Trinidad and Tobago crowned Country Champions
… Matthew Vieira takes maiden Super-stock title

AFTER losing by seven points last year, Trinidad and Tobago rebounded in fine style to win this year’s Caribbean Motor Racing Championship (CMRC) by a margin of more than 700

points to second-placed finishers Barbados.
Following the final tally of points after Sunday’s Final Round of racing, the Trinis were miles ahead of the pack, mathematically securing victory even before the final round got going last weekend in Guyana.
However, the win still did not limit the team size which consisted of 11 cars and one bike. Its commanding total of 1481.5 eclipsed second-placed Barbados 688.5 and Guyana’s third place 648 total with Jamaica scoring 492, the Cayman Islands 60 and CAMS (United States/Canada) 15.
Guyana’s third place finish was due primarily to a lack of registration for the final leg of the series and they could have challenged for the second spot which they missed by exactly 40 points.

Trinidad’s dominance was partly due to back-to-back Group Three champion Paul Vieira, who scored 275 country points. The group also won by 225 points after four rounds of action.
His nearest competitor, Guyana’s Danny Persaud was more than 100 points off the money with Ronald Wortman also of Trinidad finishing in third.
On the Group Two end of things, it was a battle to the finish with the title race having multiple possibilities heading into last weekend, though when the dust settled, Mark Thompson retained the title he had lost last year to Marc Gill.
His tally of 177 points was garnered off just three legs, while Marc’s 141 points could only place him second.
While the spoils were shared in Barbados between the two, ultimately it was Thompson’s three commanding wins on Sunday that completed the job. He was crowned the best in the group that rapidly became popular for its Honda Civic entrants.
Going into the final round, Luke Bhola was leading but slipped back to third with 135 points.
In Group Four, fight as he may, Guyanese Kristian Jeffrey, who returned to All Wheel Drive (AWD) glory with two wins on Sunday, could not impede Jamaican Doug ‘Hollywood’ Gore’s title. Gore, over three rounds of action, amassed 163 points in the series while Jeffrey, had only 50.
On the Two Wheel Drive (2WD) end of things, the three-way battle involving Jamaican Peter Rae, Barbadian Mark Maloney and Trinidad’s Franklyn Boodram had pundits on their calculators, back and forth weighing the possibilities.

However, a flag-to-flag day for Maloney easily gifted him the title in the series – 173.5 points ahead of the Trinidadian (147) and Jamaican Rae (108).
The bright spot for Guyanese, however, came through Matthew Vieira who copped that elusive title. Vieira, who returned after a tough crash on Friday, is testament to the fact that combined consistency can win titles and surely, the rest of his competition will be taking note.
His race-day may have been overshadowed by Team Mohammed’s Enterprise Duo of Bryce Prince (CMRC Super-stock) and Matt Truelove (Superbike Outlaw), both of whom took the chequered flag on all three occasions in their respective races, but they did not ultimately affect his championship.
All in all, this year’s Championship proved a learning lesson to some, a refresher to others and the possibility of an intense 2017.