Jonathan Bomarito Driver's Diary: Trois Rivieres
Heading into the weekend for Round 8 of the series, I knew two things. One, we would have a competitive race car, and two, it would be another key weekend for championship points. What I didn't know then was that the race car would be simply amazing and that we would eventually earn maximum points with another win and pull away in the championship points race by a healthy margin, 28 to be exact.
The Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres is run on a temporary street course that has some serious history behind it. In 1967 the Club Autosport Mauricien began organizing races through the city streets welcoming teams from series such as Formula Atlantic, American Le Mans and Trans Am. Over the years, the TRGP also attracted top driving talent including Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve, Patrick Carpentier, Alexandre Tagliani, Danica Patrick, Ron Fellows, and David Empringham to name only a few. Formula Atlantic has always been a favorite with the knowledgeable Quebec fans, and it was astonishing to see how many of them come out to watch. Even though it's been five years since Atlantic cars last ran the course in 2003, the fans know all about the series and its drivers.
Walking the course on Thursday, the layout really reminded me of San Jose and also a little bit of Toronto, both excellent street circuits where I have been fast before. That provided the team and I with a good confidence level as to where to start with the setup of the car. Once the track started to rubber up, it became clear that the key to a quick lap time was to maximize the available road, which brought the car really close to the walls. It was amazing, and more crucial at TR than at any street course I have ever raced on. This in turn made qualifying and the race that much harder, as you had to be extremely precise on every lap or find yourself crawling back to the pits with bent suspension pieces. Or worse.
Despite the threat of the walls, both qualifying sessions went amazingly well. Q1 was definitely more of a struggle, but once I got a clean run on my final two laps I was able to mount a charge for the pole, which we achieved. That's a hard performance to top, but we did so in Q2 on Saturday, which just turned out to be a perfect session for us as a team. Our plan was to stay out for a while on the first set of tires, and get a good understanding of the car and track conditions, then come in, make any necessary small adjustments and put fresh tires on nice and early just in case a red flag came out. It all worked according to plan, and we secured our third pole of the year with a time of 58.989 seconds, a new Atlantic track record.
As the polesitter, I had my choice of where to line up on the front row, and I chose to start from the left side even though the first corner is to the right. Usually I would have picked the inside lane but it was very dusty and dirty on that side of the track, and with a standing start every last detail matters. I admit that I was pretty nervous waiting for the start of the race but it turned out to be one of my best starts of the year, and I arced into Turn 1 uncontested.From there I was able to build a big lead before the first full-course yellow came out. After a good restart, this scenario repeated itself, as I again built a comfortable lead only to have it disappear under another full-course caution. After the second yellow, there were only about 10 laps left and I knew that as long as I got another clean restart, and kept the car off the walls, I could stay out in front to the checkered flag. And I did! Crossing the line P1 was an amazing feeling, probably the best ever because this was such a complete weekend for us as a team performing under pressure.
Looking ahead to the next race in New Jersey Motorsports Park, it's hard to know what to expect. This is a brand new facility with two road courses that no one in the Atlantic series has raced on before. It will be an even playing field for everyone and a fresh challenge, but I like our chances.I couldn't be happier with the performance of the Mathiasen Motorsports team and their dedication to preparing what has arguably become the best car out there. We are all so focused and with a healthy lead in the championship standings, we have such great momentum going that I really don't want to wait three weeks until the next race. But it will give us some quality time to fully prepare for the last three races of the season which will all be contested on circuits that are new to the Atlantic series this year. We'll be ready.