Lindenhurst, New York - Group-A Racing Racing continued their off-season testing program this past weekend. This time the test took place at the New Jersey Motorsports Park Thunderbolt Course. They had former F2000 race winner and polesitter Jonathan Scarallo in the car. The day started off in wet conditions with it raining in the New Jersey area that night and early morning. While this would not allow the team to work on set-ups, it did allow them to do install checks since it was the first time out with the spec Mazda MZR engine. They wanted to log miles to check reliability and break everything in.
The track finally started to give a dry line in the afternoon allowing the team and driver to start to push the car. The car would continue to run flawlessly with no glitches permitting the team to log as many miles as the day allowed. To top it off, the baseline set-up was a fantastic one, allowing the team to set extremely quick lap times in non-ideal conditions. The times being set in just the first dry session would have put them in contention for the pole based upon times the series did at NJMP.
“Today would have to be looked at as a tremendous success," said team owner Joe Scarallo Sr. "It was our first time out in a 100 percent full spec USF2000 car and we continued to have no issues. The car was completely reliable, which was fantastic. The Mazda engine and everything was great and performed very well. The pace of the car just made the day go from great to incredible.”
“I cannot remember the last time I had this much fun in a race car,” commented Jonathan Scarallo, who handled the driving duties for the day. “The set-up with how we rolled off the truck was so good right out of the box once the track finally got dry enough to push. It was so well balanced and it allowed me just go faster and faster every lap. We certainly had hoped to set the type of times we did, but with the conditions, did not expect to, so the fact we did really says a lot about the whole Group-A Racing effort.”
Group-A Racing has two more days of testing scheduled at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Interested parties in testing and racing with the team in the USF2000 Series can contact them via phone 631-957-3901 or E-Mail GroupARacing@aol.com. For more information on the team can go to www.GroupARacing.net.
