IMSA GTD Pro: Top eight finish

Lamborghini Factory Driver Sandy Mitchell bags top eight IMSA GTD Pro finish in Canada with PFAFF Motorsports.

Sandy delivered another top eight GTD Pro finish in the latest round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Toronto. Partnered by fellow Lamborghini works driver, Italian Andrea Caldarelli in the No9 Motomaster Temerario GT3 prepared by Canadian team Pfaff Motorsports, Sandy, the 26-year-old from Forfar delivered a strong weekend’s performance.

“We’re continuing to develop and improve the all-new Temerario,” he explained, “and every track we visit we’re starting from a brand new base line in terms of maximising the car’s performance for that specific circuit. “From arriving at the track, every member of the team is working their socks off to deliver more performance from the car and again it’s something we achieved this weekend.”

Starting from eighth on the GTD Pro grid amongst the 33 cars for the 160-minute race, Sandy, the former British GT champ, was immediately on the pace and involved in a number of close battles on the demanding 10-turn, 2.459-mile road course east of Toronto. “CTMP is notoriously difficult to overtake in race conditions, and so it proved again this weekend,” the Scot, personally backed by Tunnocks and Dama Fortuna Premium Tequila, continued. “I made a solid start and essentially for the whole of my stint I was in a queue of five or six GT3 cars running nose-to-tail with each other. All the GTD Pro cars and drivers are so equally matched that it’s often hugely difficult to make an overtaking manoeuvre, and that was the case on Sunday.”

But Sandy demonstrated the Temerario has pace, his fastest personal lap of 1min 16.973secs being the second quickest GTD Pro car at the that stage in the race. When he pitted to hand the car to Caldarelli, the Scot had moved up to fifth in class. “I was pleased with my stint,” he said. “The team did a great job at the pitstop and got Andrea out quickly. While he again showed great pace, he too found himself running tightly in a bunch of GTD Pro cars unable to overtake. Eighth place is not the result we wanted in front of our home fans, but once again we showed the Temerario has the race pace and reliability to deliver top results.”

The post-race figures support that. The #9 Pfaff Motorsports car was just 1.407s off sixth place and Caldarelli’s fastest time of 1:16.718s was the sixth-quickest lap of the GTD Pro cars, and within 0.076s of the top three class runners. “Once again we’ve proved the pace is there,” Sandy stated. “Everyone in the team is striving to maximise the car’s performance at every race weekend and we can see important gains each time we’re out on track. The competition in GTD Pro is fierce and already this season we’ve bagged a podium, so we’re right up for the challenge.”

Sandy returns to action on the opening weekend of August when IMSA heads to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, for the iconic Road America six-hour race.