Lexington, Ohio – Kory Enders battled a tough triple-header weekend in the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda, finishing 9th in Race 1 and being crashed out in Race 2 and Race 3.
Enders started Race 1 in 8th place and ran smoothly until mid-way through the race when he had to back off due to low tire pressure. The American held his ground and managed to finish inside the top ten in 9th place. Starting from the third row of the grid in 6th for Race 2, Enders felt this would be the race to finish on the podium.
The fight for the podium became fierce as race traffic left Enders stuck behind a slower car. Maneuvering in every which way he could to make the pass, Enders’ race was cut short when Darren Keane’s #36 machine carried too much speed from behind Enders and made contact.
The process to determine the starting grid for Race 3 was determined by taking each driver's fastest lap from Race 2. With that race cut short, Enders had only a few quick laps under his belt and was left to start Race 3 in 20th out of the 24 cars on the grid. An incident on the very first lap left Enders with no place to go and his race was extinguished for a second time by Keane who ran into Enders from the back.
With only two race weekends of the 2018 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda to go, Enders and DEForce Racing will find themselves competing in Portland, Oregon for the first time from August 31st to September 2nd.
Kory Enders
Driver #11 DEForce Racing Tatuus USF-17
“Unfortunately, this was a weekend to forget. We had a lot of potential going into the weekend after a lot of testing and work on the car. The team did a great job, but unfortunately, we had contact in two out of the three races by the same driver, so that was a bad ending to our weekend. Thankfully, my teammate, James Raven started on pole for the third race and was able to finish second place on the podium for us and bring home a nice trophy. That’s exactly what DEForce deserved and we are all really proud of him and we are now looking forward to Portland. I’m also excited about moving up to Pro Mazda next year where hopefully there will be some cleaner racing.”