Beasley First at Mid-Ohio
Lexington, OH – On the Fourth of July at Mid-Ohio, it was Ohio-native Sam Beasley leading flag-to-flag to score his fifth victory of the F2000 Championship Series season. Beasley managed his race pace and kept a charging John LaRue in his mirrors lap after lap to take the win in his No. 4 Legacy Autosport Mygale. Sam Chastain took his first podium in F2000 with a determined drive to round out the podium.
Beasley and LaRue went at it for the duration of the all-green-flag race, trading fast lap for fast lap in a chaotic pace-setting form at the front of the field. LaRue moved in, but couldn’t get close enough to try a move, settling for second place. LaRue now aims to win for the third time in three years at Mid-Ohio with the second and final race of the weekend taking place on Sunday afternoon.
“It feels great to finally get a win here. We’ve come close before in the past, but it’s a great thing to add to the resume,” said Beasley. “It wasn’t a cruise drive or a Sunday drive, I had to concentrate and use 100 percent focus for the entire race. My whole team, Legacy Autosport, has done a great job this weekend and I can’t thank them enough. Hopefully we can do this again tomorrow.”
“We were trying,” said LaRue. “The car worked pretty well, I’m really happy with our second event this year.”
Chastain endured an early-race fight with Austin McCusker and Steve Bamford, as well as Trent Walko, for the final podium spot. Once he got the No. 30 Chastain Motorsports entry through to third, however, it was lights out, with Chastain checking out on the group of cars directly behind him for his first-ever visit to the F2000 podium.
“Steve (Bamford) and Austin (McCusker) definitely made me work for it,” said Chastain. “Once we got past them we could show the pace we had.”
McCusker would finish fourth, while Bamford failed to finish and Trent Walko completed the top five in the sole Spectrum chassis in the field.
Kevin Kopp was sixth after a long duel with Quinlan Lall, who failed to finish after the throttle linkage broke on his No. 1 entry.
Eric Filgueiras improved to seventh after starting 10th, while Rob Allaer finished eighth after coming from the back due to an electrical problem on the grid that demoted him from second to last as the field got going.
Steve Jenks was ninth at the checkered flags, with Dave Weitzenhof completing the top ten at his home track ahead of Dan Denison, Robert Wright and Brandon Dixon.
John McCusker missed the start after losing an engine in qualifying.
Full results are available through www.F2000Series.com under the results tab.
The weekend for the F2000 Championship Series continues from Mid-Ohio with round eight of the season as well as a qualifying session on Sunday, July 5.