Drewer on pole for first Canadian race.

An abandoned qualifying session has resulted in Australian Tom Drewer and his Daily Planet WEST starting on pole today for his first race in Canada at the Grand Prix of Mosport.


IMSA officials halted yesterday’s IMSA Lites qualifying after the L1 Elan of Anthony Nicolosi made heavy impact with the wall at turn five of the historic Mosport International Raceway near Bowmanville, Ontario.

After clearing the track, the remainder of the session was converted to an official practice session (3), and the starting line-up for Round 7 of the 2008 IMSA Lites Championship was derived from the combined fastest times in practice 1 and 2.

However due to confusion over the status of the final session, Drewer and his new West Race Cars team-mate, Jordan Taylor (son of 5 times World Sportscar Champion and 2 times Daytona 24 Hour winner Wayne Taylor) traded fastest laps until the end of practice three believing the times would count towards the starting line-up.

The pair reduced their practice 2 times by nearly 2 seconds to finish the session in the low 1 minute 19 second bracket with Taylor less than two-tenths quicker than Drewer.

However, due to the ruling that only Practice 1 and 2 would count for the starting line up it will be Drewer starting from pole today in the IMSA Lites L2 Class after setting a time one-tenth faster than Taylor in session 2.

“The red flag threw everyone into an interesting situation. We all thought we were effectively still qualifying for the remainder of session 3 but in the end the times didn’t count”, Drewer said.

“Jordan and I were trading fastest times until the last lap when he gapped my by a couple of tenths, after I was slowed a little by my other team-mate, Eric Vassian.

I’m sure I could have matched and maybe bettered Jordan’s time if I could have maintained full momentum on the lap as it was shaping up to be a real quick one, but in the end it didn’t matter anyway.

It seemed a bit of a strange decision not to count the times from the third session as well, but IMSA makes the call on what is appropriate and in that sense I was the lucky one. I feel for Jordan because he ended up recording a slightly faster time than me in that ;ast run yesterday , but there have been times I’ve had similar situations go against me, and as they say that’s motor racing.

Anyway, we’re right there together on the grid and given we’re matching each other in times, it should make for one hell of a race.

I’m just really happy that the WEST Factory Team has two of their cars on the front row of the L2 grid. We did a fantastic job as a team yesterday and pushed each other all the way.

Now the focus is the races with my main aim that of collecting points to extend my lead in the Championship. But obviously it would be great to win my first race in Canada especially as I won my first race in the USA”.

This weekend is Drewer’s first time ever driving at the Mosport circuit.

The young Aussie came to North America this year to pursue an international motor racing career after winning the 2007 Australian Thundersports Sportscar Championship with WEST Race Car’s Australian Factory Team.

Drewer made the decision to race IMSA Lites even though he was in line for a test with a top level V8 Supercar (Australian’s equivalent to NASCAR) team. However, the decision has paid of with Drewer winning 5 out of the 6 rounds so far in the IMSA Lites L2 Championship including his first ever race in the USA at the Mobil 1 Sebring 12 Hour event, a track he had never raced at either.

Race 1 at Mosport (Round 7) will be held later today at 12:50pm and Race 2 (Round 8) will take place tomorrow, Sunday at 9:15am.