Starting from the outside pole, Irishman Sheamus Power made a daring move on the outside of turn four on race leader Dawson Brock in the No. 7 Grizzly Motorsports BMW who started from pole, to take the lead.
From there on, the No. 99 BMW team never looked back and led 118 laps en route to its first ever VSCA SportsCar Championship win, as Jonathan Oshalim crossed the start/finish line to take the checkers after two hours and forty minutes of racing.
The No. 7 BMW of Grizzly Motorsports took second place with Adam Shipstone as the closing driver for his team.
Rounding out the podium finishers was the No. 79 Champion Motorsports BMW with drivers Thomas Fisher and Cameron Barker.
The second LMDh class entry of Grizzly Motorsports, the No. 8 BMW with Dawid Melnarowicz and Travis Henderson ended up fourth but was seven laps down, after Melnarowicz lost control in turn eight on lap five of the race and hit the wall hard - an incident that required extensive repairs on the car.
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| On lap 13 a promising race ended for both the No. 51 World Of SimRacing Team BMW and the No. 3 Mayer Simspeed Performance BMW after this incident involving Alvaro Martinez and Kyle Birnie - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
Completing the top-five finishers in LMDh class competition was the No. 88 BMW of DS Racing eSports Team with Portuguese drivers duo Francisco Santos Pereira and Ricardo Santos.
Similar to their competitors, a better finish was prevented with an early incident when on lap 16 Santos overdrove his car into turn three, got into the rubber marbles and slid off the track into the grass, to hit the wall hard.
The incident forced the team to tow the car back to the pits and during extensive repairs the No. 88 BMW lost 13 laps.
MoneyHouse Racing and their No. 45 BMW with drivers Nolan Hodgson and Joseph Stafford completed the same number of laps and finished P6. Things were looking good for the Long Island team, getting as high as fourth place before Stafford came in on lap 73 to complete the driver swap and hand the car over to Hodgson.
For race fans it was a déjà vu as just four laps after the driver swap stop, Hodgson went off the track in turn three in exactly the same way as Santos earlier in the race. The outcome was just as severe and after crashing into the concrete wall, the team was faced with the task of fixing the damage, leading to the No. 45 car finishing 13 laps down from the leaders.
The race was even more of a nightmare for reigning 24 Hours of Daytona champions and championship leaders Mayer Simspeed Performance, as they joined several LMDh class entries who were involved in crashes at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
The No. 3 BMW of Kyle Birnie and Niclas Pedersen wound up seventh officially, 24 laps down. For the team out of Teisendorf, Germany it was another tough race after troubles at Laguna Seca two weeks prior.
Still, the team remains in the championship lead, albeit by a much smaller margin of only 22 points over Champion Motorsports’ No. 79 car.
Laguna Seca winners No. 10 BMW of Race4Cat Motorsport with drivers Alex Rourera and Marc Freixa took the checkered flag in eighth place and were the final LMDh class car still running at the conclusion of the race.
For the team out of Catalunya the dream of making it two wins in a row was short lived. On lap three Rourera found himself in the middle of the wrong kind of action when two GTD class cars touched going into turn nine, setting up an incident that the 39-year old series veteran could not avoid, crashing into the barriers. At the end the No. 10 car wound up 32 laps down from the leaders.
While their GTD team-mates celebrated the first win for the organization in VSCA, the No. 51 LMDh entry of World of SimRacing Team was out of the race with terminal damage after an accident on lap 13 when Alvaro Martinez slowed for a crash in turn two and subsequently was hit in the rear from the No. 3 BMW of Mayer Simspeed Performance driver Kyle Birnie.
Champion Motorsports creeping closer to championship lead
In the LMDh championship, the No. 3 Mayer Simspeed Performance BMW continues to hold the points lead, but by way of their third-place finish at CTMP, the No. 79 BMW of Champion Motorsports is creeping closer and sits only 22 points behind now.
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| Laguna Seca race winners, the No. 10 Race4Cat Motorsport BMW had no luck at CTMP and got caught up in a crash between two GTD class cars on lap 3 - © 2023 VSCAracing.com / Benjamin Fischer |
The No. 7 Grizzly Motorsports BMW has also gained ground and moves into third place in the point standings, at the cost of the No. 51 car of World Of SimRacing Team, who lose four spots.
VR7UAL Sports Car Challenge winners JO Motorsports gain four spots and now sit in fourth position in the championship, as the only team with four top-five finishes out of the first five races of the season.
Visibly excited, JO Motorsports team manager Eric Sibla had this to say in the winner’s circle at Mosport:
“Fantastic job, just a fantastic job by the entire team. Sheamus and Jonathan have done phenomenal work here and all season, really. I’m so proud and happy for the guys, that we finally got that first win. Hopefully we can build on this momentum and close the gap to the championship lead. We’re hungry for more!”
Team-mate and driver Sheamus Power agreed: “Thrilled, absolutely thrilled about this win. It’s a bit of a shame we couldn’t complete the trifecta by also taking pole position, but yeah. We definitely take the victory and having no incidents.”
“We had a rough start at Daytona with that DNF. But I think we’re definitely looking to contend the rest of the season. I wouldn’t say we’re favorites since it’s endurance racing where anything can happen and we still got a lot of events ahead of us, but we’re absolutely going to give it our best fight and get as many points as we can until the end.”, Power added.
The No. 45 LMDh of MoneyHouse Racing rounds out the top-five in the championship standings at Round 5.
The VSCA SportsCar Championship continues with the 6 Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen on June 17th.