FRP Road Atlanta

[Bob Wright]

It is less than a week out to the first Formula Race Promotions race of the 2019 season, the 14^th edition of the Series. The track is Michelin Tire Road Atlanta, one of the great tracks in North America. Close to 50 cars in four classes will compete Thursday, Friday and Saturday in what should be a great racing, and hopefully a couple of track records. Formula Race Promotions has always promoted vertical integration of high quality gentleman drivers with young up and coming career minded professionals. 2019 is no different.

For the Atlantic Championship Series we find KHill Motorsport’s Dario Cangialosi moving up from his 2018 F1600 championship to take a run at FRP’s top class. Also from the KHill camp will be Flinn Lazier, 2018 SCCA FE National Champion and third generation racer, son of 1996 Indy 500 winner Buddy and grandson of Bob, noted CART and Indy 500 driver. Up against him will be Polestar’s SCCA National Champion and FRP Champion Keith Grant and Spencer Brockman, with Lee Alexander from the Swan Motorsports camp. In this season’s Atlantic Master’s category we find Swan’s Bob Corliss and Rich Zober, KHill’s Dudley Fleck and Kirk Kinsfater joined by newcomers Bill Gillespie and Robert A. Wright. While they run for the master’s title, they of course can and will challenge for the overall win.

F1600 looks to start 18 entries packed with talent. KHill brings 2018 SCCA FF National Champion, 2017 Team USA Scholarship, and 2017 season FRP podium finish winner Jonathan Kotyk back to the paddock. Also from KHill will be rookie Bryce Aron. Team Pelfrey will again host a strong contingent with rookies Josh Green, Aryton Ori along with multi-year competitor Dexter Czuba, who just won a SCCA Super Tour race at VIR this weekend. Rice Race Prep is bringing a pair of drivers, rookie Burton Kyle August and well known IMSA Prototype winner Misha Goikberg. Other contenders we should watch for are Christian Lall Dass and Raceworks’ entry Ryan Bjerke. In the Master’s class returning drivers Mike Scanlan, Dave Petzko, Scott Rubenzer and Cliff Johnson will face Bob Reid, who is moving from F2000 and Polestar’s Tim Dunn, a FRP F2000 race winner who took some time off after much success in SCCA FF. Joining this group for Road Atlanta will be a trio of Canadian drivers prepped by Britain West; Matt Gidman, Gord Ross and Zachary Vanier.

In F2000 the talent runs deep with 2018 FRP Champion Steve Jenks up against SCCA FB National Champion and FRP Champion Brandon Dixon, FRP two time Champion Tim Minor, and 7 time SCCA National Champion Dave Weitzenhof. Entered as well is Megan Gilkes, a third generation Canadian racer who just beat out 125 other women world-wide to win a spot in the prestigious new all-female European Formula 3 W Series Championship. They will be joined by FRP veteran and SCCA Super Tour winner Peter Gonzales and FRP race winner Davis Durett. We will also see Misha Goikberg do double duty this weekend in the Rice Race Prep F2000 Citation that piloted Steve Bamford to the the 2016 FRP Championship.

Joining FRP for the first time is the North American Formula 1000 Championship. NorthAmF1000 cars are 1000cc superbike engines in the rear of 800 pound formula cars which scream at 14,000 RPM. Not only are the cars amazing to hear on track, many familiar names in the racing paddock are entered in the opening round of 2019, including 2017 SCCA National Champion – Alex Mayer, “godfather of F1000” – Jeremy Hill, highly accomplished racer Glenn Cooper, as well as series regulars Tim Pierce, Jose Gerardo, Doug Hertz, Steve Hamilton, Charles Livingston, Reilly Harris, and Michael Crowe. For more information about the North American Formula 1000 Championship please visit www.NorthAmF1000.com

Practice begins April 18^th with races on April 19^th and 20^th. Follow all the action on Race Monitor.

[John LaRue]

Bob,

Can you post the entries? I can't get the entry list to download from your website.

John

[Lotus7]

Motorsportreg.com has the link to the entry list

[Chris Livengood]

Bob,

Can you post the entries? I can't get the entry list to download from your website.

John

It's live now.

[John LaRue]

Dixon Citation Zetec
Durrett VD Zetec
Gilkes VD Zetec
Goikhberg Citation Zetec
Gonzales Radon Zetec
Jenks Elan VD Mazda
Minor Citation Zetec
Weitzenhoff Elan VD Mazda
Wright Elan VD Zetec

A small but very stout field in F2000 - I am looking forward to reports and results.

I am personally disappointed that I am not able to make the event, but am hopeful that we can build on F2000/FC entries this season. It is imperative that we do so if the class is to survive in its current status. While it certainly would be good to draw new people into the class, that is the most difficult way to build entries. It would be my thought that we go after the low hanging fruit - that would be to encourage those who already own cars to get them back on track.

I am well aware that lots of things have changed over the past several years in the world of small bore open wheel racing, but the one thing that I believe has hurt this class significantly was the loss of two major cheerleaders, Mike Eakin (Frog) and Mike Rand. My hat is off to those guys for the countless hours they put into promoting F2000/FC. Similar thanks need to go out to Janice, Mike's wife, for the work she put into photographing and working with Mike to get some great shots up on the internet within hours. Frog's prolific posts and track reports not only told us who was quick, but gave us some color on the characters of the class and dove into the technical issues as well. I certainly recall his great coverage of the Runoffs at Topeka when he provided commentary and "spy" photos of all of the different aero bits that were being used to eek out that last bit of grip. Those posts kept us all glued to Apex watching for updates; all of that is now gone. We no longer see much in the way of postings on APEX about what is going on at the track, let alone technical reports, and as a result, I think interest has dwindled. Maybe I am unique in my thinking, but those posts always seemed to motivate me to get back on track. To support my theory about the technical reports I would point you to Marshall Pruett's sports car postings on Racer which delve deeply into the technical perspective and are extremely popular.

I think that FRP has done an excellent job of posting content on Facebook and getting results onto the website, but there has been very sporadic coverage on Apex which seems to me to be the "go to" source for information and news concerning this class, at least so far as it concerns us "established" participants. It is my belief, maybe more hope, that if we can stir some discussion and content along these lines on Apex there is a chance that we can get those people with the cars sitting dormant to dust them off and get back out for a race weekend or two. There are ample cars, engines, gearboxes and the like to have stellar fields; they simply do us no good sitting in garages. I would encourage everyone to take some photos while they are at the track, working in the shop, etc... and to communicate about what they are doing. It is up to us to drive the interest and entries; in the absence of proper numbers this class is destined for change that we may not want or enjoy.

I would also encourage the Race Chairs and Officials to take a play from Rand's book. Routinely, a couple of weeks before an upcoming race, Rand would be on the phone asking if I was going to make it to the track or if there was anything he or the series could do to help me get there. For the events that I did make he would usually ask me where I wanted to paddocked and had a spot waiting. When we would arrive he was usually the first to show up at the trailer to extend a warm welcome. Simply put, he made it easy to go racing and hard to say no. Were things perfect? No, but I believe that most everyone in the paddock felt as though they were appreciated. I know that Bob and all of the SCCA officials likewise are appreciative of our participation and support; Rand just set a very high bar in that regard.

To summarize, I think that for the class to survive we each must take ownership and begin to promote and encourage increased participation. We need to take time out of our schedule at the track to shoot some pics and to get them up on APEX and other social media sites. We need to call our friends and encourage them to get their cars on track. It isn't that difficult and it might just work. If we don't do this ourselves it is damn sure no one is going to do it for us.

John

[Steve Demeter]

Dave W in an Elan Mazda Perish the thought.

[John LaRue]

It looks like they found some dry asphalt in Atlanta this afternoon. As of 12:49 pm I had a report that no cars had been on track! A very tight front row should make for some excitement. Jenks and Durrett aren't far behind.

Dixon - 1:25.640
Goikhberg - 1;25.660
Jenks - 1:26.269
Durrett - 1:27.765
Gilkes - 1:28.291
Gonzales - 1:28.521
Wright - 1:28.916
Weitzenhoff - 1:32.235

[Brandon Dixon]

The track was decent with the exception of turn 6. There was water running across the track from the outside to the inside in about 3 places between the apex and the exit. It was enough water that you carried the water into turn 7.

It looks like we will have cool temperatures and hopefully fully dry track for tomorrow. Both races are tomorrow.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bill Johnson 42]

Congrats to Brandon and crew on the double win!

On top of their own effort, which was considerable especially with the changing / sometimes adverse weather conditions, they also took the time to help their neighbor in another class do a last second tire change and get on the track.

Great effort and well deserved wins!

[problemchild]

Yes! Congrats to Brandon, Wren,and crew. Fine job.

We hope to make it a bit tougher at the Glen.

[DaveW]

Dave W in an Elan Mazda Perish the thought.

It's only temporary - better than missing races, especially after my 1-race-long season last year.

There's about a 50% probability of having my Citation ready for Mid-Ohio at the end of June.

[problemchild]

To summarize, I think that for the class to survive we each must take ownership and begin to promote and encourage increased participation. We need to take time out of our schedule at the track to shoot some pics and to get them up on APEX and other social media sites. We need to call our friends and encourage them to get their cars on track. It isn't that difficult and it might just work. If we don't do this ourselves it is damn sure no one is going to do it for us.

John

I am continually frustrated when I see people asking about the results or happenings at an ongoing event or just finished event, and I see people watching the thread who were there (at the event) but do not reply with info. As John said, in the early days of FRP, the Mikes made it tortuous to miss an FRP event. You just wanted to be there so badly!

It is understandable that "promoters" prefer to link people back to their websites for info. I do that myself and have over 300K in hits to my little site, but we, as Apexspeed members, have no obligation to do that. Please post results, pics, ask questions, etc. It is awkward for the race winners to post info, but you be sure they will respond to questions, congratulations, and attention.

It is great to see Chris Livengood helping the Series with PR. As a former F2000 driver and coach, and frequent Apexspeed contributor, let's help him with the task at hand!

[Bob Wright]

Chris is still coming up to speed on the PR gig- It should get better as we get more into the season. Our social media/photography person fell off a photo stand Thursday and went home with a broken shoulder. That, too should improve at the next event.

What we really need are more people not to be scared of FRP and come race with us. I get any number of drivers telling me they are planning to come try us, but they never materialize.

[Steve Bamford]

What we really need are more people not to be scared of FRP and come race with us. I get any number of drivers telling me they are planning to come try us, but they never materialize.

Offer them free first entry for one race. What do they have to lose? If they want to do the 2nd race of the weekend pro rate the costs.