Oct 4, 1997
\nChesterfield, England \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Valvoline Team USA Scholarship winners Buddy Rice and Matt Sielsky have completed three days of testing in preparation for the prestigious Nations Cup VIII to be held at Donington Park on October 18\/19.
\nThe pair will fly the red, white and blue colors of Team USA in the self-styled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Olympics of Motor Racing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and will compete \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in identical cars \u00e2\u20ac\u201c against two-driver teams representing at least 14 other nations. In 1996, Team USA gained the Silver Medal, placing second behind Germany, through the efforts of Jerry Nadeau and Tony Renna.<\/p>\n
The two talented young Americans gained their initial taste of the Formula Opel\/Vauxhall cars during a two-day shakedown test at Snetterton, England, then traveled over to Donington Park on Thursday, October 2 for an additional day under the expert guidance of race car driver-turned-team owner John Village.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going well,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Village, a former European Formula Ford champion who, since turning to team ownership, has helped several top-line drivers during the formative stages of their careers, including CART star Adrian Fernandez and Formula 3000 champion\/IRL driver Vincenzo Sospiri. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already on the pace and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting more and more comfortable in the cars.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Both drivers encountered difficulty during the most recent outing at Donington, with Sielsky spinning off due to a suspension failure and Rice losing time with a broken gearbox input shaft. Nevertheless, the drivers are pleased with progress.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motor racing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Rice, 21, from Phoenix, Ariz. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153These things happen. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather get the problems out of the way now rather than have them occur on race weekend. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very happy with the way things are going. The team is doing a great job and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all getting along well.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Added teammate Sielsky, 19, from Northbrook, Ill.: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The cars are quite different to the Formula Ford 2000s that both Buddy and I are used to. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m feeling pretty good. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m finding that you can still brake late and hard, like in the FF2000 car, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re braking in a straight line; but if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a flowing corner \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and there are several of those at Donington \u00e2\u20ac\u201c then you need to be much lighter on the brakes and carry the speed into the corner. Donington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an awesome track. I just wish we had more circuits like that in the States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Rice and Sielsky are attending the final round of the British Formula 3 Championship this weekend at Silverstone, then will return to the track on Tuesday (October 7) for another full day of testing.<\/p>\n
Photo of Matt Sielsky testing at Donington Park <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oct 4, 1997 Chesterfield, England \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Valvoline Team USA Scholarship winners Buddy Rice and Matt Sielsky have completed three days of testing in preparation for the prestigious Nations Cup VIII to be held at Donington…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1623,"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\/1622"}],"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=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}