Editor’s Note: Nathan Byrd is a 21-year-old racer who is embarking upon an intense racing schedule that will see him race in more than 10 different series and multiple forms of race cars, including sprint cars, asphalt late models, formula cars and midgets. SPEED SPORT will be following his journey with a weekly driver diary for the rest of the season.
LEEDS, Ala. — After a weekend of racing a winged midget in New Hampshire, the schedule took me to Alabama to race a completely different style of race car.
This time I was competing in the North American Formula 1000 Championship with Arrive Drive Motorsports at Barber Motorsports Park. The week was quite the challenge, but very fun and exciting at the same time.
We got faster every time we were on the race track, which started with practice and was followed by qualifying and a pair of races. Each day we practically got two seconds faster. We ended up qualifying third for the first race.
In the beginning of the first race we got passed by Steve Hamilton, but three corners later we got back past him. We got held up a couple of Formula Atlantic cars, which were racing as part of our multi-class race, but I managed to squeeze by and hold on to third for the rest of the race.
The beginning of race two was a similar story. I started third and got passed by Steve in the first corner. I almost got by him again in the same corner where I passed him in the first race. Then in turn seven there was a big plum of dirt and dust ahead of me.
Steve broke hard for turn seven while I tried carrying more speed, which ended with me getting into his left-rear tire. When we exited turn seven, we drag raced to turn eight but my car was bogging down after the contact. That allowed Tim Pierce to get a run on the two of us and almost race three-wide into turn eight.
I felt like Tim had the upper hand going into turn eight, so I lifted and gave him room to pass while also trying to lose as little speed as possible. Unfortunately, I didn’t expect him to make as big of a speed adjustment as he went for the pass and I made contact with his car’s left rear, which spun him out.
After the absolute bloodbath that was lap one, we got in some good clean laps. I finally figured out how to get through turns eight and nine flat out, something I was working on the entire weekend while also working on building speed in other corners.
After a few laps the caution flag came out. We got a pretty good restart and passed a couple of Atlantic cars. We were trying to make our way forward when I saw a plume of smoke in the distance in turns 10 and 11. When I got to turn 12, I saw Alex Mayer, who won the first race, running away from his burning race car.
I was glad to see that Alex was alright. Obviously, the caution flag waved again because of the fire, with the race eventually ending because of the incident. With Alex’s problems, I finished second for my second podium finish of the day.
Overall, it was a great learning experience. It was my first time racing at Barber and only my second time racing in the F1000 series.
This week I’m going to be extremely busy as I have races at three tracks in three states. I’m in a Formula 4 car at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, N.J., a midget, Silver Crown car and a USF2000 car at Lucas Oil Raceway in Clermont, Ind., and finally a late model at Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina.
It’ll be a long week, but it’s going to be a lot of fun.