By JAJ Entertainment
(Bowmanville, Ontario) – The new ‘Ironman’ of the CASCAR Super Series, D.J. Kennington, and his Castrol Canada Dodge traveled to Mosport on Father’s Day weekend. The event was the Clarington 200 Presented by Berms R Us on the world renowned road course just north of Bowmanville, outside Toronto. Kennington was returning to the site of his 2001 victory, and coming off a huge second-place finish in round number two of the tour at Autodrome Ste. Eustache.
The weekend started out on Saturday with practice and Kennington was among the quickest cars. “We were solid all day, and didn’t make a single change on the car at all getting ready for qualifying.”
Later in the day the cars hit the track for a pair of hour long qualifying sessions and Kennington was able to rip off the seventh-quickest lap of the day, turning the road course at one minute, 27.742 seconds, about a second and a half behind pole sitter Peter Gibbons. “We were still good in qualifying. The car was consistent and I think we have a shot at winning tomorrow.”
Sunday’s feature saw Kennington roll from the inside of row four. In the early going, Kennington had a simple game plan, and that was to stay out of trouble, find his rhythm, and be around at the end to have a shot at winning.
The day took a turn for the worse early in the day as a rock came up off the track and became jammed in the shifter linkage. Kennington couldn’t get the car out of second gear and came to the attention of the ‘Castrol Crew’ with just a handful of laps on the scoreboard. The crew found the problem and removed the offending stone, but D.J. had lost three laps. For the remainder of the event, Kennington was able to turn great lap times, but the early problem would lead to a 22nd-place finish.
“We have a pretty good size monkey on our back that we have to shake and turn this season around. A rock in the linkage is just something that you can’t do anything about. I’m not saying that we had a good enough car to beat Donnie and Jeff Lapcevich, but I think we had a top-five car for sure, and may have been able to take a shot at winning.”
Gibbons set a new track record with his qualifying run, while Don Thomson Jr. qualified on the outside of the front row. Thomson took the lead early and turned it over to Kerry Micks on lap 17. Mark Dilley would also lead before Gibbons grabbed the top spot, but Thomson and Jeff Lapcevich were on the charge and quickly shuffled Gibbons back to third. Thomson would pace the field for the remainder of the race and picked up his second career victory at Mosport, by a 0.619 second margin over Jeff Lapcevich, with J.R. Fitzpatrick recording his first career podium with a third-place result.
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