In the weeks to come, you will be treated to a set of racing tales to make the most ardent consumer of Schadenfreude blush.
During the summer of 2012, I competed in the Canadian Touring Car Championship and the Grand-Am Total Performance Challenge, racing a B-Spec Mazda2 on both sides of the continent against some of the most talented sedan-class drivers in North America. By turns, I experienced mechanical failure, ineptitude, bad luck, narrow avoidance of high-speed collisions, despair, defeat, fear, hope, joy, and finally mechanical failure again.
I won nothing and finished all three of my races either dead last by a margin best described as “considerable” or at the end of a tow chain. At one point in the process I actively considered quitting the sport entirely. At another point I was cheered by hundreds of people as I successfully made an almost impossibly bold move to catapult from worst to (nearly) first. I paid nine dollars for a Quarter Pounder in Mont-Tremblant, QC and nothing at all for a first-rate hotel room on the bay in Monterey, CA.
In short, it was the worst of times, it was the even more worst of times. But I learned quite a bit from the process and I’ll be sharing all of it with you. While I re-familiarize myself with my on-track data and sob heavy teardrops onto my well-worn laptop keyboard for a while, here’s something to keep you occupied and give you some insight into what you’ll read next: a practice lap of the Mont-Tremblant road course behind the wheel of the CTCC B-Spec Mazda2 Media Car. Note the speeds at which the Civics and BMWs close on me; it will become relevant later…
All this driving on 2 wheels only must be quite difficult…
That’s why we love you Jack, you are as unabashedly honest about your own failings as you are about everyone else’s.
$9 for a Quarter pounder? I thought Canada was on the metric system – a $9 Royale with cheese I could understand…
Beaten soundly by Canadians, eh?
Ouch!
Ah, I see your problem. Your car’s camber wasn’t properly set for the permanent 45-degree banking. Makes the corners of Daytona look positively flat.
Proves the phrase, “you can’t make a pig fly”. Discarding the other cars passing you as they were in a much different class, it remains that Mazda continuously avoids power and especially torque (MS3 not included), and thereby short circuits their zoom zoom image in that area. Why most everybody gives them a “free pass” in this department I will never know.
This B-Spec 2 isn’t competitive within its class, and only because of engine anemia. But then the street 2 had this problem from the outset too.
Looking forward to it.
Looked like the Mazda was commuting.
I tend to agree. Even his gear shifting give the impression he’s on the freeway.
I look forward to this series.