Gary Kwok is crowned the first TCR champion in Canada

With Friday’s victory in the first race of Canada Touring Car Championship’s finale at Bowmanville, Gary Kwok had staked a serious claim on the title. The M&S Racing’s driver capitalised on that result in today’s Race 2 and was content with a sixth position that was enough to be crowned the first ever TCR champion in Canada. His brother Tom provided the icing on the cake by winning the race.
Jean-François Hevey had won pole position beating Gary Kwok by 14 thousandths, but the latter started better, took the lead and set an impressive pace to pull away. However, his margin was swept away by the safety car that was deployed from lap 6 to lap 9 after an incident that involved a GT Sport car. When racing resumed, Tom Kwok overtook Matthew Taskinen for third and began putting the pressure on Hevey. For a few laps, the leading trio was covered by six/seven tenths, until lap 12, when Tom Kwok passed Hevey for second. The Kwok brothers pulled away together and Hevey dropped 2.5 seconds behind, while his teammate Taskinen shook off Bob Attrell and Travis Hill and got closer to him. Between laps 18 and 20 the pace of the leading Honda cars seemed to fade, Hevey closed the gap within 0.7 seconds from Tom Kwok, but then the two leaders began to push again and so they finished, with Gary taking his third victory of the season from Tom, with Hevey and Taskinen in third and fourth positions.
In Race 2, Gary Kwok made a superb start and passed both the GT Sport cars ahead of him on the grid to take the race lead. The position was short-lived, however, as both GT cars had passed the Honda by Turn 5, so Gary led his brother Tom in the TCR class, with the three Audi RS 3 LMS cars of Taskinen, Hevey and Hill battling for the next three places. That’s how things stayed for around half of the forty-minute race, but first Tom Kwok seized the lead and then Taskinen passed Gary Kwok for second place with around twenty minutes of the race remaining. Within a couple of minutes, both Hill and Hevey had also passed Gary Kwok, whose challenge looked to be fading. Despite battling with Hevey in the race’s closing stages, Gary Kwok was passed by Attrell with around four minutes remaining, with the latter also passing Hevey shortly afterwards to finish fourth. Tom Kwok took the win from Taskinen and Hill.
In the final standings of the TCR Class, Gary Kwok led Hevey and Hill by 21 and 30 points respectively.

Race 1
1. Gary Kwok (M&S Racing, Honda Civic FK7), 26 laps
2. Tom Kwok (M&S Racing, Honda Civic FK2), 0.546
3. Jean-François Hevey (TCR/M1GT Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS), 3.603
4. Matthew Taskinen (TCR/M1GT Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS), 4.406
5. Bob Attrell (Hyundai Racing Canada, Hyundai i30 N), 7.746

Race 2
1. Tom Kwok (M&S Racing, Honda Civic FK2), 28 laps
2. Matthew Taskinen (TCR/M1GT Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS), 0.694
3. Travis Hill (TWOth Autosport, Audi RS 3 LMS), 12.208
4. Bob Attrell (Hyundai Racing Canada, Hyundai i30 N), 12.291
5. Jean-François Hevey (TCR/M1GT Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS), 13.395

Championship points
1. G. Kwok 1165 pts; 2. Hevey 1144; 3. Hill 1135