Friday, July 31, 2009

Brian Graham Racing/ TLM Racing with Grote win at Calabogie

The BGR/TLM Racing squad arrived Thursday afternoon (July 23) to an upgraded Calabogie Motorsports Park. Friday testing showed great promise for drivers Stefan Rzadzinski in his BGR VanDiemen supported by Supertint, The ABL Group, Amsoil, and Synthetic Lubricants.ca  as well as MIkhail Goikhberg in his BGR/Amsoil VanDiemen. Stefan held 2nd quick time and Mikhail 3rd at the end of the day.

Saturday's practice saw the same order and in qualifying it was Stefan 2nd and Mikhail 4th. At the green Stefan got away well and entered the first turn off line on the dirty part of the track and simply couldn't get any grip, the car left the track and contacted heavily nose first in the turn one tire wall, a dissapointed Stefan climbed out unhurt.

Mikhail was also caught out by the lack of grip on the right hand side of the track in turn one and slid off but managed to rejoin the track, he lost some momentum but recovered well. He quickly made up the lost ground and held on for 3rd  after a good battle with Andrew Mason who finished 4th overall and won the B class. It was Mikhail's first podium of the season.

After a late night to repair Stefan's car the team once again was 2nd and 3rd in practice and then solidified that again in qualifying with Stefan once again on the front row. Eager to make up for saturday's dnf, Stefan got the jump on the polesitter and took the lead into turn one, with Mikhail slotted into 3rd, at the entry to turn one the next lap Matt White who started on pole drafted by and Stefan also found his teamate Mikhail slipping by. Mikahail was on a charge and drafted by White but unfortunetly the two came together in the next braking zone and were both out on the spot.

Stefan regained the lead and finished the lap ahead of Olivier Bonnet and rookie Nathan Block. With a lenthy yellow to pick up the cars of Mikhail and White and with lightning looming the cars were greeted with the checkered flag after a few laps behing the pace car to secure Stefan's first win.

"The team is thrilled for Stefan and his supporter's, he works very hard at this and has had his share of bad luck this season. The crash saturday was a real shame, the race shortly before ours had 50 GT cars and the dirty side of the track had virtually no grip and simply caught him out so it was the perfect way to rebound. We are equally pleased for Mikhail and his solid podium saturday and to have both our cars lead on sunday was encouraging. They both are getting faster every weekend and we are looking forward to the next event where Fabio Urbano will be back as well."

Stefan sits 2nd in the championship with Fabio 6th and Mikahil 8th.

"We really have to thank CMP for a great event and MCO for an outstanding job running the show.

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