TEAM SURVIVES FIRE TO FINISH 7th AT MOSPORT
May 21, 2001
Bowmanville, Ont.--- Competing in their first event of the
2001 season, PRT managed to circumvent several problems including an ailing
motor, badly blistered tires, and even a small fire to place a solid 7th
in Sundays' Canada GT Challenge Cup race.
PRT was relatively pleased with their Saturday qualifying 
effort.
Team driver Aaron Pettipas lapped the newly repaved 2.56 mile road circuit
in a personal best qualifying time of 1:24.44; good enough for 8th starting
spot in the 30 strong field for Sundays' one hour race. Considering
their lack of preseason testing, and the limited practice time afforded
to the supporting series for the weekends' headlining Trans-Am Series,
PRT had ample reason to be encouraged by their qualifying effort and were
looking forward to Sundays' race.
Taking the start from the outside of the fourth row, Aaron had a clean start and comfortably held down the 8th position early on. Sadly PRT’s aspirations for a top 5 finish were quickly dashed by a freak fire onboard the Dairy Queen/Synergyn Racing Oil/prtracecars.ca Camaro. The fire was later determined to have been caused by excessive flame from the exhaust, which was sucked under the car and ignited fuel spraying from the over flow. While the fire was brief and the car received only slight cosmetic damage, race officials called Aaron on to pit road as a precautionary measure. The ensuing stop cost the team two full laps and necessarily shifted their focus to clawing their way back into the top 10. The remaining laps of the race saw Aaron make it all the way back up to 7th, during which time he enjoyed a spirited battle with veteran Trans-Am competitor and eventual 4th place finisher Jerry Simmons. Remarkably, it was during these laps that Aaron turned his fastest race lap, another personal best at 1:24.9.
Although they were clearly robbed of a top 5 finish, PRT was happy to see the checkered flag to end the 39 lap race after suffering a frustrating string of mechanical problems at Mosport during the latter part of the 2000 season. PRT will return to the CGTCC series for the 5th round at Shannoville, July 20-22.