2023 Season Recap

2023 is now in the books and what a journey it has been.

We new this was going to be a journey as Cayden had very little in car experience. But with his success in karting and the hours spent on the SIM with a coach we believed he was ready.

We made the decision early that the goal is IMSA. At Cayden’s age and size open wheel was a stretch; and with the sports car endurance racing there are just many more seats available.

With that in mind we gave thought to starting in TCR but thought a year in Sports Car Challenge would be a good transition. We selected Ryspec as the team as they had just won the ERCC series and where 2nd in SCCC. They are great a car setup and their cars almost always run at the front.

Sound thinking that turned out to be all wrong. The SCCC series is very political and as a result there some challenges like differences in the BOP between cars making it difficult to be competitive. Worse we ran into car issues that  turned out to be terminal for the season. After 6 DNF/DNS for mechanicals we had to find another plan. 

Our backup plan was to run with the SportsCup GT team in LuckyDog with Russ Bond and team. That was a great experience and saved our season. We still had numerous technical challenges but Russ and team always got the car together so we could take the checkered flag. Two 3rd places on the podium were a welcome addition. What’s more Cayden proved he could run at the front and was consistently one of the fastest in the car. 

That was the highlight until August. Richard at Ryspec was doing everything he could to get Cayden behind the wheel as he could see the potential. We jointly made the decision to move to the Emzone Radical Cup.  With some trepidation as this was literally less then a year after Cayden had 1st driven even a street car let alone a race car. But talent won’t be denied.

We started with a test day at Cayuga followed by a test day at Calabogie. Cayden was quickly up to pace in the car and started to feel quite comfortable. There was a CASC race on our test day so we entered that with Cayden finishing 2nd! 1st place went to Miles who was 3 seconds a lap faster. 

The following week was our 1st FEL ERCC race and it was back at Calabogie. This time Cayden had closed the gap more picking up 5 seconds a lap from the week previous and now being faster the Miles. Turned some heads in the padoc with his pace which was only 2 tenths off of 2nd. 

It was an eventful race being taken out by Miles on lap 1 dropping us to last in race 1. Cayden fought his way back to 10th which was an awesome run but he killed his tires in the process. In our 2nd race the tires really hurts us dropping us back to 15th so we had it all to do in race 3 where Cayden had another storming drive to move up to 7th. Not how we wanted the weekend to go but Cayden proved he had pace and could race with the best of them.

Brings us to the the final weekend. Cayden was looking to definitively demonstrate he’s arrived and ready and he showed up ready to work. Qualifying was an epic battle with the 3 championship leaders and Cayden. By the end there was a new lap record and the difference was just .045 between all 4 of them. It’s never been closer at the front. Cayden qualified 3rd.

The racing was just as compelling with Cayden taking 3rd place in both race 1 and race 2, sharing the spotlight with his team mate Jake who took 2nd in both races. True to form in the final race Cayden was on track for another podium when his throttle cable broke and he was out of the race.

Having said all of this, the the year was a success.

Cayden went from Karts to cars ending up on pace with and on the podium with Jake Cowden, a F1600 Champion and ERCC Champion. Cayden finished with 5 podiums across 3 different series including both prototype sprints and GT endurance. We can say Cayden learned much more then if he’d just run SPCC, and proved he belongs in the sport. 

Can’t wait to see what happens in 2024.