Champion Motorsports would like to congratulate Joseph Cote for winning our February Special event race using Sony's Gran Turismo 5. The race was our first ever official event with GT5, and we selected a really fun format for American Muscle Ford Mustangs at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway. The event was well attended, and a ton of fun. In the past we've dabbled with various sims on the console, but it's refreshing to now have both GT5 from Sony and Forza Motorsport from Microsoft really moving into the simulation genre to provide us with great options for continued console sim racing.

The event at Laguna Seca started out with Joseph on the pole, and leading from the get go to the finish. Joseph was fast and steady qualifying with a low 1:46.xxx lap and running very quick and smooth. Joseph has been spending a fair amount of time racing GT5 since release, and it showed up in the race tonight. Joseph's performance also showed that a traditional PC sim racer is able to make the conversion well into the console arena. Prior to spending time with GT5, Joseph has run many events with CMS in our rFactor series.


Joseph Cote Leads the Field at Laguna Seca

David Anderson would finish in 2nd place with a very impressive run of his own. Starting in dead last place, and receiving a time penalty at the start for jumping the green flag at the start, he would have to be patient and overcome some early race trouble to work his way through the field. He would manage to do just that with an impressive drive from the back of the grid to second position by race night, approximately 35 seconds behind Cote.

Manuel Polanco in his first ever race with Champion Motorsports would finish third. For a large portion of the race he was engaged in a great and very close battle with David Anderson, but would suffer some damage after losing control of the car and colliding with a retaining wall. This hurt as the mechanical damage would slow him down for the rest of the night and take him out of contention for the 2nd place finish. But, it was a very solid run for Manuel and he was impressed with the quality of the race CMS hosted and looks to race with us again in the future.

Billy Bradley walked into a gaming store in Canada, met Kevin Cinnamon and ended up on the track with us tonight. He would drive to an impressive 4th place finish, having no real sim racing background on PC and focusing exclusively on the console. Solid run for Billy and welcome to Champion Motorsports, we hope to get you hooked.

The 5th spot in the race went to long-time CMS member Kevin Cinnamon. Kevin had made the wrong tire choice for the race, ans paid the price for it and was a bit behind due to the wrong tire compound. However, he battled through it and was able to complete the race.


3 Car Battle at Laguna Seca -- some Close Racing!

We'd also like to thank Brad Johnson, Alasdair Fisher and one other gentleman that raced with us tonight that I was unable to get the full name for. It was a great event, a lot of fun, and we definitely will look to try and do another race with Gran Turismo 5 in the future.

Here are the complete results from the event: