New Honda Civic Si Scores First Touring Car Class Win For Shea Racing at CTMP
• Tom O’Gorman earns Touring Car A victory on Sunday after starting from pole
• O’Gorman’s Civic Si runs fastest lap of Saturday’s event in TCA
• Shea Holbrook has top-10 hopes dashed by tire buildup on brakes

BOWMANVILLE, Ontario. (May 23, 2017) – Shea Racing’s four-car Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car program earned the first victory of the season for the new Honda Civic Si, as Tom O’Gorman rolled from pole to win Sunday’s PWC Touring Car A race at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.

O’Gorman set himself up for Sunday’s run with a strong effort on Saturday, as he powered his Civic Si to a fourth-place finish. The Ohio driver not only scored a season-best result with his fourth-place run, but he ran the fastest lap of the race, which put him on the pole for Sunday’s 40-minute event.

The story gets better from there. O’Gorman finished fourth in the opener, but only because the race was stopped after (HE WAS INVOLVED IN????) a four-car wreck (which???) necessitated track repairs that could not be executed in time to restart the event. But since O’Gorman was running the new 2017 Honda Civic Si, which has yet to hit the showrooms, parts to fix his car for Sunday’s race were going to be hard to come by.

But as the Shea Racing team was plotting a way out of its dilemma, Honda of Canada Associate Racing Team member Scott Nicol drove by in his brand new Civic Si, and the team started thinking.

““We asked Scott if we could use some of the parts from his passenger car for our Civic Si race car,” explained O’Gorman. “He was very accommodating and we started pulling front end parts from his car. We basically needed everything forward of the radiator from the passenger car … body work … arm supports … and various front-end parts to put the race car back together again. But we were ready for Sunday’s TC race. I can’t thank Scott enough.”

Still, having a running car wasn’t the only problem on Sunday morning. Early-morning rains eased up near race time, causing each team to make the tough decision whether to start the race on rain tires or slick tires for drying conditions. O’Gorman left slick tires on his Civic Si – which paid off handsomely, as the rains failed to play a major role in the race.

“A bunch of the Touring Cars switched to the rain tires at the last minute and it ended up being dry for 80 percent of the race, so it wasn’t paying off for them,” said O’Gorman. “Then it started raining, and the front-wheel drive with the new Civic Si was awesome in those conditions. It likes the cool [weather] in general, so the car was fantastic today.”

Unfortunately, the weekend wasn’t all hearts and flowers for Shea Racing. For the second straight race weekend, one of the team’s Hondas suffered a frightening accident when Sarah Montgomery barrel-rolled her Civic in Saturday’s event. She was uninjured in the crash, but was unable to answer the bell for Sunday’s race.

Meanwhile, team owner/driver Shea Holbrook ran her Honda Accord from 19th on the starting grid to ninth in Saturday’s TC race, but ninth was as far as she would get before she suffered a fire in her braking system. Karl Wittmer carried his Accord to a podium finish in TC, placing third on Saturday to give the brand its first TC podium of the year.

“What I thought was a tire going down was actually a caliper on fire,” Holbrook explained. “Rubber coming off of the rain tires collected in the caliper and caught on fire. No problem except that I couldn’t turn the car!”

The team won’t have much time to reflect on the weekend, however, as the schedule requires a quick trip to Connecticut for a pair of races at Lime Rock Park, which take place Friday and Saturday, May 26 and 27.