Minor Makes It Three for Three

“Our cars were very evenly matched today,” said Minor, who is off to a great start to the season, winning all three events thus far “With the restart I kind of just went with it and looked forward, it was clean racing into turn one.”

Minor went on to thank his Ski Motorsports crew in victory circle, who put in a long day on Thursday fixing a suspension pick-up point on the No. 88 Citation chassis. The Masters Class veteran adds a couple of points to his Championship lead over the No. 91 of Connery.

Connery, furthermore, edged closer to returning to the top step of the podium – a place he hasn’t visited since October of 2011. That year marked six race wins for the then-rookie before a challenging year in 2012 developing another chassis.

“It was our race to lose today,” explained Connery. “Tim and I had a great battle for the entire race and if it had stayed green it probably would have been ours. It was a great fight and that’s why I’m in the F2000 Championship Series.”

While Minor was the class of the field at VIRginia International Raceway in April, Connery and Grant have essentially caught the No. 88 in terms of speed.

Marking his first F2000 pro podium was Polestar’s David Grant, who continues to get faster with each session and led practice on Thursday.

“It’s been a good start to the 2013 season and I need to thank Polestar for getting me up to speed so quickly,” added the Tennessee native, who won both Atlantic races at Road Atlanta in 2012.

While Minor took the win in his Citation chassis, Connery and Grant followed in Van Diemens.

Zach Craigo was fourth yet again, and went side-by-side with Grant into turn 10 on the last lap but couldn’t make it stick.

Roberto Lorena completed the top five for HP-Tech Motorsport with Sergio Pasian, Jim Libecco, Steve Bamford, Federico Mosconi, and Dwight Rider rounding out the top ten.

Mosconi marked the first of the WISKO cars, and finished third at VIR in April. Teammates Shane Morris and Kevin Kopp failed to finish, with Kopp running as high as fourth in the early stages of the 18-lap race.

The Radons of Robert Wright and 2006 F2000 Series Champion Matt McDonough both failed to finish with mechanical issues. Peter Gonzalez was the only finishing Radon chassis in 13th.

The F2000 Championship Series weekend at Road Atlanta finishes with round four of the 14-race season on Saturday at 12:20, with an early-morning 9:40 qualifying session scheduled for the grid.

Race Results

PosNo.NameLapsTotal TmDiffGapAvg. SpeedBest Tm 1 88 Tim Minor/M 18 28:39.285 - - 95.733 1:25.647 2 91 Kyle Connery 18 28:40.239 +0.954 +0.954 95.680 1:25.586 3 29 David Grant 18 28:40.853 +1.568 +0.614 95.646 1:26.004 4 18 Zach Craigo 18 28:41.071 +1.786 +0.218 95.633 1:26.168 5 9 Roberto Lorena 18 28:42.659 +3.374 +1.588 95.545 1:27.084 6 23 Sergio Pasian 18 28:43.693 +4.408 +1.034 95.488 1:27.296 7 98 Jim Libecco 18 28:44.040 +4.755 +0.347 95.469 1:27.439 8 71 Steve Bamford/M 18 28:44.265 +4.980 +0.225 95.456 1:27.116 9 99 Federico Mosconi 18 28:45.747 +6.462 +1.482 95.374 1:27.473 10 19 Dwight Rider/M 18 28:48.525 +9.240 +2.778 95.221 1:28.297 11 51 Dan Denison/M 18 28:48.854 +9.569 +0.329 95.203 1:28.670 12 67 Dave Weitzenhof/M 18 28:49.065 +9.780 +0.211 95.191 1:27.812 13 16 Peter Gonzalez/M 18 28:49.528 +10.243 +0.463 95.166 1:29.637 14 6 David Sugg 18 28:51.845 +12.560 +2.317 95.039 1:30.288 15 78 James Belay 17 29:35.332 1 Lap 1 Lap 87.560 1:32.862 16 7 Brent Gilkes/M 16 25:47.035 2 Laps 1 Lap 94.571 1:27.772 17 39 Shane Morris 14 21:16.440 4 Laps 2 Laps 100.291 1:28.731 18 0 Keith McCrone/M 13 20:00.187 5 Laps 1 Lap 99.045 1:29.007 19 01 John McCusker 12 25:58.794 6 Laps 1 Lap 70.393 1:28.622 20 22 Kevin Kopp 8 11:48.880 10 Laps 4 Laps 103.194 1:27.832 21 69 Matt McDonough 6 9:00.493 12 Laps 2 Laps 101.507 1:27.853 22 90 Robert Wright/M 6 9:05.123 +4.630 +4.630 100.645 1:28.985 23 00 Tim Dunn/M 6 9:44.915 +44.422 +39.792 93.798 1:29.818 DNS 42 Bill Jordan/M 0 -.--- - - - -.---