16-year-old Chris Windom, of Canton, Ill., has a five-race weekend on tap as he tackles Gas City (IN) I-69 Speedway Thursday for the final event of USAC’s “Border Wars XIII, ” back to Gas City I-69 Speedway on Friday for a track show, then to O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis (ORP) Saturday for a USAC Sprint/Midget doubleheader the night before the United States Grand Prix Formula One race, and then to the Windom Motorsports’ regular stop on Sunday at Kokomo (IN) Speedway.
The first Gas City stop is a make-up date for an earlier rained out show: “Although Gas City is not my favorite track, I’m trying to get used to it, and it’s going a bit better, ” Windom explained. If things go well and we have no mechanical issues, we should be pretty good there as I’m understanding the line and how to run the track, which is different than many other dirt tracks I’ve run, a lot more. ”
Windom has been working on his pavement program a lot lately, having completed a successful Sprint and Midget car test at ORP in the past few weeks.
“I think I learned some stuff during the last race there and when we tested that we’ll hopefully apply to the races on Saturday, ” Windom said. “I’m thinking that, if we can combine what we learned in the previous race with the testing information, we can actually re-do our testing success. There are things I didn’t pick up the first time when we ran there that I got the second time during the test, and then I got used to things much better. I got the line down with the Sprint car, and I picked up tips on the Midget the first set of laps we went out to test, so that should be a better situation all the way around. ”
USAC has scheduled some key summer races in the Indianapolis area to take advantage of the United States Grand Prix Formula One event that is being staged on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course nearby. Windom, like most other top racers, has a big interest in that series and has testing or racing one of the sleek, highly technological F1 machines on his short “to do” list for the future.
“I realize how rare that would be for me to be able to test or race one of the F1 cars, but that would be amazing if it could happen. Although I realize that’s something really far away – I can’t even consider it now, or even think about it too much. I’d like to race on a road course some day, although I’ve never done it yet. I realize how tough F1 is – especially for American drivers – and it would be tough, but it would be cool. ”
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