NCATS: Ranger and Tag post-Mosport Speedway release

Bowmanville, August 10th, 2008: Vacationers are not the only ones affected by this summer's bad weather. For the third time this season, after St-Eustache at the beginning of May and Montreal last weekend, the rain was an unwelcomed guest on the Mosport oval track on Saturday, August 9th, forcing the organizers to postpone the Full Throttle Energy Drink 200 to Sunday afternoon.

 

On a wet track, the only practice session run on the oval on Saturday did not allow the drivers to come to grips with the tricky and very technical track. Furthermore, as if bad news never travels alone, serious mechanical problems prevented Andrew Ranger from making the most of the available track time. When the Series officials decided to postpone the event to the following day, Jacombs Racing team mates, Andrew Ranger and his car # 27 Tide / Wal-Mart and Alex Tagliani and his car #7 Ubisoft / Wal-Mart were in 11th and 19th place respectively.

 

Again due to bad weather, qualifying was cancelled and the starting grid was based on the driver's championship standings. By doing so, Ranger started amongst the leaders in 4th place, which helped very little as he had to learn the track under green flag conditions since he hardly ran any laps during practice and none in qualifying. Becoming increasingly comfortable as the lap count climbed, Ranger managed to move up to as high as second place before having to back off and finish the race in 7th position. "Given all the troubles that we have had this weekend, and plus the rain, 7th place is really good. The team did its best but the rain prevented us from turning laps. I know we will do much better in Trois-Rivières."

 

If Andrew Ranger managed to score a top-10 on the Mosport oval, it was unfortunately not the case for his team mate Alex Tagliani. Penalised by the lack of running thanks to the rain, Tagliani did not have the chance to set-up his car properly for the event. Starting from a respectable 12th place, he could not do better than 18th at the chequered flag. "We really need to be more competitive on ovals. We are down on power on the straights and in the turns, the car tends to drift wide. Fortunately, we should be really competitive at Trois-Rivières. The team will work hard this week!"

 

All eyes are now riveted on Trois-Rivières, the 9th round of the championship and the NASCAR Canadian Tires Series' last race on Quebec soil and the season's last road course of the season. Do not miss the Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières on August 17th.

 

Source: Professional Sports Management