National Champions! Patriot Racing Team Takes Top Honors
TALLADEGA- National Champions!
The Bob Jones High Patriot Racing Team can now lay claim to being the best in the land bringing two National Championship trophies home after competing in the Greenpower USA National Championships held at the Talladega Superspeedway outside of Birmingham. The inaugural F24 National Championship event featured 49 teams from across the country with the Patriot Racing Team taking top honors in both the Modified and Custom Divisions of the electric car event. The races were held on the road course located on the interior of the infield of the famed “Fastest Track in the World” and home to two annual NASCAR races.
The Blue Car belonging to the Patriots is named The Rival and took the championship trophy in the Modify Division while the Red Car nicknamed The Flash took similar honors in the Custom Division. Each car crew has nine members. The Patriots edged their biggest rival, Oxford High, for each title.
“Each team had to face troubleshooting of issues that arose during the racing,” said Jessye Gaines, who along with Kris Kasprzak, are the team coaches. “One of the issues came about 30 seconds into the race and the car had to be towed to the pit area where our students went through an array of troubleshooting before finding a loose wire.”
The event was comprised of two heats and a video presentation from each team. The combination of how well each team presented their video and the number of laps each car made in 90-minute races determined the winners. Each lap around the 1.3-mile course took just over three minutes and speeds can get as high as 32-miles per hour. A driver starts the race and drivers have to be changed out twice during each competition. For Bob Jones, two of their seniors were at the wheels while crossing the finish line under the checkered flag.
“I’m very proud of our seniors as each have great last memories of their trek through a tough couple of years through COVID and not being able to race,” said Gaines, of the Patriots team which completed its seventh year of racing.
The following students made up the Patriots Racing Team for 2022: Red Team- Abram Culver, Ashwin Prabhakar, Katie Tanner, Kevin Lanyi, Max Osborn, Isa Hayes, Daniel Myatt, Max McGee and Tucker Magonigal; Blue Team- Joshua Chen, Parx White, Rett Krome, Gabe Whitt, Yashas Gentela, Elaine Bao, Cameron Cummings, John Allison and Liam Culver.
