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GLOBE AND MAIL - MOTORSPORTS: CANADIAN TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP
It’s bump and grind in the fight to the finish
When the tire smoke and brake dust cleared, three champions had been crowned in their respective classes
PAUL FERRISS
October 11, 2007
Torn fenders, shredded tires and busted bumpers marked the end of the first official season of the Canadian Touring Car Championship.
Through eight race weekends beginning in May and ending Sept. 30, a group of 40 or 50 cars bumped and banged their way around four different tracks. When the tire smoke and brake dust cleared, three champions had been crowned in their respective classes.
Sasha Anis of Toronto took the high-speed Grand Touring championship in his Nissan 240SX; Charles-André Bilodeau of Montreal piloted his BMW 325 to top spot in the Super Touring class; and Alain Lauzière, of Vaudreuil, Que., took the Touring class championship driving a Mini Cooper.
The best description Anis could give of his final weekend of racing at Mosport International Raceway near Bowmanville, Ont., was “stressful.”
First, he damaged his Nissan during Friday practice, although he managed to qualify in 8th spot for the Saturday race, and then caused further damage in a collision with another competitor. A pit stop for what he thought was a loose wheel cost him valuable time that he tried to make up with a late charge during the race.
In the end, though, his effort was all for naught - he was disqualified for having a bumper that was too low. “If I’d been thinking, I would’ve just torn it off during the pit stop,” he said.
His luck improved somewhat on Sunday as the several yellow flags allowed him to nurse a wounded differential and keep his car fairly competitive until he rolled to a fifth-place overall finish.
Bilodeau was able to secure his Super Touring championship on Sept. 29, after the first of two races at Mosport. “We locked it in, but I was still pretty hungry because it had been a while since I won and I was still looking for a win on Sunday,” he said.
He would get his wish. The Sunday race, which was littered with yellow caution flags because of a series of on-track incidents, would end under yellow as well. But Bilodeau prevailed to take the ST class win after a hard-fought battle with the second-place Honda Civic of Scott Nicol.
After finishing Saturday’s race in 13th spot, Lauzière started at the back of the Touring class field on Sunday. His goal was simple: finish the race and consolidate enough points to bring home the class championship.
He managed to avoid many of the incidents that plagued the track on Sunday until two laps from the end, when he rear-ended another car that had been caught in a cloud of smoke caused by a blown engine. His Mini sustained minimal damage, however, and he crossed the finish line the Touring champion.
With so many cars fighting for the front, on-track incidents are to be expected. But bumping and grinding became the norm at races throughout the season and cars. Unlike in some other racing series, drivers - ranging from amateurs to semi-pros - take it mostly in stride. When they did complain, the dominance of the GT cars was usually the topic of discussion.
Bilodeau and other drivers pointed out that unless you’re driving one of the GT cars, your chances of being the overall race winner are slim.
While he says winning in his class is more important than crossing the finish line first, Bilodeau says the ST and Touring class cars just can’t keep up with the GTs. Still, he says, "Right now, we’re almost as fast as some of the slowest GT cars.
CTCC president John Bondar says he’s toying with the idea of splitting the GT cars away from the rest of the field, giving the Corvettes, Vipers and Mustangs room to race on their own, but hasn’t made a final decision yet.
He’s confident that the GTs would still attract fans and that the competition would still be close among Touring and Super Touring drivers.
“It would make the Touring class more entry-level,” he said, for drivers looking for an easy way into racing. “It’s the least expensive place to get started.”
Bondar has some other technical changes in mind for next year, including mandating the use of mufflers on some cars to reduce noise when they race closer to urban centres.
When he decided to expand the Ontario touring car championship into a national series, Bondar saw the British Touring Car Series and the V8 Supercars of Australia as the gold standard of sports car and touring car racing. Both series attract strong support from fans, sponsors and competitors.
“The V8 Supercars put on a very impressive show,” he said. “But I’d like to keep the series production-based, so you can give people the show and have the close racing.”
While sponsors such as Castrol and Toyo Tires are pleased with the first season, and several teams have already said they’ll be back next year, the CTCC can’t yet be considered fully “Canadian” - all eight race weekends were at tracks in Ontario.
Bondar has plans to remedy that next year. The series will expand first into Quebec and then possibly westward over the next few years. Eleven of the CTCC’s 95 drivers hail from Quebec and Bondar has had considerable interest from Quebec tracks about bringing races there as he continues to get queries about the series from Quebec-based drivers.
He’s looking at three possible venues: Trois-Rivières, Circuit Mont-Tremblant, and the newly built circuit at the Mirabel Airport near Montreal, which he’ll be inspecting in the next few weeks.
The series also got some attention as one of the support races for the July Champ Car event in Toronto. Drivers were excited about the chance to race around Toronto’s Exhibition Place - despite the fact the concrete walls became a menacing presence for those used to the green fields of Mosport and Shannonville. Some diehard fans stuck around to watch long after the high-priced Champ Car talent had left the track.
Fan support for the series was fairly strong; Bondar estimates a total of 160,000 people saw the races and he hopes the successful first season will draw out more fans of grassroots racing next year.
While Bondar has plans to build the series into a full-time job for himself and add some staff to the operation, some of the CTCC teams still take an indie-style, do-it-yourself approach. In keeping with that approach, many posted in-car videos from several races to YouTube.
Fans who just can’t get enough, and drivers who want to relive that great pass at the end of Mosport’s Andretti straightaway, can follow the link from the touringcar.ca web site.
It should sustain them through the racing-free days of winter before the green flag flies next spring.
