Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
In three past Canadian Tire Motorsport Park starts, Kevin Lacroix has finished no better than 23rd after running into several issues. However, today not only did the Quebec driver beat his mechanical gremlins, he also beat his competitors to take his second win of the season.
A number of Lacroix’s fellow competitors were plagued with mechanical failures throughout the race, including championship contender Andrew Ranger and polesitter Alex Tagliani. After suffering several mechanical issues throughout this season and last season, Lacroix was beginning to feel concerned at the end of the race.
“Maybe thinking too much,” Lacroix told OnPitRoad.com after the race. “I was feeling any sort of noise or vibration in the car. I was concerned about it. This track is very hard on cars, so I was worried about my day, but I know that if I don’t have any problems, we’d be okay. The car was dominant, so we would come up with the win.”
L.P. Dumoulin finished second on Sunday for the fourth time in the last five races. Dumoulin knows he’s likely out of the championship hunt, but the former series champ is hungry for race wins.
“We want to win,” Dumoulin said to OnPitRoad.com. “We’re there to win. We’ve got two races to go, and the only thing we haven’t had is to win races. The championship is one thing. The start of the season was so hard on us that we’re just looking for wins. We want to finish strong this year. We have four second-place finishes. If we keep knocking on that door, at one point we’re going to end up with a win. Everybody works so hard at the shop, so we need to go get it.”
Dumoulin said that pit strategy played a large role in the race on Sunday. The second caution of the day that came out for his brother J.F. Dumoulin being stopped on the track hurt his chances for a win.
“I think so because we had a really good run on Lacroix,” Dumoulin said. “That gave him a sweet spot to cool down the tires. We were on fresher tires than him. It would have helped Lapcevich and I to pass him, but when he cooled down his tires, his rhythm was way good.”
Championship points leader Cayden Lapcevich was able to capitalize on Andrew Ranger’s engine failure to put a bigger pad on the point lead. Lapcevich now heads into the final two races with a 30-point lead.
“Once I saw Ranger drop out, I was able to be more patient – calm myself a little bit, and run a smart race. It was a good points race for us overall. We go on to two ovals, and I think our oval program’s really good. We’ll see where it goes.”
Veteran road racer Robin Buck finished fourth after being second at CTMP in May, followed by Jason Hathaway in fifth.
Gary Klutt took home sixth with his dad Peter in seventh. Rounding out the top-10 were D.J. Kennington, Kerry Micks and Brett Taylor. Taylor’s 10th-place effort was his best career finish.
Several drivers encountered parts failures during the day including Alex Tagliani. Tagliani led the first 12 laps of the race, but a broken power steering pump forced lengthy repairs on the No. 18 EpiPen Chevrolet that dropped him six laps down. Tagliani finished 17th.
Anthony Simone appeared to be on for a strong day after running top-five for much of the race until a parts failure dropped him to 19th in the running order, while J.F. Dumoulin finished 20th, and Andrew Ranger lost an engine on Lap 28. Ranger’s engine failure makes his points deficit grow to 30 points from 12.
