BOWMANVILLE, Ontario, Canada (July 21, 2013) – The Extreme Speed Motorsports (ESM) team battled through heavy traffic to finish second and fourth (third and fifth overall) during Saturday’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP).
Guy Cosmo started from the fourth position in the No. 01 Tequila Patrón Honda Performance Development (HPD) ARX-03b. In less than one hour, Cosmo took the P2 class lead and was clicking off some of the quickest times in the class. Although fast, Cosmo struggled with race traffic and relinquished the class lead to the competition 17 minutes later.
With less than an hour to go in the two-hour, 45-minute race, Cosmo turned the race car over to co-driver Scott Sharp in the second position. Sharp fought the same traffic issues as Cosmo all the while posting some of the quickest P2 race laps. Frustrated that the competition was holding him up, Sharp sought to advance his position but settled for a second-place finish in the class.
Ed Brown, co-driving the No. 02 Tequila Patrón Honda Performance Development (HPD) ARX-03b, had one of his strongest races of the season. Starting from the third position in class, Brown maintained his position and found a comfortable lap pace in the racing machine. Brown drove his hour-long stint before pitting for fuel. As he was exiting the pits, Brown was too fast and was charged with a stop-and-go penalty which resulting in the No. 02 team losing a lap.
Brown completed his stint and co-driver Johannes van Overbeek then went to work on the field. At the start of his stint, van Overbeek was two laps down on the P2 field. Shortly after climbing into the race car, he was posting the quickest lap times of the P2 class and earned one of the laps back. He was chasing down that other down lap, but ran out of time as the checkered flag fell.
Next up for the Extreme Speed Motorsports team is the Orion Energy Systems 245 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, on Aug. 9-11.
Further information:
Susan Pollack
Extreme Speed Motorsports
Phone: +1 313 434 6912
Email: susan@sjp- media.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ESMracing
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ESMracing
YouTube: www.youtube.com/esmracing
SCOTT SHARP
“I’ve got to thank the ESM Patrón guys, especially the crew. They worked their butts off this week with running earlier in the week, replacing the motor early in practice, then wholesale set-up changes and really chasing the handling of the car.“I didn’t feel like I did a very good job in qualifying yesterday. Guy and I were not confident in the car at all. We all had a big think about it last night and made some subtle changes and really got our hands around the car better. We liked it in warm-up and it was really good in the race.
“Unfortunately, we got the short end of the stick in traffic today. I don’t blame him, he was leading the race, but Scott Tucker was really hard to get by. I think we ended up having one of the quickest cars out there and several laps down a P1 car, Tony Burgess, just would consistently hold me up somewhere between one to two seconds every lap. I would watch Marino [Franchitti, Level 5] sprint away. It was ridiculous and really a shame that the ALMS couldn’t have done something about that and preserve a great finish to the P2 today.
“We had a really good car and the competition was lean on fuel, so a few more minutes in the race might have helped. It would have been nice to have a couple more laps.
ED BROWN
“That was by far my best race in the P2 car. It is disappointing to get a speeding violation towards the end of my stint. I really had a good start and kept everything behind me. There was a little bit of contact out there. I got caught up once in Turn 3 and then in Turn 5 and that caused a little damage to the left rear. Racers don’t give you any room, so you’ve just got to make the room.”“We had a really good car, probably the fastest car. We just need to take that forward, build on it and keep making progress. We’ll take what we’ve learned here to Road America and go get a win.”
GUY COSMO
“The ESM Patrón crew did a killer job getting the car handling better. We were struggling these past few days since we started here. The car was great during the race. I was just trying to keep the pace with everybody and it was working out well for us.“I had an incredible scrap with Mike Conway. The traffic was insane today, so it was the luck of the draw in how you caught it. Sometimes you had great luck; sometimes you just got stuffed behind a pile of other cars and lost a lot of ground.
“Scott did a great job as well; he set some really fast lap times. We were really close at the end there. The inter-class traffic has been a little unruly and unfortunately we had a lot of factors with people outside of our class that kept us from going for the win in that last lap. We’ll take second, take the points and focus on Road America.
“If we had one more lap that would have made for a different result. Scott would have gotten the lead. We were right on the competition coming on the start/finish line. Unfortunately, that Dyson P1 car, they would not let anyone of us by and that started from the very beginning of the race with Conway. They were just blocking Conway, me, and then Scott. They aren’t in contention in their own class and they are ruining our race, it was unbelievable.”