It was a challenging first visit to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for Conquest Racing with Ferrari, finishing the sprint race in eleventh place. After experiencing a technical issue in the qualifying session which resulted in the team being unable to set a lap time, Manny Franco and Albert Costa Balboa started the race at the back of the grid in the #34 Corsa Horizon Ferrari 296 GT3.

Manny Franco completed the opening stint and recovered a couple of positions across his time earlier in the car before we had to anticipate an extra pit stop to change drivers as Manny was feeling unwell.

Albert Costa Balboa took over with one hour and fifteen minutes remaining in the race, and began competing within the Top 10. He made up further ground before coming in to perform a final pit stop with thirty minutes to go, returning to the track in eleventh place. However, a full course caution emerged shortly thereafter, with the race only returning to green in the final ten minutes.

Despite the challenges faced, the team remains in a competitive position in the championship as they still occupy fourth place in the GTD class standings with a total of 1,508 points.

Quotes from the drivers:

Manny Franco: “It wasn’t the best weekend, but luckily the sprint stages aren’t worth as many points compared to endurance rounds. Going into the weekend, we weren’t expecting too much because we’ve never been to CTMP. It’s a difficult track, and very different from a lot of the other tracks because of the minimal braking overall. We had to adapt a lot, and it took a little longer to understand how to best approach it. I learned a lot this round, and I was happy with what I was able to do. We had some inconsistencies and it wasn’t an easy race, but we will take this experience and move on. I’m really looking forward to Road America. We have a lot of data to work with, it’s a track I’m very familiar with and I feel confident.”

Albert Costa Balboa: “It was a difficult weekend overall. You have to consider the fact that we had not tested there previously and neither Manny nor I knew the track. We will take the time to debrief and we’ll focus now on Road America where the team won last year with the SRO Series.”

The team will return to action at the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America from August 2nd to 4th.