CAN: Team Octane Toronto race notes

Second place for Sallenbach at the Toronto Indy

CCTCC rookie driver Michel Sallenbach once again impressed at the wheel of his GE Nighthawk MINI Cooper S, setting a pace putting him in the leading group during the entire weekend at the Toronto Indy.

Discovering the circuit on the Friday morning, Sallenbach qualified his #46 GE Nighthawk in third place, an impressive 3/1000th of a second ahead of his teammate, 2009 Touring class champion Alain Lauzière, driving the #47 MINI Original Parts MINI Cooper S. Lauzière was called-in at the very last minute, to replace Sylvain Laporte who injured his back during the last CCTCC weekend at Icar.

Sallenbach never set a foot wrong during the first event of the weekend on Saturday, to finish in second position behind eventual winner Tom Kwok, after a heated battle with Karl Thomson "That was a clean fun race" commented Sallenbach.

While running in fourth position, Lauzière nosed his MINI Cooper in the tire wall at the exit of corner #8. His Octane MINI was collected heavily in the quarter panel by an incoming car while still rebounding from the wall. "We've had better days." expressed Lauzière after exiting the damaged car.

The hard working Octane Crew worked until 2:30 a.m. to fix the mangled car and was back at 7:00 am to get ready for the Sunday race. They would like to extend their gratitude to the YTR racing team for their assistance in fixing the bodywork.

Sallenbach was running a strong second in the Sunday feature race, when he had to make an early pit entrance to fix a damaged wheel; he would return to finish in tenth position. Lauzière's race ended on lap 4 with a damaged radiator.

-source: team octane