Team Montelo Takes Home 5 Trophies at the Peru Tour
by Pat Montelo
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June 30th, 2007, Peru Indiana -- This weekend Team Montelo made the trek across the dreaded Illinois/Indiana border and through the snarling traffic to attend stop eight of the 2007 SCCA Solo National Tour, the Peru National Tour. *Note to self: never take the Google maps route to Peru again! |
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The bumpy but grippy concrete surface of the Grissom Aeroplex has been somewhat out of favor since the Solo Nationals moved from Forbes Field to Heartland Park and asphalt in 2006, but the big draw for the team this weekend was a chance to meet & compete with some of the other SCCA Formula Junior families. With 11 Formula Junior drivers in attendance, the weekend promised to be a great chance for the kids & parents to make some new friends from around the country and to have a lot of fun. |
 Photo by Bill Crawford |
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The festivities started Friday evening with a little tailgating at the Grissom Air Museum. Many of the FJR families and our Chicago/Milwaukee Region friends stopped by the Team Montelo RV/rolling mortgage to hang out, eat some food and have a few drinks. Thanks to Laurie for making some great food and treats for the kids (big and small). Thanks to all who stopped by; we had a fun time and enjoyed your company. Saturday night the Juniors and Families also gathered at a local Pizza hang-out and a good time was had by all. Saturday morning started with a little bit of an unfortunate surprise - not only were the Juniors going to have to start 10 minutes before the "official" 9am start time, they were going to have to take all of their runs back-to-back. Sandy from the National Staff was very nice and friendly to the kids, but unfortunately would not budge on her ideas about how the Juniors should be run. We really wished that the Juniors would have been given the same treatment as the rest of the competitors and run in the normal rotation rather than being treated "special". The special treatment only seems to cause problems with the rest of the competitors who then complain about the long wait before the start of the cars. Unfortunately the Formula Junior program gets a black-eye as a result. Junior karts don't have gear boxes and if you guess wrong on gearing, you're usually going to be slow for the next three runs. In hindsight I should have used a Mechanical on Saturday to adjust our gearing, but at least we were given 5 minutes by Sandy between each set of runs to keep the tires cool and the PAX results fair. On Sunday I did take a Mechanical to adjust Michael's gearing for his third and final run, but it wasn't quite enough to fend off a very formidable Julian Garfield in FJB. Next time they meet, Michael will be packing fresh tires for sure. |
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But all in all the team had a great weekend in Peru. Saturday left Anthony sitting not only at the top of his class in FJA, but at the top of the PAX index for the day. I think no one who witnessed him run this weekend would deny that he was on his game to be sure. Joey was 2nd in FJA and with some very fine driving by him and he found himself in the 6th spot on PAX. Laurie sat in 1st uncontested in SSL, and Michael and I 2nd in FJB and SS respectively. |
 Photo by Bill Crawford |
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Besides Anthony's performance on PAX, the battle between Michael and Julian Garfield in FJB would prove to be exciting with Michael and Julian swapping the lead in FJB several times over the weekend. On Sunday I thought I had 1st in Super Stock as I watched Eric Heller cone his third run of the day. As fate would have it, Eric got a rerun and was able to pull off a stellar run knocking me out of first place by 33 thousands of a second. We had a blast and are looking forward to next weekend at the Milwaukee Tour! Results at the Peru Tour
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