Oct 17, 1994
\nDartford, England — Last Saturday, Clay Collier, 19, clinched the USAC Formula 2000 Championship title with a dramatic run to fourth place in the final round at Lime Rock Park, Conn. The following afternoon, 21-year-old Mike Borkowski, who has already secured the 1994 American Continental Championship pro series title, finished third in the SCCA Formula Continental National Championship Runoffs at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, despite a down-on-power engine.<\/p>\n
Right away after their busy weekends of racing, both young drivers began to make their way to England on Sunday evening. The next morning, (kind of) bright and early following their overnight flights, the two North American champions were ready to commence preparations for the October 21-23 International Formula Ford Festival and World Cup at Brands Hatch, where the pair will be proudly flying the red, white and blue colors of the Valvoline Team USA Scholarship in what is regarded as one of the toughest weekends of competition in the entire auto racing world.<\/p>\n
After their first full day of testing on the Brands Hatch “Indy” circuit in their pair of 1800cc Zetec-engined Formula Ford Van Diemens, prepared by John Village Automotive, Collier and Borkowski both expressed themselves pleased with progress.<\/p>\n
“We had a few minor problems early on but we made a lot of progress,”\u009d said Collier. “The good news is that we have the rest of this week to get everything sorted out. The car had a lot less grip than I expected; it didn’t “stick” at all. You’ve really got to learn to be smooth in the car to go fast. It takes quite a bit of adjustment compared to what I’m used to.”<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Collier recorded the best lap of the American contingent at 48.33 seconds. Borkowski, whose flight arrived a couple of hours later than Collier’s and so was able to enjoy slightly less track time, ended the day less than two-tenths slower. The fastest lap, incidentally, was a 47.7 turned by the factory Van Diemen driver, Ralph Firman Jr.<\/p>\n
“The cars have no wings, no slick tires, like I’m used to, but you adjust to that right away,” commented Borkowski. “We don’t have a good balance on the car yet. It really didn’t give me too much confidence; it’s kind of ‘snappy’ at the rear. But we’re working on it. We’re going to try some more things in the morning and I’m sure we can find some more speed.\u00e2”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oct 17, 1994 Dartford, England — Last Saturday, Clay Collier, 19, clinched the USAC Formula 2000 Championship title with a dramatic run to fourth place in the final round at Lime Rock Park, Conn. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1676,"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\/1675"}],"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=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}