Meanwhile In Quebec

In the weeks to come, you will be treated to a set of racing tales to make the most ardent consumer of Schadenfreude blush.

During the summer of 2012, I competed in the Canadian Touring Car Championship and the Grand-Am Total Performance Challenge, racing a B-Spec Mazda2 on both sides of the continent against some of the most talented sedan-class drivers in North America. By turns, I experienced mechanical failure, ineptitude, bad luck, narrow avoidance of high-speed collisions, despair, defeat, fear, hope, joy, and finally mechanical failure again.

I won nothing and finished all three of my races either dead last by a margin best described as “considerable” or at the end of a tow chain. At one point in the process I actively considered quitting the sport entirely. At another point I was cheered by hundreds of people as I successfully made an almost impossibly bold move to catapult from worst to (nearly) first. I paid nine dollars for a Quarter Pounder in Mont-Tremblant, QC and nothing at all for a first-rate hotel room on the bay in Monterey, CA.

In short, it was the worst of times, it was the even more worst of times. But I learned quite a bit from the process and I’ll be sharing all of it with you. While I re-familiarize myself with my on-track data and sob heavy teardrops onto my well-worn laptop keyboard for a while, here’s something to keep you occupied and give you some insight into what you’ll read next: a practice lap of the Mont-Tremblant road course behind the wheel of the CTCC B-Spec Mazda2 Media Car. Note the speeds at which the Civics and BMWs close on me; it will become relevant later…