The Coupe de Montreal championship finally got underway this past weekend at Circuit ICAR in Mirabel, Quebec and we won’t lie, it sucked that we couldn’t attend.
There were 180 entries spread across the ten races and the Coupe de Montreal continues to grow. Like we are seeing across the country, there’s a great number of Briggs Senior and Juniors in the sport right now, but we were surprised to see so many Rotax DD2 and Senior Max machines. It was also nice to see healthy Cadet numbers in both Briggs and Rotax. This has us really excited for the upcoming Canadian Open in Mont-Tremblant, with a surplus of drivers from Ontario and, fingers crossed, the East Coast provinces.
We noticed the return on 2-time Rotax Grand Finals Champion Pier-Luc Ouellette, who suited up with Ben Cooper Racing to compete in Rotax DD2. It’s great to hear he’s fully recovered from his scary (non-racing) accident and back into a kart. His speed wasn’t lost either, as he ended up P2 on Saturday, but suffered a DNF on Sunday.
There was a good spread of race teams present, from major teams like BCR, SH Karting and PSL Karting to smaller operations such as TNT Racing, Premier Karting, TAG Autosport, Nonstop Racing, Titans Racing, ETI Racing, along with a great number of privateer efforts.
Patrick Woods-Toth is once again showing that he is one of Canada’s best right now. Only a day after winning the MIKA Canada Cup in ROK Senior at Mosport, Woods-Toth was in Rotax Senior action at ICAR. He easily cruised to victory on Saturday, and crossed the finish line on Sunday as the winner, but was disqualified for ignoring the meatball flag.
Shortly after winning his Briggs Masters Final on Saturday, Eric Lessard was back on track for the Briggs Senior Final. Unfortunately, he was involved in a bad crash that required a trip to the hospital. He mentioned to CKN he will be out of the seat for at least 6 weeks, and sadly, won’t be able to compete for the championship.
Scoring weekend sweeps in their respective categories were: Alexis Baillargeon (Briggs Cadet), Lucas Pernod (Rotax DD2), Christophe Legrand (Rotax Junior), Timothe Pernod (Briggs Junior) and Davide Greco (Open/TM/KZ/Master Shifter).
The other race winners were Eric Lessard and Daniel Courtemanche in Briggs Masters, Alexis Baillargeon and Lucas Delongchamps in Rotax Micro/Mini Max, Simon Belanger and Michael Valente in Briggs Senior, Patrick Woods-Toth and Mathieu Cousineau in Rotax Senior, as well as Jean-Francois Richard and David Laplante in Rotax DD2 Masters.
It’s a quick turnaround for the next Coupe de Montreal race as they will compete again this coming weekend at SH Karting. Online Registration is open on the http://coupedemontreal.com website.
Thank you Bruno Dorais at Pole Position for the great photos below.
