Date: July 24, 2014

Re: Race Department

Location: USRMC Nationals

Coming off a strong performance in June at the Summer Shootout, J3 Competition showed strong at the 2014 USRMC Nationals held in Tooele, UT at Miller Motorsportspark last week. With a solid line up consisting of eight drivers competing in DD2, Max Sr., Max Jr., and Masters Max, the team was able to maintain its positioning at the front-end of the field during the entire event.

After a few days of solid practice, which allowed the team to optimize several different solutions, the team moved onto qualifying on Friday morning. The team struck sharply during its qualifying efforts as firstly, Alessandro Bressan grabbed the DD2 pole position by a solid two tenths of a second. After DD2, the junior squad showed well as Luis Forteza took pole position in his qualifying run with Braden Eves in his first National Rotax event taking 6th putting both drivers in the ‘Super Pole’. After Super Pole shook out, Eves had advanced to 5th place while Forteza missed the penultimate spot by a mere .071, thus settling for second place. Finally, Max Sr. heated up with Thomas Issa holding pole position for much of the session before being bumped to 2nd in the closing laps. As the Max Sr. top six moved to ‘Super Pole’ the rookie Thomas Issa laid a time down that put him on Super Pole and thus P1 for all his heat races.

Qualifying Recap
-DD2 – Pole Position
-Max Jr. – Pole Position: 2 Drivers in Super Pole: 2nd (Forteza) and 5th (Eves) after Super Pole
-Max Sr. – Super Pole (Issa)

The DD2 category was dominated during the event by Alessandro Bressan who after taking pole position, systematically won all three heat races and the subsequent pre final event by a substantial margin in all four events. Settling into the final racing got dicey as it was apparent that the competition’s plan was to attack Bressan at all costs, even if it meant contact. Even with the fight brought to the doorstep, Bressan managed the lead and looked to be enroute for the win until the sky’s opened up and it began to rain heavily with three laps to go, thus relegated a perfect weekend to 2nd place for Bressan as he crossed the line with yet another podium. Bressan’s teammate Michael Ilavia had a stellar event too as he bested his pace again and again during the event. With a great set of heat races Ilavia positioned himself well for the pre-final and finals. In the pre-final Ilavia made nice late race move to secure 5th place. The late race rain that came in the final spiced things up for Ilavia as he drove home to cross the line in 5th place earning him a well-deserved top five finish.

In Max Masters J3 Competition had John Bonanno, who joined the team after a limited schedule in 2014. Bonanno worked well within team and positioned himself solidly in the top ten after qualifying. A rough set of heats for Bonanno made his work difficult starting with the pre-final. Even with a solid and competitive field ahead of him, Bonanno drove well in the final finished in 6th place with a solid pace.

The Max Jr. heat races proved to be almost as chaotic as the Summer Shootout with a mixed set of results for the team. Forteza won two of his heats on track but a couple infractions negated those efforts with penalties. Braden Eves enjoyed a solid set of heat races too, where David Ilavia proved his paces but a few on track incidents relegated the Texan further back on the point’s standings than he had hoped for. Theo Chick, who again had solid pace was unfortunately stuck in a hard position after a sub-par qualifying effort due to being relegated to group 1, however, chick recovered nicely to take the LCQ win and join the fight on Sunday. Race Day proved well for the entire junior squad, missing the podium in the last laps, Forteza came home in 4th place, while David Ilavia finished 7th, Braden Eves in 8th, with Theo Chick taking 23rd after first lap contact.

The weekend concluded with the intense Max Sr. category and after Issa’s Super Pole the team worked through the heat races to develop the package for the important final. With solid results of 6th, 2nd and 1st in his heat races, Issa enjoyed a front row starting position for the pre-final. After an action packed first few laps, Issa took the point and led for the first quarter of the race before relinquishing the lead and settling in for 2nd. In the final, Issa was marching back to the point early on and had unfortunate contact for second pushing Issa back down the grid and forcing him to work his way back to the front. A long race proved not long enough as Issa continually reset fast lap during his final march to 4th place while taking 3-4 tenths of a second out of the leaders on given laps. After post race penalties, Issa received a ten second penalty pushing his final finish to tenth.

“At the end of the day, we missed the finally tally that we were more than in contention for. Taking two pole positions, 1 Super Pole, 6 heat race wins 1 pre-final win and not to mention having multiple drivers in contention really shows the depth of our program. We are also very pleased that all our drivers were utilizing our materials most of which are produced here in the USA proving yet again that the development and material side of our offerings are more than on par with the best in the world,” stated Team Manager.

J3 Competition is an industry leading Raced Department, which attends some of the world’s most challenging events and interested parties are encouraged to contact J3 Competition at Technical@J3Competition.com or 814-864-1846 to realize a potential program fit for any North American series.