World Speed Motorsports continued to lead the charge at the front of the Star Mazda Best Western Championship field as Grant Ryley qualified on pole and led every lap to capture round three at Mosport Park. “I’m dedicating this victory to the whole team,” an excited Ryley said in post race interviews, “They worked hard all weekend to keep us at the front of the field.”
Qualifying saw all four World Speed competitors place in the top six positions led by Ryley in the #14 Cupertino Electric/Del Monaco Specialty Foods Mazda, closely followed by Scott Bradley in the third position on the grid with the #19 Polycom/Radvision/Peak Travel car. Chantz Wade carried his #15 Shames Construction Mazda to the fifth spot and Alex Figge joined him on the third row in the #18 ZeroWait/Bell car. “It was nice having everyone up at the front of the field after qualifying and having Grant on pole to control the start of the race,” Team Manager Telo Stewart commented afterwards.
Grant did in fact jump into the lead at the first corner as the cars came out of turn ten, closely followed by second place driver Bernardo Martinez and Wade who had made a strong inside move at the start to capture the third spot ahead of Jason LaPoint and Bradley. “Grant got a good start and I was looking to follow him but Chantz got a great start and I backed off to give him room into the first corner so I wound up fifth after the start,” Bradley said.
The opening laps caused a little trouble for Figge when he was hit from behind as he was braking for turn three. He was able to continue after the contact however the alignment of the left rear corner was disturbed and he was left to battle a poor handling car the remainder of the race. The only other trouble to hit the team came on lap 16 when Wade, now running in fourth place, slid off the track in turn three and collected the tire barriers. “The car got a loose on me as the race progressed,” Chantz said, “then I dropped a couple of wheels, tried to correct but ran out of room.”
Ryley, was engaged in a race-long battle with Martinez, with the gap expanding and contracting as they encountered lapped traffic, and the two made contact a couple of times with minor damage being done to the front wings of Martinez’ car, allowing Grant to stretch his lead while Martinez faded to third. Bradley, who was challenging Wade for position when he fell of the track, was reeling Martinez in when the checkered flag fell. “If we had a couple more laps I would’ve been able to get around him but that’s how racing goes,” Bradley said.
World Speed continues to hold the third and fourth places in the Best Western Championship as the series now moves towards Texas Motor Speedway after a three week break. “We’ve been running well lately, we were strong at Charlotte which is a similar layout, so I hope we’ll be contenders there as well,” Ryley said.
Round three of the Best Western Championship will be televised August 29th on Speedvision. Check local listings for showtimes.