What an awesome season. 2012 was one of those years where we had no bad luck, lots of good luck and a fast car to go with it. I was on the podium 15 out of the 16 races, and as a result won the Championship. Jonathan finished 3rd in the championship, Bob finished 5th and we won the manufactures championship for the second time in a row for Hyundai. We had some close racing, and a ton of fun. We couldn’t have done it without the support of Castrol, Hyundai, and all of our other awesome sponsors. I’m really proud that we were able to deliver them a championship.
I’m not going to bore you all with a story about entire season, so let’s just go over the highlights in pictures with the results under each picture.
CTCC Round 1&2: Mosport Victoria Day Speedfest
Race One, Days Of Thunder was the inspiration for the year
A little tuning action is always required during practice
CTCC Round 3&4: Montreal Formula 1
Rain qualifying was fun, but difficult with turbo lag!
Gridded 3rd behind Audette and Camirand
F1 was so cool. 3rd both races behind Audette and Camirand.
CTCC Round 5&6: ICAR Sundown
Smashing curbing as always at ICAR!
First win of the season. We won both rounds!
What’s ICAR without a little wall smashing?
Why not learn how to fly a helicopter too? One of the guys we race with Phillip Fayer owns this sucker. Beautiful machine.
CTCC Round 7&8: Mont Tremblant – Summer Classic
My first time at Mont Tremblant – thank god no rain! Couldn’t catch Audette and Camirand all weekend. No matter how hard I tried.
Hoping we won’t all die into corner 1 at the race start.
3rd both finishes. Great result considering the first time at such a challenging circuit.
CTCC Round 9&10: Grand Prix Of Mosport
Three girls eagerly awaiting party time.
Photo Credit: Charles Spivak
New Mosport CTCC Lap Record: 1.28.179!
Photo Credit: Charles Spivak
Oil at the top of corner 2 ended our hopes of winning race 1, but the car still finished the race! This was the only race of the season where we weren’t on the podium.
After a wild night back at the shop the car was back together in perfect shape, and we came from LAST to WIN the race! A little bit of luck was involved no doubt. And Bob finished 2nd!
CTCC Round 11&12: Grand Prix De Trois Rivieres
GP3R Is always fun becauuse we get to do a night race there. Racing in the dark is tons of fun. Unfortunately we had huge brake problems all weekend.
Trying to beat the ever elusive and high horsepower BMW of Camirand
Maybe the dampers were a little too stiff this weekend!
Spray!
CTCC Round 13&14: Montreal Nascar Nationwide Race
Qualified 2nd but had Camirand before corner 1. He had a poor start.
Finally beat Camirand! He had an RPM limiter for this race, which was severely cutting into his top speed.
Very happy to have beat him.
Sadly Race 2 wasn’t as good. Bob got into a big wreck…
And Camirand had his power back. I did pretty well in the rain, but made a few small mistakes which was enough for him to get close, and pass on the straight.
CTCC Round 15&16: Calabogie Motorsports Park
Fastest in practice and new lap record in Qualifying, despite never racing at Calabogie Full Track before.
Bob made some interesting changes to the car that required us to tune the car before the race. Bob was able to test the changes in the regional session right before our race, to make sure the car would run correctly. I was suited up and ready to jump in my car as soon as I closed the laptop. Timing was tight!
And.. GO!
Great, clean race. Tires went off a huge amount over the 30 minutes!
Race 2 was not so calm. Lesage is a wild man and had a great car on new tires. He smashed into me and took himself out of the race as a result of the impact – breaking a knuckle. My car was OK, just minor alignment issues.
Wild season!
Fun!
The guys at Performance Racing News were great and ran a congratulatory ad for us in the magazine. We truly couldn’t have done it without the support of our awesome sponsors, and the great team that put in lots of hard hours, and never turned a wrench wrong all season. Can’t forget my fiancée Nicole! She’s the best. Thanks to all of you to helped make 2012 a fantastic championship winning season. Onwards and upwards!
