Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
Sometimes when it comes to NASCAR Canadian Tire Series and stockcar racing in general, there’s a little saying that everything goes out the window in the final laps. It seemed that was the case on Sunday at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. There would certainly be contact late in the race between Alex Tagliani and Jeff Lapcevich, leaving both without the trophy in hand.
“I’m disappointed,” he admitted. “I think we had the race won and then the caution came out and we have to restart with Alex (Tagliani).”
Starting the race from the third spot, Lapcevich ran up front all race long, taking the lead on lap 34. He looked to have the gap maintained between himself and second place race runner Alex Tagliani, when the caution flew for fluid on the track at lap 38. On the restart with 10 laps to go, Lapcevich was able to grab the advantage through turn one, but Tagliani was able to keep close, making door-to-door contact with Lapcevich in turn three. The result would be Tagliani taking the lead while Lapcevich slid back to fourth.
Earlier this week, OnPitRoad.com released an article with Tagliani’s thoughts on the incident, which can read by clicking here.
In fairness, though, there’s two sides to a story and as a journalist, both sides rightfully should be told when I am writing a story. For that matter, I do want to openly and publically apologize for how I wrote the first piece in not equally sharing both sides of the story. I extend that apology to not only Jeff Lapcevich, his team and sponsors, but to all the fans of the series and OPR.
“He’s Alex – if he can get to you, he can send you off the track and that’s what he did,” Lapcevich continued. “Maybe he’ll think twice about it next time because we’re going to be around for a long time. It’s disappointing finishing off with a third place finish. It’s not what we wanted.”
As noted previously, there was additional contact as Lapcevich was able to get back to Tagliani on a following restart with three laps to go, giving him a shot in turn one and sending him off line and back a few spots.
“You live by the sword, you die by the sword,” Lapcevich remarked. “He’s pushed me around in the past and I wasn’t taking it today. I could’ve easily rooted L.P. (Dumoulin) – I know I roughed him up a bit and got him out of shape a bit, and he did a masterful job of staying fast and staying on line. That’s good, clean racing – not when you knock a guy three lanes out of the way to pass him. That’s what he did to me, and what I did to him.”
For Lapcevich, the decision came back to what he teaches his teenage sons in their racing endeavors, in saying, “I’m proud of the way we race and that’s what I try to teach my kids – you race other people the way you want to be raced.”
