Sam’s Blog - Toronto Indy 2023 Race Recap
Running your own team can be pretty crazy. But doing it with the support of your family and friends makes it all worth while. It was two weeks before the 2023 Toronto Indy and we didn’t even have a car.
We were lucky enough to have an oval car loaned to us for the Bud-Light 300 at Chaudiere. And When I spoke to J.C. Paillé at that race, he told me plainly that he only wanted to loan us a road course car that he knew was “top equipment.” The car he had available needed a lot of work, and so he was true to his word saying he didn’t want to leave us with something he didn’t yet have confidence in.
Trying to find a good car in the middle of a racing season is tough . But we worked the phones looking for the right one. We had heard that DJ Kennington was selling one of his road course cars, and so Mike McColl and FMR crew chief Mike Knott went out to take a look at it.
It had been Andrew Ranger’s car when he had raced for DJ, and it had won a bunch of races. So we pulled the trigger and purchased the car, quickly getting it to McColl’s shop to ready it for the Toronto Indy. The race was approaching fast. I drove down to London one afternoon to sit in the car. The seat that it came with fit surprisingly well. Although I was a little cramped - I’m used to that - it wasn’t too bad. Toronto is always a shorter race anyways, so I wasn’t too concerned.
The car needed to be converted to a Camaro body, and Knott wanted to do some other changes and minor updates ahead of the race too. It was a lot of work, but he made it happen. We enlisted the help of a long-time family friend, George Smagala, who was a truck driver for Labatt’s for many years. After retiring from driving, George then went to work on the provincial board and committee that wrote the book on the training process for acquiring truck driving licences in Ontario. George himself has a record of five million kilometres without an incident or infraction as a truck driver.
George jumped into action, taking the truck and trailer all around southern Ontario to get ready for the race in Toronto. The car needed to go to Grand Bend for a quick shakedown, then to get wrapped. While the car got wrapped the trailer was taken back to McColl’s to get packed for the event. Wild’s Printing was able to wrap the car for us the night before load-in at Toronto Indy. Jae Wilds and his team worked through the night, apparently until two in the morning. Later on, George came back to get the car and took it down to Exhibition Place to load into the Pinty’s garage area.
After all the stress of organizing all these moving parts, finally the time had come to just relax and drive the car. And the car ran very well considering the short timetable we had available. Out of the gate we had some good speed, putting in a time that put us seventh fastest at the end of the practice session. I still felt the car could be better, so we made a change on the rear and put on a new set of tires. That change made the car more loose unfortunately, and that new set of tires didn’t feel great either. We went backwards in qualifying and got set to start the race from eleventh later that day.
Driving on the streets of my home city is a dream come true. I even rode my bike down to the track on Thursday to help with load-in. I drive down Lakeshore all the time, so to do it without any speed limit - and in our new FMR race car - was pretty cool. The fans came out in a big way on Friday, and they were fantastic to see.
In the race we made up a couple spots early, moving up to ninth. When I saw the 96 of Marc-Antoine Camirand coming - he had started from the back - I knew he was on a hard charge and I let him go easily into three, hoping to follow a bit and learn something. With about 10 laps to go I was running where I qualified in eleventh, trying to stay in touch with a train of cars in front of me. I was saving my equipment, going easy on the brakes. I was hoping for late race caution, and hoping I could save some equipment to grab a couple spots if there was a yellow flag or even NASCAR Overtime.
I caught a lapped car in the worst spot, between turns three and six where there isn’t anywhere easy to pass. The car went very wide entering turn six, about five or six feet off the racing line I would use, and I assumed immediately that they were letting me by. I went for the gap and suddenly the lapped car turned in on me. As we made contact our cars got connected on each-other’s bumpers for a second, like go-karts. I drove another lap but the left front was smoking pretty bad, especially down Lakeshore. After all the work we did to get this car ready, I wasn’t prepared to have a massive blow-out and crunch into a concrete wall with our brand new ride. So I decided to bring the car down pit-lane. The crew quickly changed the left front and tore some broken fibreglass off. Unfortunately we lost a lot of time and fell well back in the field.
I was really disappointed. For all the work everyone had put in, I was hoping to bring home a decent result for our first outing in our new road course car. But it just wasn’t in the cards. The silver lining was that our car was really well prepared given the timeline, and the team executed the race day perfectly. It’s really awesome to be building this program up with the people we have. It’s a combination of family, friends, and people we really enjoy working with like Mike Knott, his nephew Gavin, as well as Al Logue and Greg Dunbar who crewed for us at Toronto.
Now it’s onto the next one - the Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres. I’m excited and hopeful that we can build on my best-ever finish there from last season of sixth place. With one road race under our belts - in which we really didn’t get to tune on the car beforehand - I think the FMR team will come out swinging at GP3R. We stay hungry.
The number 87 AER / GM Paillé Chevy Camaro looking good on the Streets of Toronto.
Mike Knott and Al Logue look under the hood of our Chevy Camaro.
Talking with my brother Patrick after the race - who spotted from Turn 3 at Lakeshore and Ontario.
Standing next to our very own FMR number 87 race-car and feeling proud.