Autodrome Montmagny hosted Round 3 of the DMCC championship on Saturday July 12th. The autodrome was recently renovated with a new road-course section and the widening of the front stretch. The drivers would not yet have to face the new circuit, the event using the more traditional layout of the oval and infield.
Round three was also the first event of the year were the Pro-Am and Pro drivers where on track the same day, the organization making huge efforts to keep the events down to one day this year. The first Pro-Am round took place during the "Warm-up" event while the first two "official" rounds were reserved for Pro drivers only.
Mechanical problems
Drifting is an extremely demanding discipline on racecars. For the first events of the season, we where lucky enough that the majority of drivers managed to escape major problems during the events, thus avoiding losing tandems for mechanical breakdowns.
Unfortunately, Montmagny seemed to be particularly difficult on several vehicles. Many drivers had major problems, both in Pro-Am and in Pro. Several drivers saw their days end earlier than they would have liked.
With all this said, except for one mechanical break before the third-place finals, no big downtimes would end up plaguing this event. The DMCC organization set themselves a goal at the beginning of the season; to accelerate the pace of the events and to finish inside the time limits set up by the schedules, and as of yet, they have succeeded. No more long down times, more drifting!
Pros-Ams
The Pro-Am top 8 gave us some very good battles.
We are starting to see huge progression in the level of drivers, approaching more and more the talent of the pros. This is the case for drivers like Youri Lévesque and Alexandre Blanchette. These two would end up fighting for the top step of the podium.
Quality Pro-am drivers are stepping up to the plate, with several newcomers who are making their first steps in a competition atmosphere and with older drivers getting comfortable with their new setups, case and point of Silvio Dos Santos, who keeps impressing and keeps delivering solid performances.
That said, this weekend belonged to Alexandre Blanchette. Overcoming a mistake in qualifying, he emerged victorious in a great battle requiring a one more time against Youri Lévesque to take the victory in the second Pro-Am event of the year.
Pros: The race for the championship tightens
Despite the mechanical problems mentioned earlier, both practices and top 16 tandems offered us a lot of action on the Pro side of things.
Since the beginning of the season, the domination of Jonathan Guitard was complete. Seeking to build on this momentum, Guitard sadly had a very difficult weekend, struggling to qualify and losing in his top 16 battle. His transmission having an unsuitable gearing adjustments for the Montmagny racetrack, the troubles Guitard faced opened wide the door to his closest pursuers and left our main culprit hoping that his successes this far weren’t plain old luck.
Francis Tassé missed his hat trick this weekend, but not by much, loosing only the top entry speed challenge at the hands of Kevin Morin. Qualifying in first place, he eliminated Jeff Laflamme top 4, then defeated Eric Paradis in the finals, who would finish in second place a second event in a row.
Maxim Lemoine overcame overheating problems and won the consolation final against Jeff Laflamme. A comical moment would see the two cars refuse to restart after their tandem, creating a race between the two teams pushing the cars to the pits. The Laflamme team would win a symbolic victory.
The standings narrow down coming to round 4 with Francis Tassé making a jump in second place in the championship and Éric Paradis still not far behind in third. Will Jonathan Guitard rebound from his dissapointing performance or will his championship lead continue to melt?
Round 4 of the 2014 DMCC championship will be held Saturday, July 26 at Riverside Speedway in Sainte-Croix.
