By Maudsley Motorsports
(Toronto, Ontario) – Don Thomson Jr., and his Home Hardware Chevrolet Monte Carlo entered round five of the 2005 CASCAR Super Series as the point leader last weekend. The Atto 100 feature was part of the Toronto Molson Indy festival, and Thomson brought a 34-point cushion over Mark Dilley into the event.
The weekend commenced with practice on Friday afternoon and the # 4 machine tripped the timing lights with a fast lap of one minute, 20.779 seconds. The lap was quick, but .045 seconds behind D.J. Kennington for the fastest time of the session. “Our car was good off the trailer, and we won with this car last time out, so I think we’re going to be fine with the package we have.”
The next time on the track for the CASCAR Late Models would be Saturday afternoon for qualifying, and Thomson was able to turn a lap of one minute, 19.467, good enough for third-fastest, less than four-tenths of a second behind Kennington’s pole-sitting run and the remarkable lap turned in by Thomson’s teammate J.R. Fitzpatrick.
“I’m pretty proud of the kid [Fitzpatrick]. He turned in a good lap. On the other hand, we got caught up in traffic on every decent lap. It’s just tough to get a good lap in with that many cars spread out all over the course, but we still have a decent starting spot and still gained some points.”
Sunday’s 36-lap feature saw perfect skies, and Thomson chased Kennington and Fitzpatrick down into turn one. Thomson was able to keep J.R. on the highside through turn one and moved into second as the field thundered down Lakeshore Boulevard for the first time. Thomson positioned himself a few car lengths behind Kennington and started to look for weaknesses in D.J.’s game.
On a lap seven restart, Thomson was handed the top position as Kennington rolled to pit road with a flat tire. Thomson would take off with road racing ace Jeff Lapcevich in hot pursuit, and managed to open up a few car lengths. Lapcevich would experience tire troubles and was forced to pit lane a few laps later, allowing Thomson to open up a huge gap over the field, but right at the halfway point the handling of the Home Hardware Chevrolet changed dramatically, as the car struggled to gain forward bite off the turns. Thomson was forced to slow the pace and Kerry Micks, who had moved from 11th-starting position to second, started to reel him in.
Micks continued to chop into the lead, and by lap 29 had moved to Thomson’s flank. On the next lap, Micks took the lead and never looked back. Meanwhile, Thomson was still racing hard to the finish, but was overtaken by Peter Gibbons for second with just a couple laps left, shuffling the # 4 to a bronze medal finish.
“It was another great weekend for the Home Hardware Team,” explained Thomson. “We had a pretty good car at Mosport, and I knew that we would be strong in the feature. I was just biding my time behind D.J. when he pulled off, and was able to sneak away from Jeff before he had troubles. Then, all of a sudden my car went away. We won’t know until we get it back to the shop, but we may have a tire going down, or a bad shock, because it wasn’t gradual. We’re still very pleased with the race. We got some points in qualifying, led the most laps, and finished on the podium again.”
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