Chastain Motorsports Marks Debut Bittersweet F1600 Weekend
Noblesville, IN – Chastain Motorsports marked their first full pro F1600 Formula F Championship Series doubleheader weekend at Road Atlanta, April 11-13. The former IndyCar squad was running a single Mygale/Honda for Sam Chastain, the No. 27 Miller Eads entry. It was a top-three kind of weekend, with Chastain turning the second fastest time at 1:29.527 of the day during Friday testing, before a scary end with a closing-stages race crash on Saturday.
Making that 1:29.527 somewhat more impressive was the fact the Mygale/Honda combination turned it without a slipstream tow around the 12-turn Road Atlanta.
A shortened qualifying session had the No. 27 slotted in seventh on the grid sheets, with the first ten cars covered by under a second in a highly competitive field.
As the Saturday race unfolded, a lead pack of 12 cars broke away from the field, and traded the lead back and forth for the duration of the race. In the closing stages of the 30-minute, 16-lap run, however, Team Pelfry’s Esteban Garzon made contact with Sam Chastain, sending the No. 27 rolling through the gravel in turn 10.
“Overall the weekend is not how we wanted it to go but that’s racing,” said Chastain, who was driving under the guidance of Jay Howard at Road Atlanta. “We had a lot of speed in practice but did not have the race as we had planned.”
Chastain would emerge unhurt following a scary incident. The team elected not to run Sunday and will fully bounce back for rounds three and four, of 14, at Watkins Glen, May 16-18.
While Chastain Motorsports ran a single entry at Road Atlanta, the team has a second Mygale and is engage in conversations to run two or three cars for the remainder of the season.
“The plan is to test a few times before Watkins Glen in May and I hope to arrive there with a teammate as well,” added the 21-year-old.
The F1600 Series fielded 25 competitive cars at Road Atlanta, a significant increase year-over-year, and all signs point to the grid expanding as the field is set to run the full course (with the “boot”) at Watkins Glen next month.
Learn more about Chastain Motorsports, three time Indy 500 entrants and current full-time F1600 Championship team, at www.ChastainMotorsports.com.