BRAUN: CTMP Debrief

It’s nice to finally get our first race win of the year… Mostly so everyone else can stop talking about it!

Honestly, we never let it get to us or change our approach at all. We go to each race and do our jobs like we have the last four years.

I think that’s a big part of CORE’s success and why we consistently run up front. We don’t panic and we don’t change our plan, because we know what we do works and wins races.

Jon Bennett and I were very much looking forward to going back to Mosport… I mean Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. It’s a place we’ve run well at in the past and a place we really enjoy driving at.

The fast, flowing, rhythm-style racetracks really seem to suit our driving styles. It’s one of my favorite tracks for sure.

I enjoy tracks that are old school with fast corners that have some consequences if you go off or make a mistake. Mosport, Road America, Sebring, Watkins Glen… those are the types of tracks I really enjoy.

Not only do they have a lot of history, but they are a tough challenge for a driver because you need to be on the absolute limit. There’s no room for mistakes. At Mosport, most of the corners in the PC car are fifth- or sixth-gear corners. It makes for a big commitment kind of racetrack.

We’ve been working with Jon to get his performance to where he would like it to be. He’s made some big strides this year and he’s been working really hard to step up his game. He definitely did that at Mosport.

He had solid performances in practice and then backed it up in qualifying and the race. It was an ultra-impressive performance from him top-to-bottom, the whole weekend. I think that was one of the big contributors to our success in the race; Jon had such a solid opening stint and brought me the car in the lead.

I had a good two stints in the car. I was able to get out in the lead and was trying to maintain that gap. We wanted to be smart in traffic and we knew that it was a long race with potentially lots of green flag time.

We had a buffer and it was nice to focus on managing that. It also helped that we had really solid pit stops all day from the crew.

As soon as I jumped in the car though and left the pits I noticed we had a little power steering issue. I’d say we maybe had only 25 percent assist from the power steering. As soon as that happened I though ‘wow, this is going to be a long hour and half in the car at a track like this with all the g-forces working against me.’

With about 15 minutes to go, the power steering was gone completely. It was really challenging since my arms were already pretty tired from the first hour and 15 minutes!

Luckily we had enough of a lead at that point that I knew all I had to do was muster up the strength to make it a couple more laps and they didn’t have to be super quick. I could be conservative.

I was able to hold on and finish, but I was certainly glad that the race wasn’t any longer than it was!

So we’re revisiting another track we didn’t go to last year: Lime Rock Park.

Jon and I are looking forward to going back there. Like Mosport, it seems to be a place we’ve had good luck at in the past and it has a lot of high-speed corners. I guess those kind of racetracks are good for us!