The skies opened with a torrential downpour about a minute after the green flag start of the Toronto Grand Prix this weekend. What an incredible mix of fortunes the weather was for the Jensen MotorSport team-mates Frankie Muniz and Tom Sutherland.
Frankie Muniz, driving the #13 Chandler Development sponsored car, navigated the multiple wrecks all race long to finish a career best 9th place. Muniz stated, “It was treacherous out there today, but once I saw that so many cars weren’t going to finish, I took extra caution just to finish since I knew that if I finished, I would score a lot of championship points.”
Tom Sutherland, driving the #2 Drive Energy Soda car, had a competitive yet difficult weekend. The weekend started on a sour note with hard contact with the Turn 5 wall early during Friday morning practice. After such hard contact, Sutherland made strong progress during Saturday morning practice, clocking the 6th fastest time late in the session. Sutherland states, “We were making good progress with our car, and looked set to challenge for a top 5 qualifying position, but I made a small mistake on my last run in Saturday practice to make contact, which really hurt us because we missed the chance to validate an additional change to the set-up, which eventually we had to try in Q2”. Sutherland rebounded in Q2 to clock a 15th starting position, but was unable to match his own pace from morning practice. Unlike Muniz, Sutherland’s race quickly became disastrous as a spin in turn 2 on the rain soaked track ended his day early with heavy damage to the front and rear suspension.
Team owner Eric Jensen states, “It was a terrific result for Frankie Muniz. At the end of the year, people look mostly at your finishing results in the point standings, and the 14 points collected by Frankie today substantially elevate his ranking. It is just such a shame that Tom Sutherland seemingly is without luck this season. Tom has been consistently quick, but so often circumstance beyond his control seems to deny him the results we all know are within his capability.”
Next up for the team is the Edmonton Grand Prix in Alberta Canada on July 20-22. |