Burnaby race car driver Michael Valiante held onto the overall lead following Race 7 of the United Sportscar Championship.
Valiante and VisitFlorida.com Racing co-driver Richard Westbrook placed fourth at the Sportscar Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ont. last Sunday.
The top-four finish was enough to keep the pair in the overall driver’s lead by seven points over Action Express Racing team of Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi, who finished in fifth place, more than 11 seconds behind Valiante’s No. 90 Corvette Daytona Prototype machine.
Valiante and Westbrook, led for four of the 128 laps midway through the race before finishing a little over nine seconds behind race winner Ricky and Jordan Taylor in the Wayne Taylor Racing Corvette DP over the 2.459-mile Motorsport circuit.
“We didn’t have the pace that we wanted to this weekend, so it was great to be able to work our way to lead the race early on and to come out of the weekend with some championship points,” said Valiante in a team press release. “But that’s not what we want – we’d rather be taking care of the championship with wins and more podiums, so we’ll focus on doing exactly that at Road America.”
The VisitFlorida.com Racing team has currently reached the podium in four of the seven championship series races to date, including victories at the Monterey Grand Prix in May and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen last month.
Next up for Valiante is the Continental Tire Road Race Showcase on the four-mile track at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin on Aug. 9.
