TWO meets in and Junior Barnes — chairman of Jamaica Race Drivers Club (JRDC) — is expecting the racing action to move to even better highs on Sunday, August 14 at Dover Raceway in St Ann.

“I’m expecting the event to be even better this time around as we’ll be seeing more drivers on track,” Barnes told the Jamaica Observer‘s weekly Auto magazine.

Dubbed Fast & Furious, the third meet in the JRDC’s 2022 championship series continues. Barnes is pushing to increase attendance by holding events on non-traditional dates. Previous administration attempted to capitalise on Jamaica’s four major holiday weekends — Easter, Labour Day, Independence, and Heroes’ Day.

“We can’t compete with the big parties,” explained Barnes.

He elaborated that this also affected competitors as they would often have to make the decision between racing or spending time with their families. He hopes that this change will have the larger effect of getting Jamaicans to come to Dover, regardless of previous engrained event dates and allow for the expansion of the amount of meets per year.

“The feedback from the fans and competitors has been the same, they’re happy that Dover is back,” he said.

In addition, the infrastructure improvement made to the aging circuit has gone over well, such as the new pits for the racers and new bathroom facilities for the patrons.

“Right now, we’re doing over the bridge and the track will be cut and cleaned two days before the event,” said Barnes.

Fast & Furious is expected to be just that with 14races, 11 car and three bike, packed into the meet. With the restart of racing, the Radical race car has cemented itself as the machine of choice for those wanting to be at the top rung of local circuit racing. And while Kyle Gregg was the pioneer, it has been newcomer to Thundersport class two Senna Summerbell that has made a statement of intent, winning all his races to date except one due to a puncture and capturing the Dover lap record at his last outing.

“For this event my plan is to continue what I have been doing in the last couple of events and finish all the races. I am trying some new tyres due to not being able to get my normal ones so my car could be better or worse than normal,” said Summerbell.

In between events, Summerbell hasn’t been relaxing.

“We haven’t been testing. However, I have been driving lots on the simulator and in Barbados where I represent Jamaica,” he said.

Rival Gregg hasn’t been sitting still either, working to overcome the mechanical issues that have affected him the past two meets.

“No updates really, just trying to work with what we have and improve. The team had some mechanical issues the last Dover which we have all sorted out now,” said Gregg.