In front of a sellout crowd on the NTT Indy Car weekend, Group-A Racing drivers showcased tremendous speed and filled their trophy case during the event.

Group-A Racing entered three cars, one in each class in the Blue Marble Cocktails Radical Cup, Steve Jenks in his new Radical SR10 in the Platinum class, Reece Everard in Pro 1500 and Reid Stewart in Pro 1340. The weekend started with four practice sessions on Thursday. All three drivers started the weekend finishing the first sessions fastest in their class. Jenks & Everard would continue to set the pace in every practice session, with Reid in the top 3 every session.

Qualifying for race 1 would not go completely to plan. Jenks bumped the engine mapping knob on his steering wheel during the session without realizing it, costing him about 30 horsepower, an innocent mistake easily fixed, but would cause him to only qualify 4th. Reece found himself very unlucky with red flag session stoppages, traffic, and cars exiting the pits in front of him and never got a proper clear lap. He would still manage to salvage a 3rd in the Pro 1500 class. Reid Stewart was in an intense session in Pro 1340 and would qualify fourth, but was less than 4 tenths of a second off the pole.

With full horsepower in hand now, Jenks would quickly start moving forward in race one. The Platinum class saw a close nose-to-tail battle for the lead with 5 cars scrapping it out. Jenks did a great job to recover from his 4th place starting spot to finish 3rd on a track that’s very difficult to pass. Reece Everard did exactly the same in Pro 1500, recovering from a disappointing qualifying to finish 2nd in his class as well. Reid Stewart saw himself in a frantic Pro 1340 battle for the lead, driving swapping positions all race and finish a tremendous 2nd in class as well. All three Group-A Racing drivers set the fastest lap of the race in their class results in a clean sweep of Group-A Racing drivers starting on pole for race 2.

Race 2 saw Jenks get a great start from pole in the Platinum class to build a small lead. After an early full course yellow, defending champion Al Miller would get past Jenks. Steve continued to hound the multi time series champion and forced him into a mistake to re take the lead. Jenks never looked back to bring home the win in his debut race weekend in the Platinum class! Reece Everard did not get as good of a start from pole in the Pro 1500 falling to second behind defending champion Gustavo Rafols. After the early yellow though, he re took the lead and checked out from the rest of the field putting on a dominate display to win as well! Reid Stewart,s start from pole in Pro 1340 was not ideal, and a mistake in turn 1 saw him off course and with a spin. This resulted with him in last and many seconds behind the pack. Stewart got the car restarted finally and put his head down to salvage a tremendous 5th,considering how the race started.

In race 3, Jenks started outside pole with a great start edging ahead to take the lead. Unfortunately, he was run wide by polesitter Al Miller with contact to the left rear upright. The damage caused the alignment to go off, with Jenks having to salvage what he could with a wounded car to finish 4th. Reece was starting from pole in Pro 1500, but an electrical glitch on the grid caused the car to not engage first gear. The team scrambled to miraculously get it fixed on the formation lap. With it though, Reece went from starting on pole in his class to now starting last, 32nd overall. He drove with an intense fire in his eye blitzing through the field in an incredible manner. Everard would do a tremendous job to recover all the way back to 2nd in the Pro 1500 class! Reid Stewart started 3rd in Pro 1340 class. He was in another intense battle all race long in 1340 with 5 drivers trading position all race. Stewart would come home with yet another podium result in 2nd!

“All-in-all, I can only be extremely proud and happy with this weekend” stated Group-A Racing manager Jonathan Scarallo. “We put the paddock on notice with all of our drivers’ pace, many poles, wins, podiums, it’s a great weekend. Naturally as fierce competitors though, we are quickly not satisfied and can’t help but feel like we left some championship points on the table. But everybody under the tent is feeling great, nothing but tremendous confidence as a complete unit, which is a great thing for everybody to take to Road America next month and hopefully be better yet again.”

Round 2 of the 2022 Blue Marble Cocktails Radical Cup will take place June 9-12, again with the NTT Indy Car Series. Race fans can re watch the live stream from the Barber Motorsports Park on the Radical Sports Car Youtube page.

Race 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RldAtwXUNA

Race 2: https://youtu.be/8n_6ibMLd3U

Race 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5k63Y25iPI&t=2s

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.