There’s a level of familiarity that Guy Smith experiences whenever he visits the former Mosport track, since 2012 known as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. And that’s not just down to the many times he’s driven the FIA Grade 2 circuit’s 2.459-miles of challenging asphalt winding through the Ontario countryside. Scarborough and Whitby are within an hour’s drive, while Hull is just under four hours to the north in Quebec. The Yorkshireman jokes that the host of eight Canadian Grands Prix between 1967 and 1977 is “almost like a home from home”.
“I do like Canada, it’s got all the convenience of America but with a European vibe,” says Smith, a Le Mans 24 Hours winner with Bentley in 2003. “The people are quite chilled, and I just enjoy it. When I went there, I just felt quite relaxed.”
Smith spent the bulk of his professional career racing in North America and made eight appearances at the “relentless high-speed” Mosport track, which he nominates as his favourite. A strong 1998 Indy Lights campaign that included a victory on the streets of Toronto for Stefan Johansson’s team led to a move into sportscars alongside the Swede for the 2000 American Le Mans Series. That year his first encounter with Mosport in Johansson Matthews Racing’s Reynard-Judd 2KQ yielded seventh amid changeable conditions, as Dindo Capello (Audi) beat Jorg Muller’s BMW by less than two tenths in a grandstand finish. Despite the non-descript result, Smith’s track debut left a mark.
“I remember Stefan Johansson told me, ‘you’re going to enjoy Mosport, it’s one of the old-school circuits’ and I really took to it from the start,” he says. “I remember thinking ‘this is bloody quick’ because it’s narrow, especially in a prototype when you’re passing GT cars, and it’s quite a short track. And it flows, so it’s one of those tracks that you get into a really good rhythm. You feel like you’re on the edge. The car is dancing around, there’s quite a lot of elevation change, so that also makes it feel a little bit quicker. It’s like a little Nordschleife in some respects.”
Mosport hosted the World Sportscar Championship until Manfred Winkelhock’s death at the track in 1985, while concerns over track safety prompted BMW to withdraw from the ALMS round in 1999. But matters have improved in the years since, with paved run-off replacing grass on the outside of the long, downhill Turn 2 left-hander where Winkelhock incurred unsurvivable injuries after his Kremer 962 left the road.
“If you ran wide there, it was always a big accident,” reflects Smith. “It’s a little bit dangerous so from a driver’s point of view it always commands respect.
Source: Autosport