drive to the track, we will be up at 5:15!
That will get us to the track in plenty of time to roll off the grid at 8:00 AM for our brief 15-minute qualifying session. Morgan will be at the wheel for that one. Once that’s done, we wait a while and make sure every little thing is ready for the race. The fan walk on the grid (one of my favorite things) is at 12:25. The green flag flies at 1:25 for the two hour race with coverage on Peacock TV. Morgan will do the qualifying and he’ll start the race. Fingers crossed that all goes well. Until tomorrow, dear friend! May we all rest well!
SATURDAY NOTES:
That good rest was especially important this morning. Morgan’s plan was to hold until the first cars out had done most of their first lap. Moments after Morgan left the pit box, they red flagged the session for someone stopped on course. He was held at pit out while they cleared it up. Several cars finishing their laps under red saw Morgan at the end of pit lane and joined him there. That was the wrong call for them. They needed to pull into their pit boxes and wait for the green flag before they could go again. Those who didn't all got drive through penalties. That effectively gave us a lap more to work with than they had.
This oddity did not phase Morgan at all of course. He just went out and did his thing. He was as high as 1st and never lower than 6th. We were cheering for him with every good sector time. He crossed the timing line with 12 seconds to go so he got that one last lap that others crossing after him did not.
He used it to his advantage and set personal best times in each sector. At the end, he will start the race from 5th this afternoon, with other Hyundais in 1st and 3rd ahead of him.
The team is stoked! Morgan loves the car and loves the track! Here’s hoping this trend continues!
RACE WRAP:
If you were watching yesterday, you know why it’s taken a long time to send out the race report. We only made it about half way through before having to retire the car. It was another disappointing result. YouTube has the race and it's a good watch, at least for a while.
We got a decent start, but there was contact with another car early in the race. That caused some damage to the left front tire. It took awhile for it to show up and Morgan brought it in for a quick look; with nothing visible, he went back out. On the next lap, almost 30 minutes in, the inside shoulder of that tire blew. Morgan got it back to the pits without further damage to the car. He went back out with a new tire, but it became clear within another 25 minutes that there were other issues too. The steering rack had suffered some damage from the contact as well and we couldn’t continue.
Racing is hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it, right? Both Morgan and Tyler did a great job all weekend, we had a really strong car and excellent pace. Fortunately, this team has that special kind of resilience that will let us put the focus forward Road America in three weeks. With this strong car, a dedicated crew, and talented drivers, we will try again to reach those steps where the champagne sprays.
WHAT’S NEXT?
We took off essentially straight from Mosport to cross Canada to the next track and we are already at the next event! We are racing in the Spec Racer Ford 3 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for an SCCA Majors race. This will be excellent track time for Morgan to get used to this new track before we are back here again in another two weeks for the next IMSA MPC race.