Blackdog Speed Shop’s duo of Lawson Aschenbach and Tony Gaples climbed onto the podium in the Pirelli World Challenge’s GTS category following Saturday’s first of two races of the weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
Aschenbach won his third straight GTS Sprint race in the No. 1 Blackdog Speed Shop Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R – his fourth career World Challenge victory at the circuit. It also is the 24th win for Blackdog Speed Shop in GTS competition to rank first in class history. Aschenbach won by 7.730 seconds and set the fastest lap of the race to earn pole position for Sunday’s 10:05 a.m. ET start.
Meanwhile, Gaples finished third in GTSA and 10th overall in his No. 11 Blackdog Speed Shop Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R. He gained significant ground in the class championship race with the result.
Gaples had the most action-packed race of the two. He found himself locked in a fight with Mike Hedlund’s Audi for nearly 40 minutes with the pair rarely separated by more than a second. Gaples got by with 12 minutes to go to secure his podium spot and promptly went on to post his fastest race lap, which will put him fifth in GTSA for Sunday’s start.
Aschenbach felt no such pressure. Starting third, it took two corners for the defending GTS Champion to move into the lead with an aggressive move from the start. His efforts were enough to earn the race’s Best Start Award.
From that point, Aschenbach cruised while a group of five cars battled among themselves for the entire 50 minutes. Their fight allowed Aschenbach to open up a 10-second lead by the 12-minute mark en route to his 27th career victory in World Challenge.
GTS Race 2 is scheduled for 10:05 a.m. ET on Sunday. Live race coverage will be available at World-ChallengeTV.com, on the World Challenge mobile app and SiriusXM Channel 383.
LAWSON ASCHENBACH, NO. 1 BLACKDOG SPEED SHOP CHEVROLET CAMARO GT4.R: The race really came down to the first lap. I don’t want to say we gambled on the setup, but we made a significant change before the race. It was a great call by my engineer Neil (Schreiber). The thinking was that the track would be a little bit worse than yesterday, which proved to be the right choice. Those decisions are what we’ve come to expect from everyone at Blackdog Speed Shop. It’s what makes this Chevrolet Camaro fast every weekend. Week in and week out, these guys give me a great hot rod. It’s also great to win in a Chevrolet at Ron Fellows’ track. It means a lot to all of us to come here and do this in front of the Canadian fans. We’ll try to give them another good show tomorrow.”
TONY GAPLES, NO. 11 BLACKDOG SPEED SHOP CHEVROLET CAMARO GT4.R: “This has been a really fun day, and the Blackdog Speed Shop Camaro GT4.R was a blast to drive. To qualify in the rain earlier and then to have that kind of race makes me really enjoy this. It was a great fight with Mike (Hedlund). We both raced hard, fair and clean. At the end of the day, we didn’t quite have the pace of the front-running cars but other than that it’s been a great experience the last two days. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and seeing what it brings us.”
