1st and 2nd at COMPLEX ICAR - 3rd in Championship
MIRABEL, QUEBEC – Nathan Blok continued his charge for the Production Class Championship in the Super Production Challenge (SPC) at ICAR COMPLEX, Mirabel this past weekend, however it was a case of winning the battle, but losing the war.
Blok
headed into the final 2 rounds of the Super Production Challenge 67
points adrift of championship leader Owen Clarke, and Nelson Chan who
was only 6 points behind. He
needed
to be flawless all weekend, and hope for bad luck to fall the way of
the others.
In
Friday testing, that's exactly what happened. Nelson Chan crashed and
totalled his teammates car attempting to avoid hitting another car
slowing abruptly. Deemed unable to race for medical complications
from the crash, he would be forced to sit out for the final races.
Although Nelson couldn't compete, the unique point structure in SPC
meant that because it was his teammates car involved in the crash,
Chan's car and Team Octane
was still eligible to win the title at the hands of Carlos
Tesler-Mabe.
After
some performance was found by the Apex V2R
team from the GP3R rounds on-wards, Ryspec’s
Owen Clarke and Blok
were
almost identical in lap times during Friday’s
testing.
Saturday
morning came and so did the rain, handing the advantage back to the
front wheel drive cars at Team
Octane.
As qualifying approached the sun came out and the track dried
rapidly. Unfortunately it was Blok’s
turn to have some bad luck as an
ECU failure prevented his
automatic transmission from blipping the throttle on downshifts. But
despite
that Blok
managed to qualify in 3rd.
Race
1 would start after the lights used for the standing start procedure
remained on, giving the drivers no warning when the race would begin.
Blok
would drop to 6th by the end of the first lap. Blok
managed
to overtake his
way up to 2nd by lap 4 when a full course yellow came out, with some
Super
Production
class cars separating himself
from Owen. Blok
timed the restart perfectly and was right on Owen's tail immediately,
eventually completing the overtake for 1st place
several
laps later. After an
intense display of defensive driving, Clarke
eventually ran out of fuel, and with Blok’s
teammate Suellio Almeida behind secured his
first SPC win. Suellio would unfortunately
lose the podium due to an overtake under yellow flags.
There
would be no time to celebrate as the finale would take place only a
few hours later. However the results from the first race gave Nelson
Chan
and Team
Octane
the points they needed to secure the production class title.
Meanwhile Clarke’s
DNF meant that if Blok
won the race and Clarke
finished 3rd or lower, Blok
would finish 2nd in the championship
points.
The
randomized dice role for qualifying pole would see the top 7 cars on
the grid be inverted. Blok
would
be starting 5th, and
Clarke
7th. After only a few laps Clarke
would be leading with Blok
being right behind. Despite a race long battle, that would be the
final result.
After
the race Blok said, “I
gave it my all, took my 2 best finishes of the season, gave Apex V2R
their first ever win in real life competition, and got to share the
podium in the final race with Suellio,
who
didn't get his 3rd place taken away this time. We threw everything at
the finale, but it was unfortunately
not enough. Thanks to everyone who has supported me this season. It
wouldn't have been possible without you!! “
