In this week’s Motion Motorsport Report for InsideTrackNews.com, Dave Mathers updates readers on the APC Series at The Beach, the NASCAR Pinty’s Series at ICAR, NASCAR at Daytona and much more.
APC SERIES: Twenty-three cars took the green flag Saturday night at Sauble Beach for the APC Late Models. Blair Wickett started from the pole but outside pole starter Ryan Kimball grabbed the lead and led for 24 laps.
Shae Gemmell led until lap 71 when eventual winner Rick Spencer-Walt took over. He finished ahead of Delaware Bone Stock wizard Jo Lawrence and JR Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick continues to lead the points by 12 over Kyle Steckly and by 25 over Josh Stade.
Their next race is at Delaware, Friday and Saturday, September 26 & 27, part of the APC/Pinty’s Series BIG weekend.
ONTARIO SPORTSMAN SERIES: Their next race is at Flamboro Speedway, Saturday, September 10.
DELAWARE SPEEDWAY: The Late Models had the night off, last Friday, to get ready for this Friday’s 70 lapper. The Super Stocks had a good close race with Jay Doerr picking up the win after coming from the back.
Carson Nagy finished 2nd, Chase Pinsonneault 3rd, Trevor Colver 4th and Pete Vanderwyst 5th. Vanderwyst leads Doerr by only 1 point, with Nagy and Andrew Ferreira 3rd 20 back and Colver 5th 22 out of the lead.
Devon Bleomendol won the V/8 Stock class in his former Truck Series pickup. Doug Stewart was 2nd while Kyle Mezenberg was 3rd. Kyle has a 31-point lead over Ethan Orr and 37 ahead of Jeff Ferguson. Dave Evison took quite a ride up the wall coming out of four and damaged his right front corner. Got an old hot rod in your garage? Bring it back out and have some fun!!
In the Bone Stocks, Jo Lawrence won over Jeremiah Rabideau and Jay Cox. Rabideau continues to lead the points by 12 over Jo and by 50 atop Phil Givens.
This Friday they will run the BIG ONE!!! $7,000 to win Late Models (70 laps) and $3,000 to win Super Stocks (52 laps) for a total purse of almost $60,000!!
OXFORD 250: Congrats to Nova Scotia’s Cole Butcher winning the Oxford 250! He joins Don Biederman, Junior Hanley, Dave Whitlock and Derek Lynch on the list of Canadians to have won this major event!
NASCAR PINTY’S SERIES: Canada’s national stock car championship returned to the nearly one-mile-long road course at the closed Mirabel Airport north of Montreal now called Circuit ICAR. The starting lineup was based on points and that put Marc-Antoine Camirand on the pole with D.J. Kennington 2nd and Alex Tagliani 3rd.
It didn’t take long for Kevin Lacroix to grab the lead (lap 6) and he held it right to the checkered flag. Camirand finished 2nd with Alex Guenette 3rd.
The drive of the race came from Xfinity regular Alex Labbé who finished a very strong 8th Friday night in the “Midnight Special’ at Daytona. At ICAR, Alex started basically from the parking lot (22nd!!) and wound up 4th.
Lacroix was briefly challenged for the lead by Andrew Ranger who dive-bombed Kevin on a restart fifteen laps from the end but Ranger was unsuccessful and finished 5th.
Once again, ‘glitches’ affected the Race Center Live Timing as it labelled the event as ‘GENERAL TIRE 125 PRACTICE’ throughout the entire race!!
Camirand extended his points lead over Kennington to 23 with his 2nd place finish to DJ’s 12th place finish.
Their next race is Sunday at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
FLAMBORO SPEEDWAY: It is said that ‘God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform’ and that applies to the accident Saturday night at Flamboro. My grandson David Mathers was making his first start in a modified owned by his other grandfather, Bill Denney, and he was in the race Saturday night when a car jumped the wall.
His father, my son Paul, was helping coach him while standing outside corners 3 & 4. For some reason, Paul wanted to see how David was getting through 1 & 2 so he went to the other end of the track. The spot where the car went over the wall was right where Paul had been standing!!
In the end, racer Mike Podd – who was spectating at the time – was injured when the Modified left the track. The car took out several poles but driver TJ Edwards was unhurt. According to reports, Podd underwent surgery for leg injuries. We join everyone at Flamboro and in the Canadian Vintage Modifieds community in wishing Mike a full and rapid recovery.
ONTARIO DRAGS: I will be adding big events only for the three local drag strips as they run regular bracket races each and every weekend.
GRAND BEND DRAGWAY: Their next big race is Thunder by the Beach this weekend.
ST. THOMAS DRAGWAY: Their next big race is the ONDR Hot Rod Reunion, September 9 – 11.
TORONTO MOTORSPORT PARK: Their next big race is this weekend, Can-Am Stock/Super Stocks and AA/GS.
NASCAR CUP SERIES: With rain washing out qualifying, the lineup was set using the complicated ‘metrics’ rating system. Kyle Larson (Chev) got the pole with teammate (and co-combatant??) Chase Elliott (Chev) outside pole and Joey Logano (Ford) 3rd. By about lap 9 the cars were running three wide and several cars appeared to be overheating due to the close drafting.
In fact, polesitter Larson dropped out of the race on lap 15 with an engine failure possibly due to the overheating. On lap 31 Denny Hamlin was running behind Erik Jones and Jones appeared to lift causing a chain reaction sending Brad Keselowski and Christopher Bell to the garage. Points bubble car Ryan Blaney damaged his right front fender but was able to continue.
On lap 103 Tyler Reddick bumped Michael McDowell and collected several cars including the other points bubble car of Martin Truex, Jr. The right front tire on the Truex car blew and launched the fender into the air, an act caught on camera. So now both bubble cars have damaged right fronts!! Level playing field!!
On lap 125 Ricky Stenhouse bumped Alex Bowman into Chase Briscoe causing a wreck that ended with Austin Dillon going backwards down pit road!!
On lap 129 Joey Logano and Erik Jones got together. The BIG ONE came on lap 138 when it was raining in one spot on the track and over half the field spun.
After a 3 hour and 19 minute red flag, racing resumed with Dillon out front. With 16 to go, Austin Cindric got around Dillon to take the lead. With 2 to go Dillon shoved Cindric out of the lead but Cindric didn’t spin. At the flag it was Dillon over teammate Tyler Reddick with Cindric third.
Elliott leads the playoff points by 15 over Logano and by 20 ahead of Ross Chastain. Their next race, Darlington, is Sunday at 6 P.M. on TSN 5.
NASCAR XFINITY SERIES: Mother Nature was not cooperating at Daytona with both Cup Series and Xfinity qualifying rained out.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the start of the Xfinity race was delayed for over three hours for rain. The number of track drying units was HUGE!! I can’t remember seeing so many dryers.
Using points, AJ Allmendinger started from the pole followed by Noah Gragson and Sammy Smith. Alex Labbe started 21st. Ty Gibbs won Stage 1 while Gragson won Stage 2. There were a BUNCH of yellow flags including the, wait for it, THREE green/white/checker attempts resulting in the race going 18 laps further than scheduled.
Really NASCAR? No concern for your fans, crews, staff, TV partners? Have you never heard of the Mercy Rule? Sixteen of the thirty-eight starters showed as accident victims.
Jeremy Clements won the race over Timmy Hill and AJ Allmendinger. Labbé finished a very strong 8th. Dinger continues to lead the points by 58 over Ty Gibbs and by 80 on Justin Allgaier. There are three races left in the regular season before the Round of 12 kicks in at Texas.
Their next race, Darlington, is Saturday at 3 P.M. on TSN 5.
NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCKS: Their next race, Kansas, is Friday night, September 9 at 7.30 P.M. on Fox Sports Racing. Last week, it was announced that Craftsman is returning as the title sponsor of this series, in 2023.
FORMULA ONE: Following the summer break, the series dropped into the legendary and beautiful Spa/Francorchamp Circuit nestled in the Ardennes Forest for the Belgian Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) set fast time but had to start 14th due to penalties. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) qualified 2nd with Sergio Perez (Red Bull) 3rd. Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) started 14th and Nicholas Latifi (Williams) started 17th.
On the first lap, Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) – who started 4th – came down on Fernando Alonso (Alpine) in a right-hand corner, taking Hamilton out of the race with damage to the bottom of his car after flying through the air.
On the next lap, Latifi spun and took out Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo). Meanwhile, Max picked up five spots in five laps and took over the lead on lap 18. He lead the rest of the way to pick up the win over Perez and Sainz. Stroll finished 11th with Latifi 18th.
Max has a 93-point lead over teammate Perez and 98 ahead of Leclerc. Red Bull leads the Manufacturers Points by 115 over Ferrari and 159 over Mercedes.
Their next race, Holland, is Sunday at 8.55 A.M. on TSN 5.
NHRA: Their next race is the U.S. Nationals, Indianapolis, this weekend on Fox Sports Racing.
INDYCAR: Their next race is Portland, Sunday at 3 P.M. on NBC.
IMSA: The Canadian Pfaff Motorsports Porsche continued its domination of the GTD PRO class at Virginia International Raceway Sunday.
Starting second, the team of Campbell and Jaminet grabbed the lead over the Aston Martin of Gunn/Riberas with about fifteen minutes to go and never looked back.
AND they ran out of gas on the cool down lap and had to be pushed to the Winner’s Circle!! The Corvette of Garcia/Taylor finished 2nd with the GTD Mercedes of Ward/Ellis finishing 3rd and first in class.
I have to say a race with 18 GT cars and no Prototypes is boring!!
Their next race is Petit LeMans, at Road Atlanta, on Saturday, October 1.
MY ‘VIEW’: I’m not sure who Xfinity race sponsor ‘Wawa’ is (a string of convenience stores according to Dr. Google) but I’m sure there are a bunch of Xfinity crew members and car owners that are going ‘Wa Wa’ over their ruined race cars. (P.S. – it didn’t get any better for the Cup race!!).
I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall in the upcoming meetings in the ‘Ivory Tower’ across Volusia Ave. from the speedway this week!! ‘Okay, who was the dummy that thought it would be a great idea to move the summer Daytona race from the July 4th weekend to the last weekend in August’??? LOL
I realize that they are trying to ‘change things up’ but tradition still means a lot. The Firecracker 400 was one of everybody’s favourite races because it started at 10 A.M. and meant everybody could get down to the beach in the afternoon. AND if it rained in the morning they could run in the afternoon or even in the evening!!
Until next week!!
- Dave Mathers
