cc motorsports: round 2 weekend recap

Following short break after round one of the season, CC Motorsports returned to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park for round two of the 2022 Toyotires F1600 championship. Despite Conner and Cole finishing on a low note with double DNFs in the third race, round one proved to be a promising start with many positives to take away. After a short and tiring week of repairs on the 45 car and some setup adjustments on 44, the boys looked to bounce back at CTMP. It would prove to be a solid weekend, especially considering round 2 was only Conners 4th and Coles 3rd race weekend. Conner showed great pace all throughout the weekend and achieved personal best results while demonstrating good clean racing. Although the results weren’t the best for Cole, he still showed great improvement in only his second ever outing at CTMP. He logged some solid seat time and was able to sort out some ongoing issues caused by the crash in round one that should help him get back to speed for the next round.

Friday: Practice/Testing

It’s pretty common for there to be challenges whenever a team returns to a track for the first time in a season, and this weekend was no exception. Both Conner and Cole took the day to reacquaint themselves with Mosport and play with different setups. Conner managed to find some good pace in the first session finishing in P6, but pulled out of the second session early when a setup change wasn’t working to his liking. After the extensive repairs done to the rear end of the #45 car, Cole struggled to find a comfortable setup and lacked overall pace throughout the day.

Saturday: Qualifying and Race One

Q: For Saturday Conner decided to revert back to his original setup, which turned out to be a great call as he finished qualifying P4 in class and overall with new personal best time. Cole also found some more pace in qualifying and cross the line P7 in class and P9 overall as the session came to an end.

R1: Cole managed to get off to a strong start and would make his way up to P7 towards the end of the race, swapping places along the way. Unfortunately a lock up and spin would cause him to drop back to P13 with only a few laps remaining in the race. Cole would cross the line in P9 in class, P12 overall. Conner also got off to a great start in race one and would spend the entire 14 laps in a close battle for P4 with Craig Willis and Gerry Kavanaugh. After many laps of overtaking and defending, Conner finished the race P4 in class, P5 overall a new best finish for him and the team.

Sunday: Race Two and Three

R2: Race two found Conner starting P9 after setting a time of 1:32:715 in race one while Cole amazingly set a 1:32:174, edging out Conner by just one thousandth of a second slotting him in at P8. Conner continued where he left off on Saturday and had great pace throughout the race, making some great overtakes to finish P5 in class/P6 overall. After a few tough opening laps Cole found himself running in P11, but would recover to P8 in class/P9 overall setting a new personal best lap time along the way.

R3: Unfortunately Cole continued to struggle to find pace and move through the pack in race three. Although he was able to maintain his starting position of P9 throughout majority of the race, an off at turn one would send him back to P14 with only a couple laps remaining. Luckily he was able to keep it out of the wall and brought the car home with in one piece and sidepods full of grass. Conner on the other hand conitinued to have great form in the final race of the weekend and mainainted his strong starting position of P5, finishing P4 in class.

The team looks forward to returning to CTMP for round 3 with the BARC Canadian Touring Trophy series. With 30 cars registered it’s going to be a busy and exciting weekend of racing, and a great opportunity for CC Motorsports to show what they are capable of.

As always, we would like to thank everyone that helps make this endeavour possible. There is a lot of time, money, blood, sweat and tears that go into racing and the support from our friends, family and fellow racers is something we will never take for granted. Thank you for following along and we’ll see you at round 3.

Photography by John Cardillo and Cole Janeteas