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!