2012 season ReVIew


by J. wally nesbitt During their 16, half-hour contests spread out over eight race weekends, the 2012 canadian Touring car championship Presented by continental Tire played out in front of nearly 700,000 avid spectators and shared the race card with some of the most prestigious motorsport disciplines. supporting the formula 1 and nascaR nationwide events on Montreal’s


Isle notre Dame, the american le Mans and scca Trans am series at cana- dian Tire Motorsport Park (formerly Mosport), the nascaR canadian Tire series at IcaR Mirabel and the Indy lights at the Grand Prix of Trois Riv- ieres, the canadian Touring cars were recognized with top billing on two further weekends on the Mont Tremblant and calabogie Motorsports Park circuits. The final tally revealed that a total of 57 drivers, drawn from as far away as newfoundland and british columbia, scored points during the 2012 campaign. but ultimately, it was a pair of ontario based drivers and one Quebecois who emerged at the top of their respective divisions, re- warded with championships in the super, Touring and the newly created, b-spec, classes.


SuPER In 2007, the debut season for the canadian Touring car championship,


sasha anis was declared champion in the now defunct Grand Touring class. five seasons later, the brampton, on resident reclaimed his champion’s status, anis rolling up a remarkable record of six race victories and 15 podium finishes on his way to the 2012 super class title. “our mentality was to go out and win races, and if everything came to-


gether as we’d hoped, the title would come,” explained anis. “by the mid- point of the season we were leading the championship and we toned the aggression level down a notch, making sure that we finished every race. closer to the end of the year, we were running even more conservatively to preserve our points lead.” not that this conservative approach was evident, as anis scored three


overall victories in the final four starts. The only hiccup in his 2012 effort came at the second cTcc appearance


on the high speed canadian Tire Motorsport Park track when, caught out on some previously deposited oil, the #14 castrol edge hyundai Genesis spun


20 CTCC


and suffered a hard impact with the tire wall at the bottom of the notori- ous Turn 2. Dragging his damaged mount back to the pits, the G-1 Racing crew exacted some hasty repairs, anis returning to the contest and taking the checkered flag, albeit three laps down to the winner, the only time this season that he did not complete every race lap. “If you Dnf in one race, you spend the rest of the year trying to make up


the difference. That was why it was so important that we get back out there to collect what we could,” said anis. Rebounding from this incident, anis returned to the track the next day in


his rebuilt Genesis coupe and in a storybook finish, went from worst-to- first to claim the win. “That was a turning point for the whole team,” said anis. “That was a


huge test for us and we proved to ourselves that we could do it. we knew, as long as we kept working, we could keep winning.” Race victories, not the overall championship, was also the goal of a pair


of other front-running entrants this year, with audette Racing, fronted by brothers Mathieu and Remy audette, and sDP autosport and their driver Marc- antoine camirand, campaigning only partial schedules due to finan- cial constraints. The audette squad was fast right out of the box as the #12 Dimension


Doors acura RsX-s claimed pole positions in the first two rounds of the schedule, with Mathieu guiding his shared ride to back-to-back wins in the season opener. brother Remy scored his debut cTcc victory in the team’s second appearance at the cTMP facility. Purchasing the proven bMw 330i from GT Racing’s etienne borgeat dur-


ing the off season, Marc-antoine fine-tuned the car to suit his style and then used his new ride to sweep to three pole positions and seven overall, and super class, victories, including a trio of double-header weekend sweeps at Montreal, Mont Tremblant and Trois-Rivieres. however, due to their limited participation, neither team would factor prominently in the championship chase, the super class, runner-up position earned by lom- bardi honda Racing’s team manager, benjamin Distaulo. while unable to crack into the win column in 2012, Distaulo quietly piloted his #6 civic si to seven podium finishes, including three, second place results. “It was my responsibility to get our rookies up to speed. but I knew if I


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