Retrospect: Skip Barber F4 at NJMP
Like many in the world, in the spring of 2020 I was stuck in the house and took to sim racing as a way to stay sharp and stay busy. However the sim racing I ended up competing in had even bigger prizes than any real racing I had done up to that point. In the Skip Barber eRace Series the prizes ranged from a full season of F4 racing down to the various racing schools they run. After a hard fought 8 weeks of practice, up’s and down’s, and close racing I ended up finishing a strong 2nd in the championship which awarded me with a full 5-day racing school and 2 race weekends in the real world F4 race series.
After completing the 5-day school I was immediately thrown into the first rounds of the championship hosted at New Jersey Motorsports Park on the Lightning Circuit. This would be my first ever formula car race with the incredible downforce and lightness of the Mygale F4 cars taking some time to get used too.
The event took place on the 17th and 18th of August with the first day being monday for practice, qualifying, and race 1.
After hanging around the top 3 times in practice, qualifying 1 also resulted in a 3rd place qualifying with a time of 1:09.9. At the start of Race 1 I found myself up in 2nd defending most of the race from Ethan Ho in 3rd. Unfortunately with only a few laps left a full course yellow was thrown resetting things for a late race restart. I made a good restart and went side by side with the leader through turn 1 before falling back to 2nd going into turn 2. The race turned into a game of who could fire their tires up the best and unfortunately my lack of open wheel experience cost me, making a mistake into turn 1 and giving up 2nd. I still felt good about a podium considering my lack of experience in those cars and my speed through the race felt as fast as the other leaders.
Day 2 I ended up slipping down to 4th in qualifying with the tires starting to age and the track heating up. At the start of Race 2 I got a good jump but had nowhere to go and after that I just couldn’t find the rhythm I had in Race 1 settling for a lonely 4th place finish.
Although I couldn’t make it a double podium on debut, I was living a dream driving these cars and couldn’t believe where this year was going. My main goal for the weekend was the learn and become more comfortable in these cars to prepare for the 2nd event I would be competing in at Indianapolis in October. Since I didn’t have funding to do the other two events on the calendar I wouldn’t be driving for points and the Indianapolis race was going to be my biggest opportunity.
Again I can’t thank Skip Barber Racing School enough for these opportunities and I hope to do more with them in the future. If you want to see my full Race 1 POV video, you can find it on my Youtube channel by clicking the link below.
