BOWMANVILLE, Ontario — It was already going to be a big weekend for Pfaff Motorsports, racing on its home track in front of hundreds of team guests and Canadian fans at the Chevrolet Grand Prix. A pending milestone makes it even grander.
Sunday’s race will be the 50th for Pfaff in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition, and the first 49 have been most impressive. In that span, Pfaff has taken home 12 race wins, 26 podium finishes and two class season championships.
Not bad for the team that Pfaff general manager Steve Bortolotti labeled “the little engine that could from Canada.”
In recognition of the landmark start this weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Pfaff is reprising the red-and-black plaid livery that so many fans embraced from the team’s beginnings. Oliver Jarvis and Marvin Kirchhoefer will drive the No. 9 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo whose look resembles Canadian lumberjack flannel.
“It’s a huge weekend for us,” Bortolotti said.
Pfaff Motorsports, part of the Pfaff Automotive group that includes 15 car dealerships across Canada and an aftermarket performance division, made its WeatherTech Championship debut in 2019 with immediate results. Fielding a Porsche 911 GT3 R, Pfaff won twice and finished third in the GT Daytona (GTD) team standings. Series rookie and Canadian Zacharie Robichon also placed third in the driver standings.
The global pandemic limited the team to competing in just two races in 2020, but Bortolotti and team management endeavored to keep the team together. They offered to continue paying crew members throughout the year or rehiring them the following year if they went to work for another team in 2020. That grand gesture went a long way in retaining staff continuity as the team was about to take off.
“We haven’t been perfect on turnover – nobody is,” Bortolotti said. “But I definitely would say the majority of the team, if you looked at a photo from 2019 and a photo now, you’d see a lot of the same faces.”
In 2021, Robichon and Laurens Vanthoor teamed to win four races and the GTD championship. The next season, Pfaff joined the new GT Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) class and dominated. Behind Porsche factory drivers Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell, the No. 9 won five times in 10 races and drove away with the class title. It was the culmination of a five-year plan Bortolotti had delivered to team owner Chris Pfaff in late 2016, charting the course ahead.
“I made this plan about how we want to be in IMSA,” Bortolotti recalled, “but had this goal to be … running against the factories as the little engine that could from Canada. It’s cool that we’ve kind of accomplished everything on that five-year plan.”
The 2023 season saw Vanthoor, Klaus Bachler and Patrick Pilet win the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and the No. 9 finish fourth in the GTD PRO standings. This year came with the seismic move from Porsche to McLaren, which brought with it development growing pains. But following a pair of second-place finishes in the last three races, optimism is strong once more at Pfaff.
When asked what it would mean to get that first win of the season on Sunday, with a new manufacturer partner, in front of 400-plus Pfaff teammates and family, Bortolotti paused.
“It would be awesome,” he finally said. “Having been fortunate enough when we won (at CTMP) in ’22, you don’t realize how much it means to win at home when your family is there and that sort of stuff. Not everyone gets a home track race, so being able to win it just makes it that much more special.”