Tom Blomqvist and his Meyer Shank Racing team were back in victory lane on the weekend as they secured the win at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in the sixth round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
After topping the charts in two of the three practice sessions, Tom was once again selected for qualifying duties and scored his, and the team's, second consecutive pole position at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Tom, the 2022 IMSA Champion, started the race from pole position and displayed a dominant performance behind the wheel as he led every lap throughout his 53-minute stint before handing the No. 60 MSR Acura ARX-06 over to teammate Colin Braun.
Braun then took over and led most of the laps before the first caution waved with one-hour, 22-minutes remaining. Braun pitted, but emerged in third when two cars behind him short-pitted.
Those two rivals then got a break when another caution waved shortly with 53 minutes left, allowing them to pit to take on enough fuel to finish. Running third, Braun found the pits closed before he could join his rivals on pit road. Rather than play it safe (while losing track position) by pitting on the following lap, MSR elected to roll the dice and go for the victory.
On the restart, the team built a margin to the pursuing field, with Braun building up a 7.7-second advantage down the stretch, and any doubts were erased when a major incident with just a few minutes remaining caused the race to end under caution. Braun led the final 30 circuits, with MSR leading 80 of the 120 laps to claim victory and their second-consecutive podium finish.
Tom and the team's next IMSA outing will be the IMSA Sports Car Weekend at Road America on August 3-6.
“We put it all out there today. We looked like we were on the back foot there, but we rolled the dice and the racing gods smiled on us. Great work from the team and super thanks to Colin, I mean, he's so good around here. He taught me a lot, actually and that was a big help for qualifying, so big thanks to him. This feels really good!”
- Tom Blomqvist