The 2023 season was intended to be a safe season after last years challenges. We picked Beau and Elite Autosports to rent a Spec Racer Ford, becuase their impeccable reputation as a support team. We also wanted to make sure that Jason had a large and competitive field to hone his skills in traffic. The SCCA SRF3 met those requirements nicely. The only down side was that he would be starting the season with an h-pattern car and it would be difficult to compete with the top drivers. Jason would get the sequential transmission sometime later in the season. As it turned out, having the h-pattern for most of the season helped Jason learn to drive harder and take his race craft to the next level.
After the excitement of the June Sprints the next race up, July 13-16, was Gingerman Raceway in Belding MI. This of course wasn’t the first time racing at this track. He’s raced karts and FE2 race. Fridays test day ended with his transmission giving up, but it was replaced over night and good to go for qualifying. Jason’s Saturday was something to watch, he was pushed off early in the first lap moving to last, but the drove through the field to third. Sunday was less exiting where the top three cars pulled away and he finished an uncontested third.
July 21-23 brought Jason back to Road America and the Rodeo Cat Majors and our second home. Once again Grandma brought all the luck he needed. The transmission that was put in at Gingerman also failed during Friday’s testing. Yet another standard transmission was installed by the team, Thanks Guys. After qualify second, Jason spent the Saturdays race battling in the top four until taking the lead in turn 6 just as the rain started causing the 3 cars behind him to run off track while Jason pulled away. At turn 8 cars rear trailing arm broke and the car started to handle extremely poorly. Knowing the cars behind could catch him, he pushed hard barely able to control the car though turn 9. At turn 10 the rain and lighting caused a full course caution, Jason still had to keep a good pace as the field collected behind him and followed him across the finish line. Sunday’s race was more of the battling this time the dry with Jason coming out on top again and winning the second race of the weekend.
Up next is the last SRF3 race of the season and there’s still F1600 racing to report on.