The Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park yesterday was won by brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor, with the Wayne Taylor Racing team completing the 2h40 race just 0.477 seconds in the lead.
Ricky Taylor started the race in the #10 Corvette DP from pole position but lost his lead 27 laps in when overtaken by Christian Fittipaldi‘s #5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP after pitstops.
Following that, the race saw many different leaders, including the second Action Express Racing car – Eric Curran and Dane Cameron‘s #31, as well as the #60 Ligier JS P2 of Michael Shank Racing and the #90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette DP.
Overall, there were 8 lead changes, but the most important came with less than 15 minutes remaining.
Joao Barbosa pitted when he picked up a puncture in the #5 Corvette DP. At the time, the sister #31 car of Dane Cameron was out front, but had to make a pitstop a few minutes later for a fuel refill. Having previously suffered from heavy rear-left tyre wear, the time changed this wheel but in doing so lost valuable seconds and was passed by the #10 at the pit exit.
Coming from a few positions down, Jordan Taylor had taken advantage of both pitting Action Express Racing cars, and overtook Oswaldo Negri Jr. This allowed him to take the lead from Cameron, with the latter exiting the pitlane 1.5 seconds behind.
Taylor held onto that crucial lead for the remaining 8 laps but had to navigate a considerable amount of traffic. By the time he reached the finish line, Cameron was less than half a second behind him.
The podium was therefore made up of Ricky and Jordan Taylor’s #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP, Dane Cameron and Eric Curran’s #31 Action Express Racing Corvette DP and finally the #60 Michael Shank Racing Ligier of Oswaldo Negri Jr. and John Pew.
In fourth position were championship leaders Michael Valiante and Richard Westbrook, whose #90 VisitFlorida.com Racing Corvette still finished within 10 seconds of the leader. Fifth place was taken by the #5 Action Express Racing Corvette DP of Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi, ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing‘s #01 Ford Riley DP driven by Joey Hand and Scott Pruett.
Finally, seventh in class was awarded to the #07 SpeedSource Mazda Prototype of Tom Long and Joel Miller. The #0 DeltaWing team of Memo Rojas and Katherine Legge finished the race for the first time this season, but were three laps down on the leader.
“I thought it was going to be a long miserable day, but we kept going,” said Jordan Taylor. “We got by the 60 (Negri) who was being held up in traffic. It was lap after lap by myself, so it was a bit of a boring race in that respect. We were pitting at such weird times and taking two tires instead of four. I didn’t know what was going on, I just kept driving.”
