Jagger Jones Sweeps VP Racing Challenge at St. Petersburg

FastMD Racing with Remstar’s Jagger Jones, in only his second race weekend in IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, scored a sweep of both races Saturday (March 9) on the Streets of St. Petersburg. They are the first-ever IMSA victories for FastMD Racing.

Race No. 1

Jones started from pole in his Duqueine M30-D08-Nissan. Woolridge was alongside, but had a terrible start and dropped to sixth by the first corner. It did not take long for Jones to pull out a three-second over Escuderia ABRO’s Miguel Villagomez.

Further back, a duel between Woolridge and Brian Thienes for fifth turned physical in the final turn nine minutes in. Contact was made, cutting Thienes’ right rear tire. The mess caused a stack up and allowed Cody Ware to move up to fifth. Thienes made it back to the pits and made repairs. He would eventually finish three laps down, seventh in class and 20th overall.

Performance Tech Motorsports’ Alex Kirby was eventually able to move up to second in lapped traffic, but missed turn 1 while trying to pass a couple of BMWs. That allowed Aghakhani to catch up and take second away.

Jones’ lead vacillated between three and eight seconds over Aghakhani, depending on traffic. Meanwhile, Kirby ended up in a three-way battle between himself, Villagomez and Ware.

Villagomez was able to make the move for third in turn 1. Ware tried to follow and contact was made. Ware spun and backed into the tires at pit out. A turn later, Kirby understeered into the concrete wall at the exit of turn 3 to bring out the full course yellow.

Ware was able to restart and was going to be able to drive back to the pits. Then, his car refused to turn and slid into the tires at turn 4 under yellow. Both Ware and Kirby walked away from their crashed cars, but were out of the race and unable to start Race No. 2.

The necessary cleanup meant that there were three laps to go when the green came back out. Jones was able to get away, but Aghakhani got held up by the lapped car of Thienes. That allowed Villagomez to pounce for second, but he went too fast into turn 4 and bounced off the tires.

Meanwhile, Jones was able to take advantage of Thienes’ presence to pull away once again. He was not threatened en route to victory.

Jones won by 4.637 seconds over US RaceTronics’ Steven Aghakhani. Performance Tech Motorsports’ Jonathan Woolridge was third, then Ave Motorsports’ Ryan Phinny. Mishumotors’ Mirco Schultis was fifth.

In the GSX…