Reigning FEL Sports Car Championship Canada (SCCC) TCR champion Dean Baker will return to IMSA, where he’ll join forces with his son Sam to run five races in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge (MPC). The team’s first event will be at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on June 7-9.
The elder Baker won last year’s TCR championship on the strength of four wins, all coming at his home track of Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP). The Bowmanville, ON driver opened the season with one podium in two races at CTMP and will now shift efforts south of the border, where there’s a specific motivation behind the move.
“The goal really was just to get in the car with my son,” said Baker. “It’s always been sort of a dream or a hope that someday we’d be able to race together. So, Michelin Pilot gives us that opportunity to get in the car together; share the car, share the pain, share the fun of it, and do it together.”
The team is scheduled to compete in five MPC races; this weekend at Mid-Ohio, June 20-23 at Watkins Glen International, July 12-14 at CTMP, August 23-25 at VIRginia International Raceway, and October 9-12 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Baker says the new campaign will make for a very busy summer. He says there’s a lot of infrastructure that comes into play with endurance racing, such as driver changes, live pit stops and green flag pit stops. His team also decided to prepare a second car because of the difference in set-up between sprint and endurance racing.
Baker has 35-plus years of racing experience, including a few seasons running LMP3 in the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge (formerly IMSA Prototype Challenge). While his Baker Racing team will field the MPC ride, they’ll get some help from MLT Motorsports, one of his former teams in LMP3. MLT will assist with some of the race strategies and pit stops.
“They have the personnel and they know the IMSA systems and procedures,” said Baker. “There’s a saying in IMSA that the team that makes the fewest mistakes has the best chance of winning and it’s very true, penalties hurt. So, working with a team that has that experience goes a long way to help us avoid making those mistakes and learning the hard way.”
Baker is looking forward to see how his team stacks up against the competition in a bigger environment. He says they’ve grown and learned a lot, and that he feels more prepared to race in IMSA now than in the past.
Dean is also looking forward to watch Sam grow and see if this can lead him somewhere down the road. Sam works for FEL Motorsports, making it impossible to race together as teammates in the SCCC.
“That’s really the biggest reason for not continuing to run in FEL, otherwise we would be more than happy to run in FEL,” said Dean. “We love the series; it’s great people, great venues, but selfishly, it’s my dream to race with my son, so we have to go to IMSA to do it.”
While Baker won’t defend his TCR championship, he could still run the Labour Day Sprints races at CTMP, depending on how the MPC season goes.
“It’s expensive and you can get yourself spread too thin; burnout people, your crew, everyone gets a little bit tired,” said Baker. “In addition to the five races, we have five test days, which are almost like events on their own…it compounds very quickly when you start putting in the amount of time and effort from everybody. We’ll see, it’s very much a wait and see basis, if we can make it back we certainly will.”
Even if he doesn’t return to FEL this season, he’ll still come by to support the series as much as possible. In the meantime, Dean will now have the opportunity to fulfill a dream, when he races together with Sam for the first time at Mid-Ohio.
