With the No. 12 MagiSeal / Scarboro Subaru / K1 Speed car truly out of commission, the Vallis Motor Sport team came up with a plan. On Friday night, team principal Bill Vallis drove back to the shop in Welland to pick up the backup car. By Saturday morning, Demaras would have a clean slate to work with.
Climbing into the No. 19, Daniel expected good things, as the car had recently been ‘rebuilt’ after some unfortunate on-track incidents.
Having missed the entire Friday practice day, Saturday morning warm-up was Daniel’s first time in the backup car. Similar to his own car, the No. 19 is a Vallis-built BRD chassis, but everything in it is just a little bit different. A heavier clutch, but a very smooth shifting. However, in morning practice, the car was six seconds off the pace, and clearly there was a lot of work to do!
While Bill Vallis and Bill Davis swapped out the carburetor, and adjusted the timing, Chris Demaras got to work applying sponsor decals to the plain white canvas. K1 Speed, Scarboro Subaru, and CARSTAR were well displayed.
Qualifying was a much better session, with Daniel laying down a 1:47.612, the third quickest F1200 time, and just a bit off Paul Subject’s overall pole position lap of 1:23.106 in the Formula Mazda.
The FTDA driver’s meeting was held at lunch, and Bob Patterson was big winner, taking home a framed print of Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, courtesy of series sponsor, Illustrated Tracks.
A ‘throwback livery‘ was chosen, inspired by the 2009 F1 Champion Brawn GP. With only two rolls of hockey tape and some creativity, the design was executed over the lunch hour.
Just like those NASCAR teams at Darlington, or Ferrari at Monza this year, a special one-off livery for th important event brought an extra feeling of excitement to the weekend.
With fun and games over, Daniel headed over to the mock grid for the first race of the weekend.
At the start of the season, Daniel’s goal was to finish on the podium at least once, and shoot for the Rookie of the Year honors. And while catching Phil ‘the champ’ Wang was mathematically impossible, good weekend results could net Demaras 3rd overall in the season championship!
Daniel did not disappoint, bringing home the car a hard fought P3 in the opening race of the CASC Celebration of Motorsports. Just two more races on Sunday to wrap up the racing season.
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