My weekend at Time Attack!

A couple of weekends ago was spent attending an event in Gimli, MB at Gimli Motorsport Park. The event was hosted by the Winnipeg Sports Car Club, who owns the Gimli Motorsport Park, and took place on July 27-28, 2019.

And it was one of the greatest weekends of my life.

I went with a good friend of mine, and co-contributor to At the Apex, Reece Digney. I drove from Saskatoon to Regina and met him before driving all the way to Gimli, MB with only a few short breaks in his Toyota 86. The 86 was packed full with his extra set of tires, floor jack, tools, racing helmet, our camping gear, clothes and both our camera equipment. All of the stuff made for an extremely full car and a somewhat uncomfortable seating position for the nearly 7 hour drive.

After finally arriving in Gimli we headed to the track and got signed in. Several others had already arrived and had got their pit area all set up and were just about to go out for some “hot laps” to check their set ups prior to the event the next day. We said hi to Brooke and Ian Stecyk, two other Time Attack participants who Reece had met at racing school the previous year and who were driving their heavily modified Scion FR-S. After getting our pit area and camp set up we headed into town to grab some food and explore the water front.

The next morning we woke up early so we could get the tires switched over to the sticky Hankook RS4 tires on Enkie RPF1 rims and get registered for the event. I wasn’t racing so I signed my waiver and put a wrist band on, identifying me as a spectator. While Reece attended the morning driver’s meeting I started scoping out spots around the track to get photos of the action.

There were 3 different racing events happening throughout the day – Time Attack, Open Wheel and Road Racing. I was able to position myself at 3 different locations throughout the day and took nearly 1000 photos of the action on track. This was my first time photographing racing and it took me a couple of heats before I got the hang of it.

Time Attack had enough entrants to be broken into 2 different groups – group 1 lapping at around 1:03-1:05 and group 2 lapping at around 1:08+. The first group was dominated by 3 different 2019 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LEs with the track pack. They looked and sounded incredible, from the whine of the supercharger to the epic growl from the exhaust. I had only ever seen pictures and videos online and I was completely blown away by the presence of them on track.

The second group contained Brooke’s Scion FR-S, Reece’s Toyota 86 and a number of others, including a Miata, Supra Mk IV, Integra and others. I was blown away at the close racing this group had. Even though you aren’t racing wheel to wheel in Time Attack there was still plenty of on track action between the racers. Reece and Brooke/Ian were very close on the time sheet and provided a lot to talk about between sessions on how to improve their times.

The road racing provided a huge amount of entertainment. The racing was completely dominated by a Caterham, which was a really neat car to see blasting around the track, although the mid-field action proved to be the most intense racing I had seen in a long time. There was a group of 3-4 different Honda CR-Xs which battled it out session after session for mid-field domination and was extremely exciting to watch.

By the end of the day there had been 4 heats for each group and we were all exhausted and hungry. We drove back into Gimli and enjoyed supper and took in the views of Lake Winnipeg for a few hours before heading back for the night.

The final day was spent doing much of the same as the previous one with one big difference – rain. It rained off and on for much of Sunday’s racing. Not enough to make the track too slick to race, and the racing line dried very quickly, and so the racing continued all day. By mid-afternoon the champions were crowned for the weekend and everyone started packing up. After playing an intense game of Tetris and fitting all of our stuff back into the Toyota 86 we started the long drive back home. 7 hours later we pulled into Regina at 11:30 pm where I unloaded my stuff and started reflecting on the epic weekend I had just experienced.

While I wasn’t able to race, nor did I get a chance to get any passenger laps in, I still had an amazing weekend. Not only did I get to spend it with one of my closest friends but I got to be part of a racing community and be fully immersed into a racing weekend. It was long days, an uncomfortable road trip, I got heat exhaustion and I would do it all over again.

See you again next year Gimli. I can’t wait.