Memoirs of a Newbie Spectator (sort of)

My buddy Alan Burns asked me in December 2017 about going to the 2018 Canadian Superbike Championships series racing (CSBK) event at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP; formerly Mosport) with him. He was trying to entice me to race again, but instead of declining, I told him I’d happily hold the umbrella for him. I was getting pretty excited about riding up to CTMP on my VFR with all my camping gear. I’d be back at the track just like in the good ol’ days, except I wouldn’t be racing. My road-racing days were a lot of fun for me and I have a lot of good memories of racing at Mosport, so I was pretty excited to see the place again. In the end, Alan was too broke to race, but I decided to go anyway.

I also have a threadbare Mosport T-shirt from 2001 that my wife bans me from wearing in public and has been relegated to garage duty. That year was my first of eight consecutive years racing at Mosport.

Mosport is a pretty big track with first-class facilities. When I began racing in 1999, I was going only to tracks such as Shannonville (east of Belleville, Ont.) and St-Eustache (near Montreal), where I could “club” race. There wasn’t any club racing at Mosport, but for one week a year, you could race with the Canadian