This weekend marks the unofficial, official start of the Canadian racing season with the Castrol Victoria Day Speedfest at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

Again this year, the event is an all Canadian affair, headlined by the NASCAR Pinty's Series and the FEL Motorsports Sports Car Championship Canada. Supporting the two headliners are the FEL Emzone Radical Cup Canada, and the biggest field of the weekend in the the Super Production Challenge.

2023 marks the third year for the FEL Sports Car Championship Canada, a series that bills itself as Canada professional road racing series. The series has been off to a bit of a rocky start, with it's inaugural season of 2021 still being affected by Covid. In an attempt to help increase grid sizes this year after disappointing car counts in the first couple of seasons, the series introduced the new, entry level TCA class. Four cars are registered this weekend for the class debut.

Radical qualifying on Friday gave us our first surprise of the weekend when Canadian Superbike star Kenny Riedmann put his car on pole, despite Jake Cowden being 3 to 4 tenths faster in the practice sessions leading up to qualifying.

The first race of Saturday morning however, run in wet and foggy conditions, saw Jake Cowden make up for qualifying, taking the lead immediately off the start, with fellow young gun Gavin Sanders, who qualified third, also getting by pole sitter Riedmann.

The race turned into a bit of a procession for the top three, with Cowden easing away from Sanders at about a second a lap, while Sanders was easing away from Riedmann at the same pace, the top three qualifiers taking the first podium of the season.

Sports Car Championship Canada qualifying gave us our second surprise of Friday afternoon, with Dean Baker taking the TCR pole over Justin Di Benedetto and veteran Richard Boake.

In GT4 qualifying, Jack Polito put his Mustang on pole over the Mercedes of Demi Chalkais, with another Mercedes, of Marc Lafleur, taking the third and final qualifying spot in the three car field.

The rain and fog moved in for the FEL Sports Car Championship race, which saw a significant portion of the race run under full course caution conditions.

Similar to the Radical start, GT4 second place qualifier Demi Chalkais quickly took the lead from pole sitter Jack Pollito and held it when the yellow flags came out on lap one. Soon after the yellow ended, Polito got back around the Chalkais's Mercedes, and held the lead until a late yellow ended the race.

TCR saw Di Benedetto jump quickly past pole sitter Baker, as did LP Montour. There was no drama for the leading three the rest of the way as Di Benedetto scored the win from Montour and Baker.

The early caution came out for contact between Ron Tomlinson and Quinn Attrell on the first lap. Atterll's race was over right there, while Tomlinson limped around to the pits, only to retire shortly after.

Unfortunately, weather really played it's hand with the rain and fog resulting in the cancellation of the NASCAR Pinty's Series practice, scheduled to begin immediately after lunch. This morphed the late afternoon qualifying session into a practice session, with the grid being set according to the rule book, which will line the cars up based on final points from last season.

As a result, Marc-Antoine Camirand will start from pole, with Kevin Lacroix lining up along side him on the front row. DJ Kennington and Treyten Lapcevich will make up row two, with Alex Tagliani rounding out the top five. The race is scheduled to start tomorrow at 1:00pm and can be streamed live on TSN+

NASCAR then made the decision at about 3:00pm to cancel all on track action for the day, with an optional 15 minute warm up session scheduled for 10:00am Sunday morning.

While the NASCAR Pinty's Series called it an early day, the FEL Series didn't, with the Emzone Radical Cup cars heading back on track just before a 3:45 in the afternoon, about an hour and a half behind schedule, with the NASCAR Pinty's cancellation giving them a window to get their race in.

Race one winner Jake Cowden led Kenny Riedmann and Gavin Sanders to the green, with 8 cars taking the flag. The race was pretty much a carbon copy of race one, with Cowden opening up about a second a lap on Sanders, while Sanders opening up a second, or more, on Riedmann. Cowden would take his second win of the day by lapping everyone up to third place finisher Kenny Riedmann.

Race two for the Sports Car Canada Championship got under way with brightening skies but a still very wet track.

Jack Polito again led the GT4 class to the green, as did Dean Baker with the TCR cars, and with more green flag running than in race one, Polito was able to ease away from Chalkais, who eventually surrendered second overall to the eventual TCR winner Dean Baker.

The yellow came out almost immediately after the drop of the green when contact put race one TCR winner Justin Di Benedetto into the tires in turn one. Lap 12 saw another yellow as Megan Tomlinson ran off in turn 5a and got beached in the gravel, and the race ended under a yellow as Gary Kwok and Ron Tomlinson ran side by side up into 5 for the final podium spot, with Kwok running off and hitting the wall hard.

As the Super Production Challenge took to the track, the skies that were brightening towards the end of the SCCC race were again starting to look a little gloomy.

Like the races before it, the Super Production Class was, if not a mirror of race one, then very similar.

Kurt Wittmer again went flag to flag to take his second victory of the weekend (Ed. Note – all three series top classes ended in sweeps today, with Jake Cowden taking both Radical races, Jack Polito taking both GT4 wins, and Kurt Wittmer taking both SPC wins), followed again by Gabriel Lacombe.

In the Production class, race one saw Ethan Bell take the win, followed by Sylvain Laporte and Vincent Desautels. In race two, Sylvain Laporte won from Connor Bell and rookie Blake Kelly, while race one winner Ethan Bell finished well down the order.

In Compact class, Frederic Bernier grabbed the win in race one, followed by Mario Berthiaume and Cameron Nabert. Race two saw the same drivers on the podium, but in a different order, with Nabert grabbing the win followed by Bernier and Berthiaume.

Each class has one more race to go on Sunday, with the Super Production Challenge getting things kicked off at 10:15am, followed by the Emzone Radical Cup Canada race. The morning schedule might be put back a bit as NASCAR is now scheduled to have their optional shakedown from 10:00 to 10:15.

Lunch follows the Radical race, with the eBay Motors 200 NASCAR Pinty's headliner getting under way at 1:00pm, and the final Sports Car Championship Canada race closing out the weekend from 3:20 to 4:00.

As always, if you can't be here, you can stream the NASCAR Pinty's race live on TSN+.