Mosport Todd Lamb Review

Lamb Turns Heads at Mosport

BOWMANVILLE, Ontario, Canada - August 8, 1998 - Todd Lamb piloted the #84 Red Line Oil / TRD Toyota Supra of Van Cleef Racing to his first SPEEDVISION Cup Series finish on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon during the Mosport Festival. The final standings, indicating the 20th overall and 5th in the Sports class finishes, reveal very little of the actual story.

Most of practice on Thursday and Friday was run in the rain. It didn't take long on Thursday for Lamb to turn some heads. He was a full second ahead of the competition in the wet according to the practice results. Lamb's co-driver, Bob Henderson, took the car out for qualifying on Friday in the dry and put it solidly into the middle of the pack.

Henderson took the green flag on Saturday to start the race. On lap 12 Henderson reported to the crew that the engine was misfiring at high RPM. He brought it into the pits for an unscheduled green flag stop and no obvious causes were found. The crew sent him back out while they narrowed the problem down to the car's computer. An incident on lap 20 brought out a caution flag and it was time for a scheduled stop and driver change. The crew did an excellent job fueling the car and swapping the faulty computer for a new one, as Lamb climbed in to take the reins of the #84 car.

At this point, Lamb was four laps down from the leader and running in 36th position. The computer change was an excellent call on the part of the crew. With the engine misfire cured, Lamb consistently ran laps that were .5 to 1.0 seconds faster than the class leader. He missed fast lap of the race by .2 of a second. Due to Lamb's stellar performance and a wave-by under yellow, he was able to make up 2 laps by the end of the race.

Todd Lamb - "The Supra has really improved since Road Atlanta, and I think we have shown the other teams that we will be in the hunt for the win at Sebring. The engine misfire was very disappointing to the team, we were really looking forward to a podium finish. The upside is that I got a lot of experience in heavy traffic, brought the car home in one piece, and had a good run."