A Tale of Two Races: Crash, Victory, and Fire For The PWC Shea Racing Honda Team

Shea Holbrook in a light moment before the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park race

Take the Pirelli World Challenge and the K&N-sponsored Shea Racing Honda team. Immediately after their race ended on Sunday they had to load-up and drive from Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in Ontario, Canada, to Lime Rock Park in rural Connecticut, ready to load in on Thursday morning. That’s not much of a break for anyone. But Shea Racing was undeterred and unperturbed.

In Canada, the good news was that Shea Racing's Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car program earned the first victory of the season with Tom O’Gorman driving the new Honda Civic Si, starting from the pole to win Sunday's Touring Car A race.

O'Gorman earned the pole position not through qualifying but by setting the fastest lap in Saturday’s race. In addition, he brought his Honda Civic Si home to a fourth-place finish.

O’Gorman was actually lucky to be in Saturday’s race at all. Several laps into the race, several cars collided and collected O’Gorman as he had the bad luck to be in the same area of the racetrack. The race was red-flagged. The problem that faced Shea Racing is that the Civic Si had not yet reached showrooms so repair parts were extremely limited.

Just as it looked all was lost, a Honda of Canada employee drove by in a new Civic Si. Happy to assist (of course, as A. he’s from Honda, and B. he’s a Canadian) the team start disassembling his street car with the promise they’d put it all back together when they were done. “We basically needed everything forward of the radiator from the passenger car. Body work, arm supports, and various front end parts to put the race car back together again,” O’Gorman said.

Tom O'Gorman gave the new Honda Civic Si its first victory in Pirelli World Challenge

Where the weekend had been pretty lucky for O’Gorman, it was hardly the case for new recruit to Shea racing, Sarah Montgomery. On Saturday she barrel-rolled her Civic and while uninjured in the crash, but was unable to answer the bell for Sunday's race. If you’re keeping track, that’s two cars rolled in two weekends.

Team owner and driver Shea Holbrook ran her Honda Accord from 19th on the starting grid to ninth in Saturday's TC race, but then she had her own drama. "What I thought was a tire going down was actually a caliper on fire," Holbrook explained. "Rubber coming off of the rain tires collected in the caliper and caught on fire. No problem except that I couldn't turn the car!"

The entire Shea Racing team was looking forward to a drama-free weekend at Lime Rock, a race that’s run on a tight schedule as racing is not allowed on Sunday at the facility. Everything had to be squeezed into two days.

Tom O’Gorman moved into fourth in the standings with his 2017 Honda Civic Si as he took third after starting fifth. Tom nearly scored a podium finish in Friday’s race as well, but a valve stem was broken in contact with another car in Turn Three, forcing him into the pits with a by-then flat tire.

Team boss and driver, Shea Holbrook, demonstrated her and the Honda Accord’s competitiveness in both Touring Car events. Shea made up three positions from her starting position in Friday’s opening race and gaining five spots over her grid position in Saturday’s event. The tight 1.47-mile race course made passing opportunities hard to come by, but Shea made the most of the opportunities that presented themselves in both races.

Shea's Touring Class Honda Accord gets a full alignment to maximize performance

“We made some minor handling changes for race 2, which made my Honda Accord virtually flawless,” reported Holbrook. “I was able to put the pressure on a little harder, and I know we could have run higher, but we feel good about our consistency on what was our best weekend of the season so far.”

After two races jammed together the team will have a lengthy midseason break to prepare for its next event, as the Touring Cars do not compete again for a couple months at Utah Motorsports Campus.