Behind the Wheel: Chris Boersma

Chris Boersma from Ontario, Canada, has competed in GRIDLIFE TrackBattle in his #33 Honda Civic for several years in the Track Mod category. We sat down with Chris to talk about his motorsports beginnings, and how he, his car, and the sport have changed over the years as he chases a championship in the NOS Energy TrackBattle Championship.

Where did you get your start in motorsports?

I started drag racing, actually, back in 2001. We obviously started doing it not the right way, which was on the streets, how a lot of people started in those days. Then we moved our way up and built, like, a crazy all-motor Honda, made like 230 wheel horsepower. We were the second sleeved [engine] block in North America from Golden Eagle back in the day. My dad was big into drag racing, so it just kind of made a good fit. We did that for quite some time, and then life just got in the way, went to university, had other things going on, got sick of breaking the car. Honestly, I kind of got sick going to the drag strip.

I was getting ready to sell the car. In 2008 I had just started working, and just happened to find a local [time attack] series here, and I was like hey, that looks kind of cool. I enjoyed it and then fell down the rabbit hole.

In 2013 you started traveling with James Houghton (another longtime GRIDLIFE competitor) and over the years you’ve been competitors, but also sort of teammates.

Yeah, so, in 2013, I had this bright idea that we should go to California. Jim and I had raced, you know, had been racing for a few years together, and I spent the whole season convincing him to go because I wanted to go. I didn’t want to go by myself, I’d never raced outside of Ontario. You know, we had been so dominant in Canada, and we’re like oh, we’re going to clean house, we got this in the bag, no problem. And got there, and it was just a disaster. I broke my transmission on the test day. And didn’t run a sub two minute lap time at Button Willow, which was super disappointing. 

It was the start of you know, we’re good here in Canada but like, how can we compete with some of these cars in the U.S.? It just kind of sparked this energy in both of us. The next two years, we just worked together trying to make both cars better and better - and that’s how the team started and Eric [Lavigne] was kind of the glue between us.

You’ve had the Honda Civic since high school and used it as a delivery car?

My mom owned a courier company, and I wanted a Type R. And back then, you had to be on a waiting list, there was bidding wars, it was insane. I couldn’t afford it. So I was like okay, fine, I’m going to do the next thing, I’m going to get an Si. And then it was the same thing, bidding wars, so I actually missed out because it was only two years, ‘99 and ‘00, and I couldn’t get one. Then I happened to find this one used at a dealership from a parts manager that drove back and forth between Quebec. It’s like 70,000 km for a two year old car. I wound up buying it, and then deliveries for my mom. That was basically how I paid for school, commuting to downtown Toronto. It was like a two hour commute every day, deliveries at night, on the weekend, and then basically racing it [the car]. It was pretty crazy. Eventually I got to the point where I had to start buying Toyota Tercels and drive them into the ground because it was too much driving the Civic.

Took my wife to prom in it.

Talk about the development process in time attack and how your car has changed over time.

I started by going the wrong way, which was when we started coming from drag racing. We’re like, I need horsepower. I didn’t think about suspension, didn’t think about braking or tires, nothing. Let’s just throw a turbo kit on it and we’re going to go out and win. And then basically it was terrible. Then it’s just been an iterative process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t and rinse and repeat over and over again. We spent a lot of time, we went down the aero rabbit hole and worked with Professional Awesome and a bunch of aero people to figure out how to get that aspect of the car dialed in. I learned how to make carbon, built splitters and iteration after iteration. 

And now 2024, we’re going the opposite direction. Aero is hard, it’s impossible for us to make it work properly. Unless you have a really good suspension engineer who comes with you to every single track and optimizes the car, you’re not getting the most out of it, unfortunately. So we’ve taken the step to go back to something a bit more mild on the aero side of things, that mechanical grip setup, horsepower, and slippery, and hope that maybe gives us a chance to chase after some of these faster cars.

How do you balance learning about the car, but also pushing, given that time attack cars aren’t really built to just run laps?

You maybe get three or four laps per session if you’re lucky. So if you’re learning a new track, it’s hard, you have changing conditions. If you’re running through different conditions, the cars are sensitive to them, especially our front wheel drive cars. We’re asking so much of those tires, we’re lucky if we can do one lap before the tires are literally screaming. Sometimes I do extra laps knowing I’m not going to be fast, but giving myself a chance to kind of learn what the car will feel like in the afternoon when the tire temperature is way past where they should be.

Luckily our Candian Time Attack series, which I basically grew up in, has never had this notion of qualifying. You couldn’t even set a record. The only time, the only lap that counted was that last session at 4:00, so you had to do it in those three laps, so it kind of sets us up for this shootout style [Podium Sprint] where the pressure is on and you really have to deliver.

How much has the time attack scene changed since you started?

The size of the field is huge, right? You go to a GRIDLIFE event, there’s over 100 cars, 120 cars, 130 cars. And the variety in cars now - the thing I’ve been noticing over the last four or five years is just the quality of car that you can get now versus what we have is just next level. Like you look at a new Supra, they come with an amazing transmission out of the box, they can make horsepower, they have lots of mechanical grip; they’re not super expensive and they’re a great platform. And you see them, there’s tons of them in GRIDLIFE, they come out and they perform because they’re such a great car - and that’s kind of across the board, there’s so many platforms that you can build on now. 

Technology’s come so far, and the depth of the field has grown substantially. So a win to me means much more now than it did before, because the field is so much more difficult. The growth in the sport makes it so much more meaningful. Like when we won at Lime Rock last year, it was the first win in a long time that I had tears in my eyes under the helmet - that was so big for me.

During COVID, you were diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Can you tell us a bit about that diagnosis, and how it has impacted you and your racing?

COVID and since, has been a lot more challenging from the racing perspective. Ankylosing Spondylitis is an autoimmune disease that attacks your spine and the things connected to your spine. So I have a lot of trouble with my eyes and just general movement and ability to kind of hold things and do things that I used to be able to do quite easily. The car is in Waterloo, I’m in Toronto. It’s 2 hours for me to go to the shop and back, and I used to do it every day. I can’t do that anymore. I can’t sit in vehicles and drive for long periods of time. I wasn’t sure during COVID whether I was going to be able to race again, and that was really hard for me. And thankfully, I have some of the best people behind me, like Eric, who basically stepped up to the plate and said “listen, we can race”.

I get sore, I get stiff sometimes. We weren’t sure if we were going to make GRIDLIFE South Carolina because I had some issues with my eyes going on. It wasn’t the best event. It’s a terrible disease, it definitely takes a toll, but we’ve been able to kind of work around it, and so far it’s been pretty good.

How can the racing community learn more or contribute to fund research and support for Ankylosing Spondylitis?

There’s the Ankylosing Spondylitis Foundation in the U.S. and Canada, which do quite a lot of research into the disease. It’s branched under the umbrella of autoimmune disorders and arthritis based diseases, so a lot of research trickles down both ways. The medications have come a long way.

What’s next for Chris Boersma and the Honda Civic?

Yeah, I mean, I’d really like to be able to win a championship. That’s kind of a goal. We were really close last year, and I didn’t think we’d be able to get that close, to be honest. To get that elusive GRIDLIFE championship, that’s definitely something I’d like to do. My biggest thing is I enjoy being at the track with Eric and my dad and Greg and Jim and everybody. Maybe we’ll go fast and maybe we won’t, and that’s okay for me.

Is there any desire to try a different chassis after running the Civic for so long?

Yeah, there’s some other things possible that we’ve looked at in the works. There’s something I’ve had in my mind for many, many years, and Eric and I kind of have stumbled upon some things that make it happen. There’s been talk about possibly doing some GLTC racing as well. But yeah, we’re looking at some things.

What’s on your calendar for this season?

This year we went full ham, we did CMP, completely destroyed the car. But we’re basically doing all the GRIDLIFE festivals, plus a few more. We’re doing Mid-Ohio, we’re doing Midwest Festival, Road America, Lime Rock, and then Laguna.