Big changes this year for me that I'm really excited about!  Working on some official releases but the cat's already out of the bag: I'll be racing in the Grand Am Continental Series this year!  Some of you are saying "cool!" and some of you are saying "huh?" haha.  The Continental Tire Series is part of the Grand Am organization (NASCAR Sports Cars) and the Continental Tire Sports Car Championship (CTSCC) races alongside at Rolex Series, NASCAR and IndyCar events.  It's the "true" beginning of my sports car career; which I hope is a long one!



My decision to leave open wheel after just a year on a tight budget was a tough one.  Especially after I did a test recently and outpaced a pole-winning driver from last year.  I knew I had the speed in those cars but I never quite had the right opportunity.  In open wheel, unfortunately, it 100% revolves around the budget a driver can bring.  Now money makes sports cars go fast too but the culture is different.  Teams are more willing to give you a chance and good results in sports cars opens the door to move up into higher series whereas good results in open wheel opens the door to bring more money the following year!  Now I am not hating on open wheel, I value the year I spent there and think what Mazda has done with the Road to Indy is amazing, and paves the way for truly talented drivers to move up the ranks; but for now I am focused on doing well in the CTSCC series!



I will post some more info later on but I am extremely excited that I will be competing with Multimatic Motorsports; one of the best sports car teams on the planet and to date the only Canadian team to win Le Mans; not too shabby!  They are an amazing group of guys and have some serious engineering and manufacturing abilities so this is a huge opportunity for me.  And a huge opportunity to hear more about NHL hockey scores during the race weekend than ever before... eh? :)



I am also over the moon about being in a factory backed Ford Racing program running the Ford Focus ST-R racecar.  It's every drivers dream to align themselves with a factory and Ford's record of racing success speaks for itself.  The Focus is one of the funnest (that is a word, you're thinking of funner!) racecars I've ever driven and the competition is incredibly intense in CTSCC.  Racing a front-wheel drive car is also a blast because it is so different and you have to adjust you're driving style just "slightly" from a rear-wheel drive, downforce formula car!  Our last race at Barber had almost 80 cars take the green flag so you'll start hearing me be more excited about "top 20" or "top 10" results than I ever have been in the past as we develop the car!  BW we finished 15th at Barber in our first race!



Quick update for now but more news to come.  In the meantime try to come out and see our next race at Homestead Miami Speedway April 28th or watch us on SPEED TV. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @NickMancusoRace and feel free to come by the Multimatic pits and say hi.  My teammate Patrick Dempsey (aka "McDreamy" always seems to have more fans outside his pits than I do for some reason....

Happy Racing!

-Nick

Have been very busy trying to put together the 2012 season and catching up at work so I will just post a quick press release form my last event at mazda Raceway.  In the near future I will put together a season review about my first foray into open wheel racing!

Release:
"Nick Mancuso closed out a successful first season of open wheel competition with another strong top-10 showing.

Mancuso drove the No. 27 Jimmy John’s/INDECK machine to a competitive ninth-place result during Round Eleven of the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Starting the weekend with a Thursday test session, Mancuso had to relearn the infamous track he had been to a few years earlier in a vastly different car. Learning quickly, and working diligently with his champion JDC Motorsports crew, Mancuso optimized his “Freaky Fast” Star Mazda on the 2.238 mile raceway. After a brief practice on Friday the Star Mazda drivers wouldall have to wait until Sunday morning to qualify and then race.

Nick took the opportunity of having a rare free day during the race weekend to visit the local SPCA animal shelter nearby the track to sign autographs and help some furry friends get adopted. Sunday morning qualifications were a bit wild for Mancuso as a suspension failure in a 100mph corner sent him flying off the track. Luckily Mancuso kept the car away from the walls and nursed it back to the pits. Some amazingly quick pit work by the JDC boys got Mancuso back out with just enough time for one more flying lap which was enough to place Nick 12th on the grid. From the drop of the green Mancuso would battle with several competitors close to him in the championship standings.

As Mancuso worked his way up and was reeling in the 6th and 7th place cars ahead of him a late race restart shuffled him back to 9th position where he would finish the event.

“Any time you get to race a Mazda at Mazda Raceway it’s a pretty good day!” Mancuso said after the affair. “I was very happy to be in the car this weekend as it was an unexpected surprise so I enjoyed every second of it. A big congratulations to my lightning quick teammate Tristan and the JDC Motorsports crew on a well deserved championship! I am going to work hard during the off season so that I can compete for a full season and throw my name into the ring for the 2012 crown!”

Mancuso finished the season 12th in points after missing 4 races during the year. He is looking to build upon his partnerships and be in a full time seat next year to fight for the 2012 Star Mazda championship and stay in the Mazda Road to Indy ladder system. Stay tuned for updates!
In 2011, Mancuso races with support from Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, INDECK, JDC Motorsports, Lake Forest Sportscars, Putnam Leasing, ProMotion Driver Development, F.A.S.T. Race Products and the Max Schewitz Foundation.

Born on December 31st, 1986 in Lake Forest, IL, Nick Mancuso joins JDC Motorsports in the Star Mazda Championship, having raced
exclusively in the sports car ranks earlier in his career. In his first season of open-wheel competition Mancuso hopes to catch some people by surprise and contend for Rookie of the Year honors. Becoming part of the Mazda Road to Indy program allows Nick a clear path to achieving his dream of driving in the IZOD IndyCar Series. In addition to his racing activities, Mancuso is a black belt in Shotokan Karate and an ‘extreme adventurer’ with hobbies that include SCUBA and free-diving, Krav Maga, skydiving and capturing reptiles in the wild. In addition, he was inducted into the Cum Laude Society in 2004 and in 2005 he was made a member of the National Honor Society and chosen as a National Merit Scholar before graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009."

Thanks!!  Look for updates soon!
-Nick

Indy is awesome!  I want to get that part out of the way early in this post.  Believe it or not this past weekend was the first time I attended the Indy500!  And it certainly was the first time I had raced the night before it!!  Not to mention that Lucas Oil Raceway (IRP to the locals!) was my first race on an oval; so, lots of firsts this past weekend.  In the first three races I have ever run in a formula, or open-wheel, car I have raced on a street course, permanent road course, and now an oval; there is no other series quite like Star Mazda!

The ovals are crazy, fun, exciting, and scary.  We road racers certainly do not give the circle-track guys enough credit.  It might look like it’s easy from the outside but I can assure you there is plenty going on in the cockpit!  Although our racing activities were packed into only two days, I left for Indy on Tuesday night to be there for a few days of press activities and the Mazda Road to Indy Summit.  Our activities included an autograph session with a surprisingly large turnout, a luncheon with various Road to Indy teams, a visit from IndyCar CEO (and great guy) Randy Bernard, a social media presentation by IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, and a history lesson from track historian Donald Davidson; talk about a neat way to visit the Brickyard for the first time!

The week leading up to the race was also a great chance to hang out in the Firestone Indy Lights and IZOD IndyCar pit lanes and try to meet some of the teams.  As a young-ish J driver trying to make it into IndyCar, it’s important to try to meet as many people as you can on a race weekend and try to get a feel for the various teams as you never know where you will end up.  Come Friday night it was time to focus on the #27 Jimmy John’s/INDECK machine and figure out what it was going to take to get it going “Freaky Fast.” 

Friday evening practice was really cool.  We had a long session at nighttime under the lights.  We worked through a multitude of changes and I worked on my confidence in running closer and closer to the wall.  At Lucas Oil Raceway the fast way around is to run quite close to the wall for the majority of the lap.  On a small, 5/8 mile track when you are doing over 125mph it’s not as easy as it sounds!  The next day we had two practice sessions before qualifying so it was important for us to buckle down.  I had ended up 9^th on the timesheets on Friday night and I was looking to improve before the race.  The morning session seemed to go fairly well; we ended up in 9^th position again but only 5/10 of a second off of the fast time.  That just goes to show how tight the entire field is and how important it is to gain every fraction of a second that you can.  The second practice we were a bit improved and ended up in 7^th position.  It was a bit sketchy out there as the wind had shifted and was now blowing as a tail wind into Turn 3 which took a lot of the downforce off the car and the rear end was very nervous on entry.  This caught several drivers out and led to me having the biggest sideways moment I have had in a Star Mazda to date!  Luckily, I kept it off the wall and recovered and luckily my friend, and series photographer, Eric McCombs snapped a sequence of pics showing the progression of the massive slide.  One of the pics looks like I am fully drifting my Mazda around the corner; total poster material!

After the practice tuning it was time to qualify and then race.  Qualifications were pretty intense: you run one car on track at a time and you only get two warmup laps and then two flying laps.  The only thing more intense than sitting there quietly in the car waiting to go was going into Turn 1 on your first flying lap just hoping that you have enough temperature in the tires!  I ended up qualifying 9^th which I guess was sort of on-par with where we had been all weekend.  I think we were a bit off on the setup and I don’t think I quite have my oval technique perfected after 3 practice sessions either.  We were then at the mercy of the weather while waiting to take the green flag for the race.  It had been relatively nice all day but ominous clouds had been circling the track sporadically.  It wasn’t until just before the F2000 race was supposed to start that the rain really came down.  Eventually we got the track dried out and we were able to take the green flag about two hours behind schedule.  We still had an amazing fan turnout and the stands were packed.  The fans in Indianapolis are like nowhere else I’ve ever been!

Our race was shortened from 100 laps to 85 in consideration of the late start.  It was really neat to take the green flag underneath the lights (even if our first attempt was waived off).  The first few laps were pretty interesting with some very tight racing and a couple of 2 and 3 wide moments.  After that it strung out a bit and everybody settled into a rhythm.  Unfortunately my rhythm wasn’t quite quick enough and I ended up finishing in 8^th position.  I would have liked to have been further up since I am in such a tight points battle, but I’ll certainly take a top ten finish on my oval racing debut!  I did have a bit of a moment towards the end when I was passing a car in the last corner and lost the front downforce on the car resulting in a light “brushing” of the wall.  It was almost a Hildebrand-like moment but luckily I lifted off as quickly as I could and slid the car evenly into the wall and then continued on my way with no damage.  My apologies to GoodYear as I scraped their label off of the sidewall!

I definitely enjoy the ovals more than I thought I would and I can’t wait to get back into the car at the Milwaukee Mile.  If I thought 125mph felt fast at Indy, Milwaukee is a whole other story!  I am still 6^th place in the overall championship and looking to hopefully advance after the next two oval races are finished.  Those yellow cars (Team Pelfrey) were fast but Tristan, myself, and our new JDC teammate Joao are going to work hard to try and catch them.  Look for the #27 to be Freaky Fast next weekend at ‘the Mile!’

 

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @NickMancusoRace!

 

Thanks,

Nick

Two open-wheel races in the books now!  After this past weekend’s event at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL I am starting to feel a lot more comfortable in the car.  It was definitely a bit of an odd schedule: practice and qualifying Thursday morning, nothing Friday, nothing Saturday and race Sunday morning!  This is the price you pay when you are racing in a support series.  However, the upside is that you get to race in front of the large IndyCar crowds and be in the same paddock as the team owners so getting up early and hanging out for a few days is more than a fair trade. 

During the practice sessions I was still struggling a bit with the setup of the car.  It is tough for me as I have been driving 3,000 lb cars with little downforce for the past few years so I am still unsure of exactly what I need from a lightweight, winged car.  However, with the help of my driver coach Tony Kester we were able to review some of the data and video before qualifying and make some excellent changes to the aero balance and chassis.  We made a pretty significant adjustment before qualifying and it was night and day how much better the car was!  It doesn’t always work out like that and is a bit of a gamble, but it’s certainly nice when it does work.  It was the first time I felt like I could really drive the car hard and it was responding the way that I like a racecar to.  If I had this car at St. Pete I’m confident I would have been even further towards the front.  I ended up qualifying a very respectable 7^th place and I was pretty happy with that.  Another 3/10 of a second would have put me in 4^th position so it was definitely a tight field!  Also, my session was pretty significantly reduced as I had the flywheel explode on me on the back straight.  It was a very loud bang and very expensive sounding; it sounded like the whole engine blew up!  Luckily it was a fairly easy fix and my chief mechanic Dave Hoppel did an awesome job.  The metal shrapnel embedded on the inside of the bellhousing was crazy to see. 

We had the next two days off so it was nice to have qualified decently because you had plenty of time to think about it if you screwed up!  Even though we didn’t have to be at the track for official sessions Friday and Saturday I came by to check on the progress of the car and sit in it to scale it properly etc.  It was also a nice time to review data/video and see where I can still improve as Tristan went 7/10 faster than me so there was obviously still plenty to learn.   He is a really great teammate; he is VERY fast and very open and sharing with his data and is really helping me get up to speed.  The days off were also a nice time to “pound the pavement” and walk around and see who you can run into.  It was great to see some of my old sport scar friends in the Grand-Am paddock and I made some good connections with Indy Lights and IndyCar teams as well. 

Sunday was an early morning as I had to be there in plenty of time to make the 8am warmup session to check that everything was alright with the new flywheel and fine-tune our clutch adjustments for the standing start.  It’s funny, going into this season I was very concerned about how to do the best standing start and you can talk to 10 people and get 10 different explanations, but you really just have to figure it out for yourself.  Unfortunately, up to the race I’d only done about 5 of them total (including St. Pete race) so it was still a bit of a worry for me.  However, at the start of the race I got an awesome start, just the right amount of clutch slip and wheel spin, and managed to briefly squeeze into 4^th place by Turn 1 before eventually settling in 5^th.  I remained in 5^th position for the early portion of the race and was trying to hang on for a top 5 finish.  Barber is notoriously hard on tires due to the porous surface and it’s always a bit of a guessing game as to the right setup for the race.  We went even further in the direction that we did with our pre-qualifying improvement, but I think the combination of that setup and my hard battles early on led to my rear tires wearing away very quickly.  I had a VERY loose car for most of the race and it was exciting to say the least.  It felt like I was driving a 700 horsepower IndyCar coming off of the corners!  I had some very close and exciting battles with several drivers and held onto the car to come home in a solid 6^th place and finish as the top rookie.  I was very happy with this result as it is such a competitive field and I am so new to these cars.  Some of the other “rookies” in this series are championship winning drivers who have been in formula type cars for man years!  I am satisfied with my progress, but I want to be up there fighting with Tristan for race wins (Tristan drove a fantastic race and won in dominating fashion so a big congratulations to him as well); it’s just going to take a bit of time. 

After the race Tristan and I hung around for a bit and watched the start of the IndyCar race and went out for a nice dinner afterwards.  Neither of us were leaving until late in the day Monday so we got up early and went hiking Monday morning.  Birmingham is certainly a beautiful place and the landscape was phenomenal.  Now we are off to the ovals for the next three rounds which will be a whole new world for me.  I am very excited because it will be a completely different challenge.  We do not race until the end of May when we run the “Night Before the 500” in Indy.  So during the long break I am trying to put together the funding to get a test day on an oval so I don’t embarrass myself too badly in front of 100,000 people in Indy!  I am also going to be going on a safari in Africa looking for snakes and crocodiles during this time so I will surely have some neat pictures when I get back. 

Thanks,

Nick

If you aren’t following me yet on Twitter please do!  @nickmancusorace

PS check out some of the links below to some great press coverage I got throughout the weekend on Fox and NBC. 

Links to interviews: http://www.myfoxal.com/category/195956/video-landing-page?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=5735612&flvUri&partnerclipid

http://www2.alabamas13.com/lifestyles/2011/apr/09/2011-honda-indy-grand-prix-special-simo-38006-vi-76191/

Hey all,

I have been insanely busy since the race in St. Pete; the day after I landed back home I was off again to Nevada for Aston Martin training.  As I haven't had much time to put a proper post together I am going to put up the text from the press release that is about to go out describing the race.  I will give you a behind the scenes look when I get a moment to write something up.  Off again to Barber next Wednesday so it will likely be a "double header" post!  It was crazy and fun and I can't wait to be back in the car!!

MANCUSO SHINES IN PROFESSIONAL OPEN-WHEEL DEBUT WITH JDC MOTORSPORTSNick Mancuso’s first open-wheel race resulted in a top 10 finishLAKE BLUFF, IL. (March 31, 2011) - Rookie Star Mazda driver Nick Mancuso solidified his name as a contender in the professional open-wheel ranks with a solid top-ten finish in this past weekend’s St. Petersburg Grand Prix.  The formula car newcomer drove a strong race, advancing from 13th position on the grid and eventually bringing the Jimmy John's/INDECK car home in 7th place.  The 45 minute race through the streets of St. Petersburg, FL was punctuated by several caution periods and exciting restarts.
“Wow, what a race!” stated Mancuso. “It truly was a street fight in the #27 Jimmy John's/INDECK car. This was the first open-wheel race I've ever done, so I'm very happy to have moved up through the field and finish 7th.  It's truly a testament to the JDC team and my chief mechanic Dave Hoppel that I was able to do so.  At one point, I was run over by another car that flew over the top of me so I am glad to have finished at all; let alone inside the top-10!"


   After his first Formula One-style standing start and a strong charge towards the front, Mancuso looked set to finish the race in 5th position until contact in Turn 1 nearly took him out of the race entirely.  "I arguably should have finished inside the top 5 until another driver tried an overly ambitious move in Turn 1.  That stuff happens and I considered myself lucky to be able to finish the race at all after some of what I saw out there.  Given my limited seat time in these Mazda racecars it's very important that I do everything in my power to finish every race.  It's been a dream of mine for a long time to race these cars and I still can't believe it is actually happening.  I can't thank my racing partners Jimmy John’s and INDECK enough and I can't wait to be back in the car next weekend for the Grand Prix of Alabama!”



A native of Lake Forest, Ill., Nick Mancuso joins JDC Motorsports in the Star Mazda Championship this coming season having raced exclusively in the sports car ranks in his young racing career. First getting behind the wheel in 2006, he immediately steered his way into victory lane, winning numerous races in SCCA Regional Sports 2000 competition. That trend continued one year later in National competition, culminating in a third place finish in the year-end SCCA National Championship Runoffs, and the Jim Fitzgerald Rookie of the Year award. Making the move up to the pro racing ranks, Mancuso was selected to take part in the inaugural Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup in 2008, before racing in the SCCA Pro Racing Playboy Mazda MX-5 in 2009. Last season, the Illinois racer contested one race in the SCCA World Challenge, piloting an Aston Martin DB9 in the GT class. In addition to his racing activities, Mancuso is an 'extreme adventurer' with hobbies that include SCUBA and free-diving, skydiving and capturing reptiles in the wild.  In addition, he was inducted into the cum Laude Society in 2004 and in 2005 he was made a member of the National Honor Society and chosen as a National Merit Scholar.  He was born December 31, 1986.


PS you can follow me now on Twitter (even though I am still figuring out how to work it!) @nickmancusorace.  I will try to link it to my webpage int he future too!

Thanks,
Nick