Two weeks ago, I attended the June Sprints to get some time on the Road America track before the race this past weekend. With it being a new track for me and a new surface, I wanted to spend some time getting to know it before the Formula Race Promotions races.
Formula 1600/Formula Ford is great racing. It is a highly competitive class that focuses on developing driver skills. At a long track, like Road America with 3 long straights, drafting is one of those skills that is so important.
After a couple of decent practices days, qualifying on Saturday morning didn’t work in our favor. Our strategy was to go out as a team and work the draft between my teammate and I. The session was shortened first by a wreck in the previous session and then again in our session so the safety vehicles on track for our flying lap impeded us. I ended up qualifying 9th overall.
Starting from 9th I got a great start and jumped up to 4th on the first lap. Yellow flag came out on lap 1 with an incident further back in the field before restarting on lap 4. Between the session already being shortened due to incidents in previous races and the yellow flag laps in this race, it became a sprint once we went green. There was an intense battle up front during the remainder of the 8-lap race with only 0.317 second separating first through fifth places! First crossed a little ahead of the rest but it was the first of the photo finishes for the weekend. Here is 2nd – 5th as they come across the line:
A penalty on the 3rd place finisher promoted me to a fourth place finish for the race. This group were all in a line coming up to the start finish line using the draft to gain momentum for the dash to the line. As a result of the draft, qualifying for Race 2, which is set using the fastest lap times from the previous race were all scrambled. I was able to get a decent lap time to start 5th for race 2, but everyone that finished in front of me in race 1 were starting behind me in race 2.
Race 2 was a crazy one. There was a nine-car breakaway. In the first couple of laps, I was able to move from fifth to first, then down to 7th on lap 3. I worked my way back to the front of the pack by lap 6. From there it was a back and forth between the top 4 in that group of 9 cars for the final 3 laps. A few lead changes, a bit of a breakaway for the leader before the draft allowed the rest of the group to catch back up and the a few corners with as many as 6 cars in two rows going side by side. I was able to draft up the hill to the start finish line and swung out to race for the checkered. It was so close that the timing app indicated I finished first, but a review of the finish line video shows I came in second.
To watch race 2, you can go to SpeedTourTV and scroll ahead to 1:02 for the start of the race. Its a great clean race with a lot of battling back and forth.
With all of the back and forth battling on just about every lap, I didn’t get a great fast lap time, setting the 8th fastest lap of the race. The top 9 were within 0.7 seconds of one another in the qualifying lap times for race 3.
Race 3 was another battle among the top 6 drivers for most of the race. Starting 8th, I was able to move into the top 5 on the first lap as the front group broke away from the pack. From there, it was a battle until around lap 7 when the leader started to pull away from the rest of the group as the group continued to fight for position over trying to catch up to the leader. It was another race to the finish line for the last spot on podium and I came up just short, crossing the line 0.009 seconds behind the third place finisher. The replay of the race can be found at SpeedTourTV starting at 4:58.
It was fun to see a lot of my karting friends and I appreciate everyone who stopped by to see us this weekend! I even got to do a radio interview on Friday which was a lot of fun! Check out my media page to listen!