{"id":3878,"date":"2017-05-10T13:33:35","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T13:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2017-05-10T13:33:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T13:33:35","slug":"oliver-askew-maintaining-the-momentum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/?p=3878","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Askew: Maintaining the Momentum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SPEEDWAY, Ind.<\/strong> \u2013 Hidden in the hills near Birmingham, Ala., lies one of the most technical, high speed and undulating circuits in the world. Barber Motorsports Park became one of my all-time favorite tracks when I first practiced there this past winter with Cape Motorsports in the brand-new Tatuus USF-17. I found it much harder to learn a track with so many blind corners \u2013 it takes a certain amount of discipline and track knowledge to consistently hit every apex around Barber. With our new track knowledge, we could hit the track with a full head of steam when it was time for the second round of the 2017 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda.<\/p>\n

When it\u2019s go time, Cape Motorsports doesn\u2019t mess around. My Soul Red Mazda Scholarship car was quickest right off the bat through the first day of unofficial practice at Barber. I knew we were going to be very competitive here, but it was most important to me to be on top of the changing track conditions. I try to spend as much time as I can in the engineer\u2019s room to have completely clear and thorough discussions with Dominic Cape about what we feel needs to be done to the car to ensure a quick setup for the coming sessions. The battle between drivers and teams will continue to be very close this year, so it is especially important for us as a team to keep focusing on the details. I feel fortunate to be racing with Cape Motorsports because I don\u2019t think there is another group which nails down the details better than them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As the weekend progressed, we continued to pace the field by qualifying on pole for Race 1 by three tenths. Starting on pole at Barber is a huge advantage because it is extremely hard to pass. I knew that if I got a good start I could control the field and win the race, and that is exactly what I did. Race 2 was the next day and I wasn\u2019t expecting our advantage to slip away. Happily, we qualified on pole by four tenths and completed the weekend sweep by bagging another flag-to-flag victory.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Round 3 of the series takes place this weekend on the Indianapolis road course. I\u2019ve decided to travel to Indy a few days early to take advantage of some state-of-the-art training facilities this city has to offer. Bell Helmets rep and IndyCar spotter Chris Wheeler has been kind enough to let me stay at his house. I have been going to PitFit Training where I see myself spending a great deal of time through the rest of this season. Jim Leo and Alex Wanee at PitFit have helped tremendously in making sure I am in the best physical condition possible. RaceCraft1 is just next door to PitFit, so I have spent some time there to stay sharp with Kelly Jones and his racing simulations.<\/p>\n

The Indianapolis road course is another circuit I have experience on. I had the opportunity to drive the old Van Diemen USF2000 car here last year at the Chris Griffis Memorial test with Cape Motorsports. I expect to carry on our pace from Barber, and I can imagine the racing will be closer here than it has been all year. We have a fairly big point lead now but it is still very early in the season. Our focus is to keep our heads down and continue to win races.<\/p>\n

As always, thank you for reading.<\/p>\n

Oliver Askew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPEEDWAY, Ind. \u2013 Hidden in the hills near Birmingham, Ala., lies one of the most technical, high speed and undulating circuits in the world. Barber Motorsports Park became one of my all-time favorite tracks when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,5,34],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878"}],"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=3878"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3886,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions\/3886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamusascholarship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}