Beasley Cruises to PittRace Win
Wampum, PA – Sam Beasley led flag-to-flag in round 13 of the F2000 Championship Series season at Pittsburgh International Race Complex to take the win in the first of two races scheduled for the season finale weekend at the challenging road course. Steve Bamford carved through cars to finished second from tenth on the grid ahead of a similarly charging Austin McCusker in third who completed the podium in an all-green-flag sprint.
“The team did a great job last night just getting everything back together,” said Beasley, commenting on a late-night engine change by his Legacy Autosport team. “I would like to thank the team and everyone involved in the whole group, we have been phenomenal this weekend.”
The win marks Beasley’s 11th victory in the 2015 season.
Coming to the green flag, the initial start was waved off as Beasley looked opportunistic, jumping on the gas early compared to Trent Walko, who started on the outside of the front row.
The next lap, the F2000 field would get the green flag with Beasley moving into the lead in the No. 4 Mygale, and Walko looking to challenge in the No. 91 Spectrum, before an issue dropped the No. 91 down the order to 19th. While the local racer would recover to ninth by the mid-way point of the race, Walko failed to finish, pulling into the pits and getting out of the car with a reported mechanical issue.
As Beasley led, second place was assumed by David Grant, who ran a solid pace at the front, but also faced issues, going off and failing to finish with an axle issue, with Eric Filgueiras right behind him.
That promoted Filgueiras’ No. 22 Van Diemen to second place.
A bit further back, Bamford was moving, and pulled a nice move on Quinlan Lall for sixth. Bamford would continue to advance, later getting around Filgueiras for second in the closing stages, while A. McCusker followed suit, with a last lap pass in his RFR chassis to take the final podium spot.
“The last lap I made a late move on Eric (Filgueiras) and it seemed to work,” said McCusker. “It is good to be back on the podium after missing it the last few races.”
Filgueiras ended up fourth, and was the first of the Van Diemen chassis cars behind a Mygale, Citation, RFR podium at Pittsburgh.
John McCusker completed the top five ahead of Quinlan Lall and Brandon Dixon, who finished second in the Masters Class behind Bamford.
Sam Chastain, Matt Machiko and Neil Verhagen completed the top ten.
An 11th place drive from Dan Denison netted the No. 51 entry the third and final podium spot in the Masters Class.
Full results are available on www.F2000Series.com under the Results tab.
The F2000 Championship Series comes to a quick close with the final race of the 2015 season, round 14, on Sunday from Pittsburgh.