Andrew Ogilvie had been the man to beat all weekend in Honda Challenge 1. Fast and consistent, Ogilvie led the field on track and on the time sheets.
Speed and consistency put him on pole for the Championship race, followed by Steve Peterson, Thomas Lepper and Pete Bovenberg. As the race commenced, Ogilvie did what he had been doing all weekend and jumped out to a strong lead. The car that gave him the most competition during the race was first-place Honda Challenge 2 leader Jeremy Croiset.
Despite some out-of-class German Touring Series cars ahead and coming from behind, Ogilvie enjoyed a commanding lead for the entire race and went on to finish first. After the race, Ogilvie was all smiles.
“It was pretty intense from the start,” Ogilvie said. “One of the really, really fast guys in H2 kept me honest the entire way. Lapped traffic with the much faster GTS cars, they were really good about making sure they were in the right place. A couple of the back markers were interesting to get past, because it didn’t seem like they wanted to be. Other than that, it was a good race. NASA has definitely come up. Thank God they had it here this year, my home track. I’ve been working for this all year.”
Lepper passed Peterson to take second about halfway through the race, but wasn’t making nearly enough power to catch Ogilvie, so he made the most of his race in other ways.
“I was back with the H2 cars, but I had a grand old race with Benny and Marcel,” Lepper said with his arm around his nephew, who also is his crew chief. “I certainly got my money’s worth. I have to thank my crew chief Russell Lepper, who made it all happen.”
Peterson had some trouble in traffic, but hung on for third.
“I had a good race till about halfway through when I got into a little sideswipe with an out-of-class car and that kind of took me out a little bit, bent a couple of wheels,” Peterson said. “But I was able to finish the race and cross the checkered line in third. My steering was out of alignment, not too bad. I was still able to control it. It was kind of a bummer, but I still finished and that’s all that matters.”
