Blok takes revenge to secure first win of the season
Rounds 3 and 4 of the Super Production Challenge left Nathan Blok with a wide range of results and emotions. The 30 year old from Beachburg, Ontario driving the #88 Futec Motorsports powered by Shellbourne Fuels entered the third round of the season at the Grand Prix de Trois Rivieres 4th in the standings, and only 50 points behind the championship leader, Guillaume Labee.
With the weather initially looking to favour the rear wheel drive Nissan 370z, the forecast rapidly turned when hurricane Debby made landfall early Friday morning, handing the advantage back to Blok's competition. In the Friday evening race, Blok’s windshield fogged up and condensed dramatically forcing him even having to pit to clean the windshield. As a result he rapidly fell from 4th place to last.
Starting in 15th and last for the second of three races, Blok picked off the competition one by one, and by lap 8 found himself in 2nd place behind Trois Rivieres native Marc Geroux just before a lengthy caution. The restart would see a one lap dash to the checkered flag. Blok got a perfect restart and overtook Heroux on the final lap to cross the line in first. However, Blok would receive a post race penalty for pulling out of single file line coming to the restart.
Disappointed but determined, Blok would line up in fourth position for the final race of the weekend, but on the 3rd lap, another competitor made contact with him on the run to turn 5, causing Blok to have a major accident into the concrete wall at 160km/h. Blok was uninjured, but the car had major repair work needed, and only a 2 week turnaround to the sundown GP. In only 9 days, the crew put in over 160 hours collectively to repair the car, only finished hours before needing to pack up to travel to the next race weekend at Mirabel, Quebec.
Blok would qualify 2nd with the top four
being separated by under one tenth of a second. At lights out, he
would pass Gabriel Lacombe for the lead on the third corner, and then
never looked
back. Thirty
minutes later, he
would take his
first
official win of the season. Starting the final race of the weekend in
5th, Blok
had moved his way up to the lead by lap 9 and was cruising home to
take his first clean sweep in over 10 years. However,
on lap 17 the
radiator cap broke, dramatically covering the track with water and
ending his race .
"In the last 3 weeks I've had a range of emotions from euphoria, rage, and relief. The crash, losing the teams first win, then the crew pulling off a genuine miracle to fix the car in 9 days to come back to win again was all something straight out of a Hollywood script. The repairs were not enough to have the car running at its optimal, but we pushed through and won anyways. The rad cap coming off has now realistically taken me out of the championship for good this time, and our focus is already on development for 2025. But there is still a chance to take a podium in the championship in Calabogie, and I'm not going down without a fight".
"A special thanks goes out to all the crew, Lad's Auto Recylers, Sunsign Graphics and Shellbourne Fuels for helping to repair the car."
Blok
still remains 4th in the standings. And the SPC season will be
concluded at Calabogie Motorsports Park on September 27th to 29th.
