BAR1 No. 20 Gas Monkey PC Battles Back at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park

Showing quick times all weekend, the No. 20 BAR1 Motorsports PC started Sunday’s Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix from pit lane. During the morning warm-up, the crew discovered that the No. 20 Gas Monkey / Southwest Funding / Top 1 Oil machine had a faulty fuel pressure regulator. Though the crew was able to make the fix in time to make the 11AM start, IMSA issued the crew a double whammy penalty. Matt McMurry was required to start the race from pit lane after the full field had taken the green flag. A pit lane start is immediately followed with a mandatory drive through for starting from pit lane. Effectively, Matt started the race nearly a full lap down. 

“It’s a pretty harsh penalty,” noted team owner, Brian Alder. “You’d think starting from the back of the field would serve the purpose. But, these were the cards we were dealt. It’s a shame really, because we had a good car. Matt and Johnny [Mowlem] did a great job and ran hard all day. Unfortunately, track temperatures started wreaking havoc with the tires. A lot of the teams were experiencing similar issues. For us, it put the set up off and we were chasing it the entire race. But, like I said, hats off to Johnny and Matt for keeping us in it.”

The team finished sixth on the day.

“We’ll keep our heads in it,” Alder continued. “Given the effort the team made in coming back from the wreck at Watkins Glen, everyone is committed to getting the results we deserve. We’ll get to Lime Rock and keep working on  our set ups. We know we’re fast… we’re just looking for that break to get to the front.”

Alder also participated in the Mazda Prototype Lites races this weekend. Driving the No. 22 Top 1 Oil car, Alder continued to move up in the highly competitive L1 division, enjoying an 8th place finish… his best of the season.

“We’ve got some homework to do,” said Alder. We found some issues at Watkins Glen that we were unable to fix between races. We’ll get it sorted out before Laguna and be ready to take a run at the podium.”

“I had a great time driving the track here in Canada,” Alder continued. “We saw some good clean racing, battling with lots of different drivers.  We had some oversteer we couldn’t get dialed out and that had the car on a knife edge in Race 1. This isn’t a track where you want to have a loose car in these high speed corners. It was a fun learning experience… but I was definitely hanging on to keep the car out of the wall. We were a lot better in Race 2 and bettered our qualifying time by over a .5 of a second.”