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| NEWS - July 27, 2010 |
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LLB Post
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| Ken Staples (left) and Brad Musat hold their trophies after the NASCC GT Invitational race. Staples won second place overall, while Musat won second in class and sixth overall. |
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| Local racers speed to podium |
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tobias romaniuk
Post Staff
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Lac La Biche race drivers Brad Musat and Ken Staples both managed to finish in second place in last Saturday’s Northern Alberta Sports Car Club’s GT Invitational.
Musat’s finish was just two one-hundredths of a second behind the leader of his race class, finishing sixth overall and second in class, despite nearly running out of fuel near the end of the race.
Sitting at the start line for 15 minutes with the car idling as officials waited for the signal to start the race, Musat didn’t shut off his engine for fear of vapourizing his fuel lines, which would make restarting the car difficult. So he idled on the start.
With a few laps to go, Musat raced into a corner, charging hard to maintain position, only to have his engine quit. Coasting through the corner, Musat realized that his fuel line was on one side of the tank, while the fuel was pushed to the other side of the tank in the corner. Straightening out again, the gas-starved engine was fed, and the engine kicked back in.
It was in one of these corners that Musat lost the top spot, and despite his best efforts, he was unable to catch his opponent.
"This is a technical track," said Musat, adding that successfully negotiating the many corners was the key to staying at the head of the pack.
It was his earlier skill in the turns that helped him keep his position, he said.
"We were really fast through the corners," he said, adding he was able to catch up to cars that would out-power him on the straights.
Electrical issues during the qualifying race left Musat starting in sixteenth place for the main race, sitting at the back of his GT-2 class.
A good start combined with running a clean race helped Musat work his way through the pack, he said.
As Musat worked his way through traffic, passing cars on the first lap, the white #19 car of Ken Staples had a clear track ahead of him.
Staples won the qualifying race, giving him a first position start for the main race. He was able to hold onto the top spot for much of the race, using his decades of racing experience to out-drive racers in cars with much more power than his GT-1 class NASCAR-style car.
"I ran it as hard as I could the whole race," he said.
As he charged through traffic, fighting to hold his position, he met up with slower cars in other race classes fighting their own battles for position. One of those cars tried to claim the same patch of track Staples was using, forcing him to swerve.
That move caused Staples to spin-out, but he kept the car off the wall, and barely paused as he kept racing after getting a 360-degree look at the track.
Those slower cars proved useful to Staples, who used them to block other drivers.
"You work traffic," he said, adding that passing slower cars in the right spot on the track helped him hold off the more powerful, faster cars.
But one of those high-powered racers caught up to him and passed him near the end of the race, leaving Staples to settle for second place.
The pair of top finishes for Staples came in a car that was rebuilt and had the body replaced after a crash at last year’s Edmonton Indy.
"The first time we turned a wheel was on the track," he said.
Both Staples and Musat plan to race three more events before the end of the season, where they will be looking to maintain their trophy-winning momentum. |
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