Group-A Racing Shows Great Speed But Has No Luck At VIR

Lindenhurst, New York (September 2, 2017) - Group-A Racing showed great speed this past weekend at Virginia International Raceway in the Formula 4 United States Championship powered by Honda. Unfortunately, luck was not on the team’s side to get the results they deserved.

Thursday provided a full test day giving the teams and drivers plenty of track time to get ready for the races. Group-A Racing driver Jonathan Scarallo had the car in the top 5 throughout the whole day. In final practice before qualifying Scarallo put the #29 Group-A Racing car 2nd fastest in the 33 car field giving the team a lot of confidence going into qualifying.

“So far the car has been working great!” said Jonathan Scarallo “My new engineer, Peter & I, have been working really well together and this is the best the car has felt by far.”

Qualifying would not bring the result the team was hoping for. With the session interrupted with red flags, Scarallo ended the session 10th fastest.

Race 1 would see more bad luck come Group-A Racing’s way when the exhaust failed in the opening laps of the race. This resulted in lack in straight line speed leaving Scarallo to hang on the best he could.

“This is very frustrating since there is nothing anybody could have done to prevent this. It’s really just bad luck it happened and at the worst possible time. But, that’s the way it goes sometimes and we’ll just try and rebound the best we can for the rest of the event.”

Race 2 is gridded based upon race 1 fastest lap leaving Scarallo & the Group-A Racing team handicapped due to the exhaust failure in race 1. After starting in 20th Scarallo fought his way back up to 12th in the opening 20 minutes before a full course yellow came out and the race never got back to green.

Race three saw Scarallo start 11th and got a great start off the line to climb up to 8th on the opening few corners. More bad luck would come though, as Scarallo got hit from behind a few corners later, and while in the slide from contact, that same driver then hit him in the front, ending his race. To make matters worse, the crash has resulted in a broken right hand for Scarallo leaving him questionable for the remainder of the year.

“Frustrated does zero justice to how I am feeling right now” said Scarallo. “We had such great pace in testing and practice but since then it’s been one more hit of bad luck after the other. Everybody in the Group-A Racing team has done a fantastic job to give me a very fast car to run up front, but we just need this black cloud following us to go away. The doctors at the moment are not sure if I will be able to race at Circuit of the Americas with my broken hand, I really don’t want to get out of this rocketship Group-A Racing has given me. I have a lot of unfinished business and I really don’t want to end the season this way.”

Group-A Racing has already started making arrangements for potential 2018 drivers to test with the team in preparation for next year. Interested drivers can contact the team via 631-974-4379 or info@GroupARacingTeam.com