TORONTO, ON – After a week of major announcements, hectic travel and high expectations the Pioneer Family Pools Team headed to the NASCAR Pinty’s Series opener at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. The event took place May 21 & 22 at the legendary road course located northeast of Toronto.
Defending pole and race winner, Gary Klutt and his team unloaded a new beautiful blue and yellow #59 Dodge Challenger sporting the colors of newly announced primary sponsor Pioneer Family Pools, Bothwell-Accurate and returning sponsor CTL.
Gary hit the track for practice 1 and laid down an impressive lap that paced the field by close to second until the final minute of the opening session. However the team was hard to work, just after his second lap in the session Gary felt that there was an issue with the motor and the swim team started to change the engine in time for qualifying for the Clarington 200 and thus missing the second practice session.
Without any real practice laps qualifying would be a roll of the dice for car set up, but again the opening lap of qualifying Klutt had his Pioneer Family Pools car at the top of the field, but issues arose yet again leading to a blown engine on lap two of qualifying, with his one lap holding up for the 4th starting spot for Sundays event. The team loaded up and headed back to the shop to find the gremlin causing the motor woes. Making it back to Legendary Motor Car in Halton-Hills, the team lead by John Fletcher got to work stripping everything engine related. After hours of work the team headed back to CTMP in the wee hours of the morning ready to roll on Sunday.
Klutt needed to forfeit his 4th spot on the grid as per NASCAR rules and fall to the rear of the stellar 27 car field. Klutt laid down some blistering opening laps moving from 27th to 13th in five laps. The first restart, Gary was on the move to the front when an on track incident put a cloud on the race. Gary made contact overtaking a slower car and the #59 car suffered damage to the front end hampering the cars speed. “I thought he was waving me by going into corner 2”said Klutt, ”but no one to blame for that one but me, I’ve just have to be more patient when I know that we have a hot rod.”
Klutt was able to battle back and was solidly in the top 10 on the final lap. In the final corner all hell broke loose, “I think there were three cars parked sideways on the track and I had no where to go” laughed Klutt. But when the smoked cleared Klutt was 10th… “we’ll take it and move on to Round #2”.
The Pioneer Family Pools/ CTL Team is working harder than ever and are already working on the car for NASCAR’s next event, June 11 at Autodrome Chaudiere Speedway in Quebec, the Series’ first oval of 2016 where Klutt will debut another new sponsor on the hood.
Gary Klutt is Sponsored for the NASCAR Pinty’s Series by; Pioneer Family Pool, CTL, Bothwell-Accurate, Motive Media, Titan Productions, Daniels Corp., Torkin-Manes and Trailcon. @GaryKlutt for more information. Photo courtesy SawmillCreative.ca
