#mosports

[frenchcurious]

Charlie Kemp (Rinzler Motoracing - Porsche 917/10 TC) Can-Am - Mosport Park 1973. - source Carros e Pilotos.

[christiangeistdorfer]

ah shit. here we are again.

[viper-motorsports]

Pursued by their sister GTD Pro podium winner, The Heart of Racing team relished the run of their N°27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 in the 2022 IMSA Chevrolet Grand Prix at Mosport ON CA to secure the champ GTD trophy.

[jimclarkposting]

mosport in the rain my beloved <3

[duck7]

IMSA SportsCar Championship 2023 ʳᵒᵘⁿᵈ ⁶ Mosport 🇨🇦

Ross Gunn into the tires after clash with Jules Gounon.

Philipp Eng’s close call with safety vehicles.

Renger Van der Zande crashes hard at Turn 8.

[thundermotorsports]

Peter Revson (Yardley McLaren-Ford M19C) and Emerson Fittipaldi (JPS Lotus-Ford 72D) battle at Mosport Park. Canadian Grand Prix, 1972. 📷 Plus google - Pinterest #formulawednesday #wednesday #thundermotorsports . . . DM for credits or support. Welcome! . . . #formula1 #formula #f1 #grandprix #mosport #ford #motorsport #motorsports #motor #motorclassic #vintage #vintageracing #racing #racingblog #racingcar #racinghistory #classiccars #classic #classiccar #car #welcome #motorhead #gearhead #petrolicious #petrolhead #likeforlikes #photooftheday (em Mosport Park, Bowmanville) https://www.instagram.com/p/Coa1CJypF9m/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[coimbrabertone]

So Can NASCAR Drivers Turn Right or Not?

So in the past couple of weeks, I've watched a couple of races and a couple of things crossed my timeline that had to do with the following question: just how good are NASCAR drivers at turning right?

I don't mean this in like the Formula One fan newbie kinda way, I mean this as like a legitimate discussion as to the quality of the NASCAR field and the fact that road course ringers have seemingly returned to the series.

So, first things first, Shane van Gisbergen. Love him, New Zealander race car driver that went over to Australia, won three Supercars championships and three Bathurst 1000s. SVG then came over to America last year, won the NASCAR Chicago Street Race to be the first guy to win in his first attempt since 1963, and impressed so much that Trackhouse partnered with Kaulig Racing in the Xfinity Series to give Shane a full-time campaign in American stock car racing.

Well, last week he won the Pacific Office Automation 147 at Portland International Raceway, and this week he won the Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250 at Sonoma. Which brings two things to mind:

One: Gee Xfinity races have some crappy ass names, don't they?

Two: Wow, he went back-to-back on road courses...that is really impressive, but also kinda sad.

Like two weeks in a row now the Xfinity field got beat by a thirty-five-year-old rookie on road courses. This is supposed to be the most road course heavy era of NASCAR, in the past five years the top three NASCAR series have gone to the likes of Mosport, Road America, Mid-Ohio, the Daytona Sports Car Course, the Charlotte Roval, the aforementioned Chicago Street Race, Circuit of the Americas, and NASCAR's traditional road courses in the form of Sonoma and Watkins Glen.

NASCAR drivers turn right a lot, they're not the oval only meme that F1 fans like to present it as, so what is going on?

Well, I think the simplest answer is that Shane van Gisbergen is a damn good race car driver. Supercars have long been compared to NASCARs and that's even truer in the Next Gen era, plus he's gotten a lot of support and advice from Marcos Ambrose, someone who I'll talk about more shortly. Plus, there's also Scott McLaughlin.

SVG and Scotty Mac are quite possibly the two best drivers to ever come out of Supercars, and we've seen Scott be successful in Indycar for a number of years now. Just this last weekend he was competing for the win at Road America with his Penske teammates. So it's not that NASCAR drivers are bad at turning right, it's that they've been unlucky enough to come up against a once in a generation talent.

To support this, there were another two Supercars drivers in Sonoma this past weekend. Cam Waters in the #60 RFK Mustang and Will Brown in the #33 RCR Camaro, and quite frankly, both of them had weekends full of bad luck that didn't amount to much of anything. Will was third in one of the practice sessions, and that's as close as he got to pulling off an SVG-esque performance in the Cup race.

And even in the Xfinity race, Ty Gibbs and Austin Hill both presented very real threats to SVG during the race, before Gibbs got caught up in a wreck and spun around into his own teammate trying to get going again, and Austin Hill got pushed into the grass after trying to slam the door shut on SVG in turn two.

It wasn't a cake walk.

Hell, Boris Said, long considered to be the archetypal NASCAR road course ringer, has been around the series since the mid to late 90s...he's never won a Cup race. He has one truck win at Sonoma and one Xfinity (then Nationwide) win at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to his name.

So even way back when, NASCAR drivers could handle themselves on the road courses.

There are three road course ringers that have had a lot of success in the modern era, and I think all of them subvert the idea that it's as simple as being able to turn right.

The first is the great Juan Pablo Montoya, who famously got sick of F1 mid-2006, quit McLaren, and decided to become a NASCAR driver instead. Well, come 2007, and JPM is driving the #42 Dodge for Chip Ganassi Racing, and he won at Sonoma in his first attempt. He would only win one more NASCAR race, the 2010 Watkins Glen race. Despite this, I would argue his best season was 2009, when he finished eighth in the points after running as high as third in the season.

The high point was six top five finishes in eight races towards the end of the season, all of which were on ovals. One of which, Fontana, he was well acquainted with from his CART days!

The second is Marcos Ambrose, who in 2011 and 2012, had two consecutive duels with Brad Keselowski at Watkins Glen and came out on top both times. Those two races are badass, and I recommend you watch them, because it's just two big giant stock cars fighting tooth and nail without a care in the world for track limits. It's freaking glorious.

But after that 2012 Watkins Glen win? Well, Marcos then took two straight fifth placed finishes, at Michigan and Bristol, two ovals, and two very different ovals, no less. The third is AJ Allmendinger, who is still in NASCAR and still doing well. With wins on road courses in Cup and the old Champ Car series, and wins on both road courses and ovals in Xfinity. His story continues, most recently as SVG's Kaulig teammate.

So, the moral of the story? Being a good road course racer isn't enough to win NASCAR road races, you need to be a pretty damn good race car driver, and you need to learn stock cars. That means you'll have good showings on the ovals as well as the road courses.

To that end, in addition to SVG's back-to-back Xfinity wins, he also finished third at Atlanta earlier in the season and managed to finish on the lead lap in a Cup race at Talladega this year as well. In fact, I remember in that Talladega race SVG did well in the draft and worked his way to the front, only to fall back when the uppermost line collapsed behind him, and he was left all alone a lane above the drafting pack.

Something that could happen to anyone in a restrictor plate race in NASCAR.

So...NASCAR drivers are good at turning right, the top "road course ringers" in the form of JPM, Marcos Ambrose, and Shane van Gisbergen just happen to, you know, be pretty damn good drivers, and Xfinity races have some crappy ass names.

They let the crappiest name of them all die though.

So please, let's pour one out for the Beef. It's What's for Dinner. 300, the NASCAR Xfinity season opener at Daytona International Speedway.

RIP, 2021-2023. Your name was so bad that it was actually great.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

1970 Pontiac Firebird

Titus/Godsall Racing built three '70 Pontiac Firebirds with Radial T/A tires for the 1970 SCCA Trans-Am road racing series. Their first race—a four-hour endurance race at Mosport Park—put them on the podium with a third-place finish,

T/G Racing brought the Tirebirds to Watkins Glen International. They took home class wins in both the Saturday and Sunday races, climbing the podium and proving that the Radial T/A street tire could do what no other tire could do--Win a race, then drive home after.

[retromania4ever]

1976 Canadian GP🍁at Mosport Park 🇨🇦🏁

Ronnie Peterson 🇸🇪 - March/Ford!

James Hunt 🇬🇧 - McLaren/Ford!

Patrick Depailler 🇨🇵 - Tyrrell/Ford!

Mario Andretti 🇮🇹🇺🇲 - Lotus/Ford!

#classic #formula1

[frenchcurious]

Jackie Stewart (elf - Tyrrell 005 Ford-Cosworth) vainqueur du Grand prix du Canada - Mosport 1972. © Motorsport. - source Carros e Pilotos.

[1boblog]

Donohue, Penske Sunoco Lola, Mosport 1966

[viper-motorsports]

Cadillac Racing earned a third place podium with the N°3 Cadillac ATS-V.R GT3 in the 2017 Pirelli World Challenge Sprint-X race at Ontario’s Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

[jimclarkposting]

"what the hell is he explaining with that horse feed bag on his face," thinks a disgruntled johnny servoz-gavin

[duck7]

IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge 2023 ʳᵒᵘⁿᵈ ³ Mosport 🇨🇦

Race 1: Huge crash for Siegel for Mark Siegel.

Keith McGovern's big hit.

[stefduke88]

[rFactor2] HOT LAP Stock Car 2018X Mosport 1.15.1 SimRacing