CTMP Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***Meyer Shank Racing’s Oliver Jarvis and Tom Blomqvist have retaken the DPi points lead following their fifth consecutive runner-up finish. The duo are now 56 points ahead of fellow Acura pairing Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque with only two more DPi races remaining.

***Chevrolet Grand Prix winners Renger van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais, meanwhile, have moved to 148 points of the lead following the Chip Ganassi Racing pairing’s third IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory of the season.

***It marked van der Zande’s 18th career WeatherTech Championship win and the tenth for Bourdais, who was making his first appearance at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. The Dutchman told Sportscar365 post-race: “These [DPi] cars are so fun to drive. It’s the last bit of driving with these cars around these tracks. We better enjoy it.”

***Albuquerque completed only 36 minutes of drive time after electing to get out of the car with 1 hour and 39 minutes to go. The minimum drive time in DPi was 10 minutes. “It would’ve been a long stint for me to go to the finish — 2 hours and 20 minutes. On this track, that was too much, so I decided to hand it back to Ricky, and he was really on it. It was the right call there.”

***The No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05 had no fewer than four incidents, beginning with a right-rear puncture on Lap 11, side-by-side contact with Jarvis on the front-straight that resulted in a warning for the MSR driver, contact from the No. 02 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac of Earl Bamber, who received a drive-through, prior to Taylor making contact with the barriers with 25 minutes to go after a brush with the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac of Pipo Derani.

***Taylor said: “I have to apologize to the No. 31. They didn’t lose because of it, but I didn’t make a very good move on them trying to get by in Turn 9. I was trying to get every position that I could because I could see the championship points going away. Unfortunately, it caused a yellow and put the No. 60 in a tough position as well.”

***Derani and co-driver Olivier Pla, however, managed to finish third after lacking speed in their Whelen Engineering-sponsored Cadillac all weekend. It marked the No. 31 car’s first podium since Mid-Ohio in May.

***Bamber who was battling for second before the contact with Taylor with 27 minutes to go, had to settle for a fourth place result alongside co-driver Alex Lynn in one of the most incident-filled DPi races in recent memory.

***With their second class win of the season, CORE autosport’s Colin Braun and Jon Bennett have extended their LMP3 championship lead to 98 points over Jr III Racing’s Garett Grist and Ari Balogh.

***LMP3 results in Sunday’s race remain provisional until further inspections are performed according to an IMSA spokesperson. Officials found the No. 36 Andretti Autosport Ligier JS P320 Nissan to have a non-compliant suspension component in post-qualifying technical inspection that sent Jarett Andretti to the rear of the starting grid.

***Corvette Racing scored its first GTD Pro class podium finish since Long Beach, with Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor moving back into second place in the class standings with the runner-up finish. Garcia described their race as “perfect” and that the class-winning Pfaff Motorsports “Porsche was showing what they had to show.” Garcia added: “Whenever we would stop saving fuel or tires, it felt like they had some in reserve.”

***The No. 25 Team RLL BMW M4 GT3 of John Edwards dropped out of contention in GTD Pro early on after the right-rear wheel came off the car to bring out the race’s first of four full-course cautions. The team had trouble attaching a new wheel to the car and then was forced to serve a stop plus 10-second penalty for not fulfilling the emergency service procedure.

***GTD pole-sitter Frankie Montecalvo got collected by a spinning No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsports Ligier of Lance Willsey on the opening lap, damaging the right-rear suspension of the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. The car returned to action after 30 minutes to repair work.

***It marked the first race at CTMP where Montecalvo did not finish on the podium. “It was really frustrating because we had a phenomenal Lexus RC F GT3,” he said. “Upfront you really shouldn’t have to worry about that happening, but one of the LMP3 cars got us.”

***Kamui Kobayashi, in his first start in Vasser Sullivan’s Lexus, finished sixth in GTD Pro after a slow pit stop and planned three-stop strategy did not pan out for the No. 14 Lexus. A similar strategy also did not benefit the GTD class BMW M4 GT3s from Turner Motorsport and Paul Miller Racing, which came home fourth and fifth in class, respectively.

***Paul Miller Racing’s Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow, however, maintain their lead in the WeatherTech Sprint Cup standings, with Sunday’s GTD winning No. 27 The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Roman De Angelis moving into third behind the two BMW driver pairings.

***After reaching the milestone 200th qualifying and race lap records since becoming the Official Tire of IMSA in 2019 at Watkins Glen, Michelin slashed six more records over the weekend.

***Blomqvist obliterated the DPi qualifying lap record, along with Michelin Pilot Challenge driver Kenny Murillo in GS. In the two races, Blomqvist also bettered the previous track record, with Jr III’s Grist setting a new benchmark in LMP3. Both the GS (Robin Liddell) and TCR (Mikey Taylor) race records in Pilot Challenge were broken as well.

***The CTMP media center was named after longtime broadcaster and track public address announcer Jim Martyn, who passed away in October 2019. It came on the same weekend that Mid-Ohio named its media center in honor of longtime Honda motorsports communications manager T.E. McHale, who died last year.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John