Apr 16, 2008
\nRancho Santa Margarita, Calif. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The racing season is now well and truly under way and already an array of Team USA Scholarship alumni have provided plenty of highlights.<\/p>\n
It all started on the final weekend in January with the traditional Rolex 24 at Daytona, where inaugural Team USA Scholarship recipient Jimmy Vasser (1990) claimed a fine second-place finish with the defending series champion Bob Stallings Racing team. In addition, A.J. Allmendinger (2001), Joey Hand (2000), Memo Gidley (1995) and Buddy Rice (1996) combined to lead a total of 101 laps of the Rolex Sports Car Series opener in their respective entries. Ultimately, all would hit some kind of misfortune but they had clearly made their mark. It was a similar story in the GT division, with Bryan Sellers (2001), Andy Lally (1999) and Paul Edwards (1997) leading a total of 81 laps. Lally claimed the best GT finish with second in a TRG Porsche GT3 Cup, while Sellers took third in an identical car.<\/p>\n
Next time out at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Edwards guided his Banner Racing Pontiac GXP.R to a dominant GT class victory, while Hand finished second overall in Alex Job Racing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ruby Tuesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Crawford-Porsche.<\/p>\n
2007 Scholarship winner Joel Miller was virtually in a class of his own when the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear season began at the famed Sebring International Raceway in mid-March. The 19-year-old from Hesperia, Calif., qualified his JDC Motorsports entry on pole, a full second clear of his opposition, before romping away to an accomplished debut victory.<\/p>\n
Dane Cameron (2006), who drove the same JDC car to victory in last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Star Mazda series, has played a starring role during preseason testing for the Atlantic Championship. Cameron, who drives for Genoa Racing, will start as one of the favorites for victory when the 35th Anniversary Atlantic season begins on the streets of Long Beach, Calif., this coming weekend.<\/p>\n
J.R. Hildebrand (2005), who had originally intended to drive for Genoa in the Atlantic series, instead concluded a late deal to drive for RLR\/Andersen Racing in the newly renamed Firestone Indy Lights Championship (formerly Indy Pro Series). He immediately made a bold impression. A fuel system glitch obliged Hildebrand to start from last position for his first-ever race on an oval, at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but he moved inexorably through the 22-car field to finish comfortably among the top 10. One week later in a double-header on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., Hildebrand took fifth on Saturday and added a first podium finish (second) the following morning.<\/p>\n
Not to be outdone, Charlie Kimball (2003) made an impressive return to Formula 3 competition at Hockenheim, Germany, last weekend, finishing a stout second in the hotly contested Euro F3 Series behind the wheel of a Prema Racing Dallara-Mercedes.<\/p>\n
Photo: Hildebrand (left) on the podium at St Pete with race winner Richard Antinucci and third-place finisher Logan Gomez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apr 16, 2008 Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c The racing season is now well and truly under way and already an array of Team USA Scholarship alumni have provided plenty of highlights. It all started…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}