FORMULA 600 CHALLENGE – SERIES FINALE AT THE 2021 INDY RUNOFFS

This event is the largest and longest of any SCCA road race during the season – three days of testing, three days of qualifying and three days for 26 races with over 850 race cars & trailers filling the Indy infield, everywhere there was space, it was taken.  You needed a map just to navigate this huge complex.  Most of the top F5 drivers were here.  A side note – there were yellow jackets throughout the infield bugging all of us most of the week and one went down Leon Mitchell’s throat which caused him to go to the medical center (severely constricted throat) and after treatment he was okay but it was scary for awhile.

After three qualifying sessions, Ryan Mayfield won the pole in the very last session in the Murphy/McMahan Scorpion with a new track record of 1:42.6 beating Clint McMahan’s previous record of a 1:42.8 in a field of 22 cars.  This just barely edged Sven deVries’ time of 1:42.9; 3rd was Calvin Stewart with a 1:43.6, then 4th was Aaron Ellis, 5th was James Weida, 6th was Clint McMahan running only the last session in Craig Laprade’s F600, 7th was Jason Martin, 8th was Jay Beckley, 9th was David Lapham and 10th was Steven Jondal.

Thursday night after the last qualifying session, Sven drove back to Michigan to borrow rain tires as rain was being predicted for the Sunday race and Sven had never driven his car in the rain.  In the meantime, for the race, Clint prepared Craig’s car and mounted rain tires on it saying that his only chance would be if it rained (there was a 50% chance of rain), but it did not rain so this car sat in the paddock.  We were all hoping that Clint would run as this would have added more excitement to the race.  But, this race still had plenty of excitement as both Ryan and Sven duked it out on every single lap swapping the lead one or more times every lap.  Behind these two there was a battle with Calvin, Aaron, Weida and Jason until Jason, struggling with too soft a tire, spun and dropped back.  Also struggling was Carl Maier with tire issues which led to overheated brakes (soft pedal) forcing him to back off.  Jeff DeLong braked hard to keep from hitting Jondal at the end of the infield straight, snap spun, stalled and blew his starter when he was not fast enough to disengage the clutch which resulted in no way to restart the motor.  Jay Beckley threw a rod on the infield straight which brought out the unfortunate Full Course Yellow.  Thus, the race was decided by this Full Course Yellow two laps from the end with Sven (fastest race lap 1:43.1) edging out Ryan.  Third was Calvin Stewart, 4th Aaron Ellis, 5th James Weida, 6th Keith Joslyn, 7th Jason Martin, 8th David Lapham, 9th Jeff Jorgensen and 10th Scott Barksdale, his first season in this class.  For this finale, there will be two Pegasus winners for the best finishes who have not won before – Aaron Ellis and Jason Martin.  And there will be two Hyper Racing Hard Charger Awards – Russell Strate and Scott Barksdale who struggled in qualifying.  Also, for this finale, Hawk Brakes will pay down to 7th place.

The Series points for this race are as follows:

  1. Sven deVries 24
  2. Ryan Mayfield 22
  3. Calvin Stewart 20
  4. Aaron Ellis 18
  5. Jason Martin 16
  6. David Lapham 14
  7. Scott Barksdale 12
  8. Robert Gray 11
  9. George Bugg 10
  10. Russell Strate  9
  11. Carl Maier  8
  12. Jay Beckley  7
  13. Jack Walbran  6
  14. Jeff DeLong  5
  15. Clint McMahan  0

We are very thankful for our valued sponsors who have made this series possible:

Hoosier Racing Tire ( www.hoosiertire.com )

Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies ( www.PegasusAutoRacing.com )

Hawk Performance ( www.hawkperformance.com )

MPT Industries ( www.mptindustries.com )

Design Engineering, Inc. ( http://www.designengineering.com/ )

Hyper Racing ( www.hyperracing.com )

The Formula 600 Challenge Series was developed to help promote an affordable open wheel formula car class to showcase talent without large financial race budgets.  There are no paid staffers and one hundred percent of all sponsorship monies and product goes directly to the drivers in our series.  The Formula 600 open wheel cars use a 600cc motorcycle engine and a six-speed sequential transmission revving up to 15,000 rpm with speeds in excess of 140 mph. The sound of these cars is likened to F1 cars.

For videos, news and photos go to our website – www.theformula600challenge.com

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For more information, please contact:

Jim Murphy

jdmurphy47@aol.com

Fred Edwards

f.edwards@metalloidcorp.com

Carl Maier

wetfrog2@yahoo.com