A (long) weekend of quite a few firsts.
- First time flying alone
- First time racing in Canada
- First time driving Mosport
- First time walking a city alone
- First time sleeping on a stranger’s couch
This post is meant to be mostly about Mosport, which I’d never driven before. I’d like to say I had a great race and I won all sorts of cash and prizes, but it was actually one of my worst showings to date. In most cases I was relatively far back in the field and I even skipped a few wet sessions and cut the final race short in favor of packing everything up in a timely fashion. This isn’t generally how one wins races, but there were several factors that lead to this.
The strange thing about going all the way up to Canada to race was despite a field of 30 944’s, there were only four that would earn points in my chapter. Given so many of the usual racers weren’t going to get points and it being a three point weekend, my primary focus was to start all races and bring the car back in one piece. Since my initial times put me firmly in third, all I had to do was take each green flag to get relatively high points for the chapter championship.
Probably more influential was that Mosport was not only an entirely new track to me, but it’s a track that takes some serious balls to race right. I legitimately scared myself a few times, more so than I have in a long time, and there was more desire not to put my car into a wall (which I saw happen multiple times) than go fast. This is a fairly fuddy-duddy way to run a race, but I was having fun just driving so it didn’t bother me much.
Does this mean I’ve lost a bit of the fire I once had for racing? Probably… but I decided a few years ago to use racing as an opportunity to spend time with my dad and not a way to put pressure on myself or make myself miserable. There’s a younger racer who is in the position I was in ~5 years ago and while I believe he loves it, there are times when he is so serious it seems like he isn’t having a good time. When I talked to him about lightening up and having a bit more fun, his response was something to the effect of “It’s easy for you to have fun, you don’t have to worry about winning.” At first I was insulted, but then the comment actually made me happy. He is quite right, I don’t have to worry about winning. (Some life commentary in there, obviously.)
That’s not to say I didn’t have any good racing. I most definitely did. There were several guys I was competitive with and spent a good bit of my weekend swapping positions and driving two wide through countless turns. This was all great fun and helluva way to spend a weekend. All the beer, food and great hospitality shown by the French Canadians who’d driven down from Quebec to run with us didn’t hurt either. Yeah, I said it and I’ll say it again…great hospitality shown by the French Canadians.
Regarding the actual track – I love it. It is an absolutely blast to drive and may very well by my favorite track. I highly recommend it.
After all that, I made use of the opportunity to spend 24 hours in Toronto. I didn’t do much other than walk around the city aimlessly and hang out with my CouchSurfing host, but that was enough to know I really, really like Toronto. Honorable mentions include the amazing hospitality of my host (who left keys for me to get into his place, even though we’d never met), getting five more strangers for my project and some of the most perfect June weather I’d ever experienced. I am very much looking forward to going back with Melissa and maybe even living there one day.