Jaygo Racing

Sunday's race was another interesting experience. It ended up with a good result for me but it was a fraught race for several other FST competitors.

All of the F500, FST, and FV competitors dove into Turn 1 to begin our 11-lap race. My father-in-law and brother-in-law were in the grandstands with an excellent view of the start and subsequent turn 1 carnage. After Doug Dale made an excellent move to dive inside of me going into Turn 1 (second great start in two races, Doug -- I'll get you one of these times!) all heck broke loose at the front of the field. I arrived at T1 to see Doug Seim (the overall and FST polesitter) spinning down to the inside of the track and a Formula 500 spinning to the outside of the track. After locking my brakes up and sliding around a bit I aimed to head between the two cars and successfully did that. Apparently a Formula Vee collected the spinning F500 behind me and the track went to a full course caution. After two laps behind the pace car we set off for Turn 1 again and this time everybody made it successfully. Unfortunately, this lap was my first dry, green lap on the track all weekend and I had two huge bobbles on the back side of the track that cost me positions and seconds on the track (and took me out of the FST lead battle that was, from what I have heard, excellent). I recovered from those bobbles and began learning the track in the dry and picking up positions and time on the cars ahead of me. Unfortunately, during our 6th green flag lap there were two separate incidents in the chute part of the Boot at Watkins Glen. First, Doug Dale hit the wall turning onto the chute after the car washed out into the marbles during a passing attempt by Carl Middelegge (who finished a strong second - congrats to Carl). Second, Guy Bellingham experienced a stuck throttle in the toe of the boot and hit the wall quite hard. His car suffered extensive damage and Guy was taken to the hospital in Elmira to have his cuts, scrapes, back pain, etc. tended to by medical professionals. Guy has since reported (via the Formula First Exchange) that he is mostly alright but still pretty banged up. Needless to say, a serious incident such as this brought about the second and final full course caution of the race and the race ended under yellow.
Due to the incidents in front of me I came home 3rd this weekend and got a cool looking trophy for my third place showing (after I had to convince the guy in impound that my car was not a Formula Vee). I would rather get a third on pure speed but part of the battle is finishing and I was able to do that. My result put me just five points behind Bill Bonow for the championship lead and I'm looking forward to going to Road America and hopefully challenging for the win there. I'll report to you in about a month from Elkhart Lake, WI. Thanks for everybody's support!

As Jim, B.J., and I rode to Watkins Glen on Thursday in the SR Racing hauler, Jim told me that an "official" Formula First session had never been run in the rain. This morning at Watkins Glen that officially changed. Along with that, I'd never raced in the rain either. Needless to say, today was a very interesting and educational day.

Due to the fact that the Watkins Glen long course is 3.4 miles long (which makes for approximately 3-minute laps in our cars in the wet) and the fact that the Glen region specified 12 minute qualifying sessions this morning and this afternoon, our class only made eight laps of the track today. For the many Formula First drivers here this weekend who were new to Watkins Glen this proved to be a big challenge but everybody made it through the sessions with no on-track incidents.

In the first session this morning I ran a 3:01.4 (6th out of 10 FST cars that took to the track this morning). The goal for this morning's session was to learn the track, learn about driving in the rain, and keep the car off the guardrails. Thankfully I succeeded in doing that this morning.

This afternoon I wanted to get down under three minutes so that I could outqualify most of the Vees and get closer to the race at the front of the Formula First field. This afternoon I followed Rob Howden (in the brand new SR Racing Evolution) to grid and we both laid down times in the 2:56 range to qualify 4th (Rob) and 5th (me) in FST. Other than the exciting moment that I had almost spinning out in the inner loop (due to not being able to see a thing in front of me (including the turn-in point) except spray from other cars), this afternoon's session was reasonably uneventful on the track.

Kudos to my father-in-law and brother-in-law for making the four hour hike from NJ to Watkins Glen, NY to see me qualify this afternoon. Hopefully I'll be able to put on a good show for them during the race tomorrow! I should be able to update the blog Monday or Tuesday night this week with a full report from tomorrow's race.

After I turned a 1:23.1 during Saturday's race, my goal for Sunday was to turn times in the 1:22s. The fastest lap turned during the race on Saturday was in the low 1:21s, so I thought turning a few 1:22 laps would make for a largely successful weekend, especially since this was my first time at Blackhawk Farms.

After adding 13 additional pounds of lead underneath me so as to appease the crazy voodoo scales at Blackhawk Farms, I rolled the car to the grid for Sunday morning's first qualifying session. Jim and B.J. from SR Racing were standing by the fence giving me times and they displayed several times in the 1:23 range so I was pleased with my consistency but disappointed that I had not cracked the 1:22 bracket yet. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I consulted the official timing sheet and noticed that I had turned a 1:22.986. I did not think it was fair to criticize Jim and B.J. for being off by 14-thousandths of a second. :-) I was pleased with the morning session but I felt that I could still do better.

Prior to the afternoon qualifying session I requested more oversteer in the car (making it "looser" for you NASCAR folks). I felt that I would be a little faster if I could get the back of the car to swing through the corners a little better. Jim and B.J. added a pound of air to both rear tires and we rolled back to grid for the afternoon qualifying session. By combining my better handling car with a shifting tip from Bill Bonow (recommending I approach a corner in 4th and then downshift to 3rd rather than taking the whole section in 3rd) I ran a 1:22.520 to qualify 2nd in Formula First and 3rd overall. I nipped eventual race winner Doug Dale by a couple tenths of a second. I was quite excited after qualifying and looking forward to a fun race.

Doug outdragged me to turn 1 on the start and he and Bill Bonow proceeded to distance themselves from me after a few laps. However, I ran a consistent race (lapping several of the Formula Vees in the race) to finish 3rd in Formula First and 3rd overall. This was my best weekend in the car so far and I continue to get more and more comfortable with the car. A quick check of the points standings (found at www.formula-first.org) shows that I'm 2nd in the points behind Bill as the series heads to Watkins Glen. I will only have about 10 laps there to learn the track prior to our race on Sunday, but I will do my very best to run up front and bring home another solid finish for our sponsor, Progressive Basics!

Thanks again for everybody's support. I plan to have the photo gallery operational at www.jaygoracing.com this week, and I'll be blogging from Watkins Glen in a little less than two weeks.

I will put up a complete post tonight about Sunday's track action at Blackhawk Farms, but go ahead and check out www.formula-first.org for an unbiased :-) review of this weekend's races. Plus, if you click the link for points standings you will see that Jaygo Racing is sitting 2nd in points after four rounds of the championship. I'll talk to everybody tonight.

Well, today was certainly an interesting day at the track. For starters, we had very comfortable weather all day today. The temperatures reached into the mid 80s but the humidity was not too bad and everybody felt much better getting out of the cars today than they did after the last two races at Grattan.

I took to the track this morning and ran my first ever laps at Blackhawk Farms Raceway. I quickly found out that Blackhawk Farms has far less grip than Grattan did, as I spun twice in the first session. Thankfully, I was immediately aware of what I had done wrong to cause the spins and I did not spin for the rest of the day. In practice/qualifying 1 I was more than six seconds slower (in the 1:27s) than the fastest Formula First (FST) time. I was not very happy with that, but it was my first session on the track, so all in all things were not terrible. After all, I didn't hit anything. :-)

In the second session I gained two seconds (down into the 1:25s) but all of my times were disallowed due to the car being declared underweight by seven pounds. This surprised Jim (the owner of SR Racing, who is preparing the car), but there was nothing we could do about the decision. Bill Bonow had been declared underweight in the first session, but given the large disparity between the weights they quoted Bill as he ran through the scales multiple times, the theory among the FSTers is that Blackhawk's scales have crazy voodoo measurements. Bill was declared 40 pounds underweight, added 68 pounds (which should have made him +28 pounds), but his next run through the scales said that he was 40 pounds OVERweight (rather than 28). That would seem to indicate an issue with the scales, but the chief steward disagreed with us. Based on the weight issue, my qualifying times from the 2nd session were wiped out, so I started last for the race.

The race was a lot of fun for me, but it did not go as well for a couple of my fellow Formula First competitors. I was able to pick off one FST (who laid back on the start due to cooling issues) and pass about four Formula Vees before a full-course caution was thrown. As I traveled around the first half of the course I saw the double yellow flags from the corner stations indicating the full-course yellow but I did not see the reason why. However, as I approached the last turn I saw the cause of the caution (and the black flag ALL that followed). Jared Smith and Doug Seim had been dicing for the lead for the first half of the race, but Doug had passed Jared and put a car length or two between them. Under braking for the last turn Jared had a right front shock mount let go and the car shot to the right, did not brake effectively (due to the broken shock mount), and ended up going up and over Doug's rear wheels. Jared's car was still on top of Doug's as I came by. The two ambulances present at the scene worried me, but I found out during the black flag (where we were called to the pits to sit and wait for the accident to be cleaned up) that both Doug and Jared were OK.

When the race resumed, I was 7th on track and 3rd in FST. This would be my first restart during a race and I was taken to school by four Vees that drafted by me on the start. I believe I have learned a better way to restart. :-) Anyhow, I was able to repass all of the Vees that drafted by me (along with one more) and ended up 4th overall and 3rd in FST. By virtue of being 3rd I was called to impound to have the car weighed once again. Oddly enough, despite the fact that we added 12 pounds before the race, the car weighed in at exactly the same weight and I was moved to last place overall and in FST. On the bright side, a glance at the timing chart revealed that I had done a 1:23.1 (within 1.8 seconds of the fastest lap of the race in FST). I was very pleased with that ending to my first day at Blackhawk Farms, even though the man and the crazy voodoo scales did not give me the "official" results that I was looking for.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get into the 1:22s with my car, and hopefully I will make weight. I had an extra helping of dinner at the FST party tonight to make sure that I was doing my part to make weight tomorrow. :-)

I will do my best to update this blog again on Monday when I return to Kentucky. Thanks again to everybody for all of their support.