Charlottetown, Canada, October 30 – The ClubSport Series lands Stateside for the first of three races in the USA at Mid-Ohio. It’s a drastically different track from the opening round of Motegi, and drivers would be challenged by the narrow circuit over 400km.
As the grid settled in, the battles began to heat up. In the Sport class Michael Janney in the #134 Fiercely Forward car was hounding the #162 Geodesic car piloted by Tristan Iglesias who started the race on pole.
Meanwhile, in the Cup class, the field would spread out slightly as they began to encounter traffic. A 4-way battle would develop with Fiercely Forward (34), Orion Race Team (44), Mydays Erlebniswerk (13), and Maniti Racing (78) vying for 6th position. This foursome would encounter a rejoining Puresims Cup car who suffered a large side-impact from a rejoining Alpinestars Geodesic Racing car breaking this pack up slightly.
In the TCR class, a snaking pack of 6 cars were battling for positions 2nd – 8th, headed by the #258 FSR (Full Send Racing) x Majors Garage, followed by Fiercely Forward (#234), Project Dynamic (#217), Impulse Racing (#232), FSR x Majors Garage (#285), Team Heusinkveld (#248), and Alpinestars Geodesic Racing (#222). As the Cup class made their way through this train, slight contact occurred between Michael Polasek in the #285 FSR and Volante Racing with Vince Peeters at the wheel. Fortunately it was only slight contact which unsettled each car, and both would continue on largely unharmed. These types of door-rubbing incidents are something we’d see throughout the entire race as the field tried to navigate its way through a fairly narrow track with widely varying speeds between classes.
With 73 laps to go, a major pit window opened with cars from all classes heading in for service. And without a safety car being deployed so far in the race, there are many strategy considerations that would be taking place on the team’s pitwalls. At this point, there were several position changes up-and-down the grid. Volante had taken over the lead in the Cup class, ahead of Alpinestars Geodesic Racing and Hellracers Tershine. Fiercely Forward led FSR x Project Alien (#185) in the Sport class, and Impulse Racing (233) continued to hold their lead in the TCRs. Further down the pack though, the train from earlier in the race continued with Project Dynamic (#217), Impulse Racing (#222), Team Heusinkveld (#248), and Fiercely Forward (#234) who were all jousting for 4th place. The battle between Impulse and Heusinkveld would become a gloves-off throwdown for a short while, as the two did not want to concede an inch to the other. This saw Heusinkveld slightly off track on the exit of turn 2, but they would not lose all of their momentum. They followed Impulse through turn 3 and tried to sneak their way inside of turn 4, but would make slight contact with Impulse’s rear. Impulse were able to manage this well, controlling the spin and collecting themselves to regain the position after Heusinkveld realized they had created the contact and spin. A tit-for-tat exchange that seemed to quickly resolve itself and the two would continue on! In the Sport class, FSR x Project Alien (#185) and Alpinestars Geodesic Racing Black (#162) were in a healthy battle for 2nd place while the 4th and 5th place cars battled about 12 seconds behind. These two battles would definitely be ones to keep track of, as they would need to navigate traffic both in front (TCR) and behind (Cup) while also having at least one pit stop remaining – these two variables might affect where these teams will end up at the end of the race.
With 30 laps to go, and traffic picking up again following pit stop cycles, the Cup leaders were managing their way through an intense 3-way fight between two Full Send Racing (FSR) cars and Team Heusinkveld. Heusinkveld took advantage of the FSR sister cars battling momentarily, and were able to get inside of the #258 FSR car into turn 4, leading eventually to the #258 car jumping off track while the Heusinkveld had a massive lockup slightly ahead of them. They would both rejoin and continue their battle as we approached the final 25 laps.
With 17 laps to go, the race would be flipped on its head as Sampsoid Racing’s Christian Cecil had a hardware failure – his VR crashed, and in his best attempt to remove himself from the racing surface he would end up directly in the line of fire and have a massive impact with #185 FSR x Project Alien. The incident would cause significant damage for each, and result in the first Safety Car Period of the season as the #199 Sampsoid GT4 would require a tow.
When the green flag flew on the restart, we were off to clean racing and a sprint to the finish with 11 laps remaining. It was going to be a challenge for all teams to keep it clean though as adrenaline would be surging in all drivers…
…and it would only take one lap before Volante Racing and Mydays Erlebniswerk came together and spun off in unison. Nearly simultaneously SRN Motorsports (Sport) and Alpinestars Geodesic Racing (TCR) would touch heading into turn 3 resulting in a huge off for SRN, and Puresims Esports (#16) and Sampsoid Kanaan (#88) would touch in turn 6 resulting in a spin for Sampsoid Kanaan. Impulse Racing and Alpinestars Geodesic Racing were able to create a break as the top two in the Cup class, but Orion Race Team, Maniti Racing, Hellracers Tershine and TREQ Esports were in a bumper-to-bumper battle for the final podium position. In the TCR class, a separate train of four were battling for 3rd as well, and with two laps to go another foursome appeared in a battle for first!
At the end, Fiercely Forward (#134) would maintain their form from start-to-finish and come away with the win in the Sport class from Alpinestars Geodesic Racing (#162) and Vector by RSR (#172).
Impulse Racing would cross the line in picture-perfect form with sister cars winning the Cup class (#15) and TCR class (#233). In the Cup class Alpinestars Geodesic Racing (#62) and Orion Race Team (#44) rounded out the podium, with FSR x Majors Garage (#285) and Team Heusinkveld (#248) finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively in the TCR class. Another fantastic round of racing in the ClubSport Series! Next up – we stay Stateside and make a short trip to VIR.
Full post race TFRLAB Laptime Summaries:
https://races.tfrlab.org/#/events/0ec80ed2-dea6-4a61-b2ee-2ecb72f1ad76