Chastain Motorsports: Win in Opening Weekend, Strong F2000 Effort

April 16, 2015
Kyle Kirkwood

Noblesville, IN – It was an action packed weekend with five races across two Championships, and a total of five cars entered for Chastain Motorsports at Road Atlanta. It was Kyle Kirkwood, Parker Chase, Andrew Lewis and Will Harvey competing in the F1600 Formula F Championship Series triple-race weekend format, while Sam Chastain ran a pair of F2000 Championship Series races.

Kirkwood made his mark in his first points-paying start, storming to the lead from a second back on the last lap of race one on Saturday afternoon Road Atlanta to take the win in his Mygale/Honda.

“This is all new to me after some karting but overall it’s an awesome feeling,” said Kirkwood. “With the white flag out I thought I was too far back but I was able to catch (Steve Bamford) and pull off the pass.”

Lewis and Chase finished in 10th and 11th in that race, while Harvey led laps but finished 17th after a last-lap incident.

A day later, all four drivers would have their work cut out for them and the expanded Chastain Motorsports team kept busy with two races hours apart. Harvey rebounded to score his first F1600 podium with a third place run, while Kirkwood finished eighth with Chase in 11th and Lewis in 17th.

For race three, Kirkwood would miss out on victory after being a race-long threat for first place hardware, with the No. 29 entry settling for a second place effort by .139 seconds at the checkered flags. Chase and Lewis ran in tandem to the finish line, finishing 8th and 9th, while Harvey looked set for another podium finish before a late-race crash ended his day.

All drivers ran under the eyes of team driver coach and engineer Jay Howard and his driver development program.

It was a chaotic weekend at Road Atlanta with F1600 races seeing a train of eight to 10 cars at the front engulfed in a draft battle going down to the wire with three-wide racing down the back stretch the norm.

In the F2000 Championship Series, Sam Chastain adapted to his new ride with wings, moving up from the F1600 category he has raced in the last two seasons. Chastain took his No. 30 Van Diemen to a solid sixth place finish on Saturday.

Sunday was a different story for the young driver, however, as he tracked down the McCusker brothers in the closing stages of the race and passed both of them to finish fourth, taking two tenths off his fastest lap from Saturday’s race and underlining a weekend showing solid improvement in the F2000 category.

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