In a weekend of peaks and valleys, the World Speed Motorsports Star Mazda team battled back from a run of practice accidents during the test days to place all four drivers in the top half of the 44 car field in the fourth round of the Star Mazda Series North American Championship at Portland International Raceway. Despite falling to second place in the championship, the watchwords for the weekend were “It could’ve been a lot worse.”
Scott Bradley, the series points leader entering the event, experienced the tallest peaks and lowest valleys over the course of the weekend in the #14 Polycom, Shames Construction Star Mazda. In the second session of the weekend his primary car was written off when another driver drove through an official’s stop sign on pit lane and directly in front of Scott’s path, forcing Scott into the wall, and into the spare car for the rest of the weekend. “We lost a bit of track time early in the weekend due to the incidents but the World Speed crew worked all night to get the spare car up to speed,” Bradley said.
Back on track those efforts paid off, as Bradley was able to capture his first pole position in the series and pick up one valuable bonus point. “It was awesome to grab the pole position for the guys after everything that had happened and you could see how it picked up everyone’s spirits. We knew it would be crazy at the start of the race in the first chicane and with pole we hopped we could stay ahead of the trouble,” Bradley said.
Unfortunately, the front row was not safe from danger as the fifth place qualifier Matt Beardsley lost control and pushed Bradley off the track in the chicane. “That was ridiculous,” Bradley commented afterwards, “He is a danger to himself and everyone else around him when he gets on the track. I was talking to other drivers prior to the race and we were asking each other which one of us he would hit. Regrettably, I was the victim.”
The contact damaged the suspension and gearbox on Bradley’s car and knocked him down to last place but he took to the track to try to hold onto his championship lead. “Once I got going I found that the car had suffered rear suspension damage, the front brakes were working at about twenty percent and the bias adjuster had broken,” Bradley said. “The next thing I found was that some how the transmission had been mildly damaged as well putting me in the position of not being able to downshift properly. The only way I could get the car to go into gear was to wait until the very last second before I turned into the corner and just slam it into gear. This allowed me to at least brake in a straight line without locking up the rear tires but by mid way through the race had damaged the dog-rings so badly that I was having problems upshifting. I had to lift all the way off the throttle, push the gear lever gently until it would just fall into gear.”
Despite all this Bradley was able to climb back into the top ten by the checkered flag, finishing eighth overall. However he now trails Chad Block in the championship by one point, but is able to see the silver lining. “When it first happened I had visions of the championship being over. Now that I’m only one point behind Chad this thing is far from being over. Especially considering we went as fast as we did with a car that probably shouldn’t have been on the track.”
While Bradley was moving through the field, World Speed welcomed a new driver onto the team, as Tulsa, Oklahoma, native David Stover took to the track in the #15 World Speed machine, finishing eleventh in his pro series debut. “I really wasn’t sure how all of these Mazdas were going to fit through the festival chicane, but even with a first turn melee I managed to slide through and pick off about 5 or 6 positions. The rest of the race was all about survival as there were cars off everywhere,” Stover said.
“David was impressive out there in his first North American Championship race,” commented his engineer Mikel Miller. “He’s got some speed and as he learns the car and we work together he’s only going to get faster.”
World Speed Masters Division competitors Frank McCormick, in the #16 Onyx Pharmaceuticals Mazda and Rick Waddell had some scuffles with the rest of the field before bring their machines home nose to tail in 19th and 20th positions respectively. “I damaged my nose right at the start and without the one wing the car had an awful push but we were able to avoid trouble the rest of the way,” said Waddell, driver of the #17 Northwest Speedwerx Star Mazda.
The Star Mazda Series North American Championship resumes in two weeks time at Mosport Raceway near Toronto, Canada, on August 16-18. For more information on the Star Mazda Series please visit www.starmazda.com.