4X Racing

Wednesday evening saw the first round of the new 60 Plus Openwheel Series aimed at the more senior drivers on the service 60 years old and older.  Don't be misled by the title of the series, this is no series full of old coffin dodgers out for a Sunday afternoon drive.  But a series full of talented and very rapid guys still with the drive and experience and a burning will to win.  The series, consisting of 2 ovals and 8 road courses, runs the Star Mazda and Formula Renault 2.0 with fixed setups which are carefully balanced to match the two cars evenly on track.

The first round of the series at Road America saw 16 drivers take the start of the 14 lap race, with 4X Racing's Andy Morgan in 5th spot and David Sustello lining up behind him in 7th.  After the rolling start behind the pace car Andy moved up a position to 4th spot going into T1 but then outbraked himself into T2 and went wide allowing a couple of cars to pass him and dropping him back to 6th.  During all of this David capitalised on this and moved from his 7th spot on the grid into 3rd.

Andy slowly regained his composure and began his fight back, slowly picking off the drivers in front until on lap 5 he passed David going into Canada Corner to take 3rd place.  A short while afterwards David lost control on the last corner when the back stepped out and touched the grass and fired David into the wall ending his good run.

The next lap saw Andy move up to 2nd place behind a flying John Unsbee when Jos van der Ven lost control on the exit of T1 and also fired himself into the inside wall.  The damage requiring him to limp around to the pits for repairs before continuing.  Andy didn't find it all plain sailing from there as he was being hunted down by Florida driver John Morgan, who Andy had passed to take 4th place from a few laps earlier.  Their battle was to see the two of them swopping positions in some very close wheel to wheel racing, with each driver giving the other racing room where needed.  It ended with a drag race between the two drivers to the line out of the final corner with John benefiting from the draft off Andy's Renault, but Andy held John off by the smallest of margins possible, just 0.002 seconds or around 4" in actual distance as the pictures show.

The next round on Wednesday 9th November is from Phoenix Oval which will see the series make it's first visit to an oval track.  As usual the series is being broadcast by MaxspeedTV.