After the hard-charging and very fast ferraris, we were presented with something completely different - and something we hadn't seen in previous years : the Nissan Micra cup. This is a super low-cost racing series based on nearly bone-stock Nissan Micra cars. We hadn't seen this series before (last year we had instead watched a very fun set of Canadian Touring Car Championship races).
The very large field of small microcars soon came down the start/finish line in a bee-like swarm. Buzzing and humming - also not unlike a swarm of bees - they glided past, at a much lower speed than the other cars we'd seen so far today.
One thing was for sure - these cars were tippy. They frequently lifted a front or rear wheel in turns, and fairly often drivers would have to battle to prevent a rollover. We got an excellent example of this when #26 Valerie Chiasson nearly flipped her car around the Senna curve, managing to balance her car on a knife edge for an agonizing couple of seconds, before she managed to plop all four tires safely back down onto the pavement.
Video snippet, Micra Cup Race - Click on video above to start
Despite the relatively low performance of the cars, the strict-stock nature of the rules meant racing was tight, right to the end. For this first race, long-time and well-known Canadian racer Olivier Bedard came across the line first. Second place? Tharanoj Thanasitnitike, only 0.21 seconds behind. Close racing!
The end of the Micra Cup race marked the end of our saturday at circuit Gilles Villeneuve. We began the long forty+ minute walk back towards the metro station. We were in no particular rush, as we knew that arriving during the heaviest foot traffic would simply mean waiting in a big crowd for the subway.
Later that evening, we had a nice dinner out with Luke's friends and in-laws.
