The COTA weekend kicked off with a promoter test day, which saw Burrows and Mason working together to unlock the keys to speed within the 20 corners that make up the highly technical Formula 1-grade facility. The C360R squad saw all four team entries posting practice times within a quarter of a second of each other, showing the strength and consistency of the Toronto-based team’s preparation.

The race saw Mason make a good start--Turn 1 being something that had concerned everyone looking on with the prospect of 60+ cars racing into the very tight turn one hairpin. But Mason handled the challenge adroitly before moving forward in the opening stages. Burrows took the controls during a well-timed pit stop, putting him in the top-10, a prime position to charge to the front. Unfortunately, the charge was halted when the car suffered from overheating and forced the former champ back into the pits.

“It was a great weekend and a really unfortunate weekend, all in one, ” said Burrows.  “Ray (Mason) did a great job all weekend and I was really impressed with how quickly he got his arms around the track. We had our game plan for the race and that was just clicking along and in fact was going even better than we had hoped, thanks to the yellow that came out as we were executing the driver change in the pits. It gave us great track position as we cycled through to 9th as the rest of the field pitted.  But we didn’t get the chance to convert all that hard work from the team into a big result--the temps were just too high with the car and it was smarter to bring it in and park it rather than cause any big issues. ”

While the on-track results were far from satisfying, the weekend still had its positive moments.

“I was down here for the F1 race in November, and was blown away by the quality of the facility,” said Burrows.  “To drive on it this weekend only enhanced that impression.  The staff are great and the fans are fantastic . . . this place is truly world class. Austin is an awesome city, and its great to see how everyone has embraced the track . . .and I wont deny that I've definitely taken advantage of the great BBQ down here.  This wasn’t the way we wanted the race to end up, but at least Ray and I were able to have a good weekend outside of that, and now we’ll just focus ahead to Barber.”

Round 3 of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Championship is April 6th at Barber Motorsports Park.

Photos courtesy of Wes Duenkel Photography.