The Asphalt Assault series may have had a delay to its season start, but it got up to pace rather quickly with another action-packed event at Palisadoes International Raceway, Kingston, on Saturday, June 22, ‘Wet n Slide’, that thrilled to the very end.

“The event went great. My team is tired, but we’re ecstatic because it was an amazing event. Great turnout, excellent competition. Spectators loved it. Sponsors loved it, so we’re happy,” Christopher James, of organisers Team Streetz, told the Jamaica Observer’s weekly Auto magazine.

While Rajendra Jadusingh, winner of the previous round, is a perennial favourite at dexterity events, he didn’t have it easy despite series rival Joel Jackson not participating this time around. He had to fight it out across a variety of talent and machinery to come out on top at the end of the night.

“Dexterities are still a lot fun, especially given the type of car I drive. I used to race in a professional series with a proper race car and won a lot there, but this has its own appeal using a regular road car while competing against the same people from back then with their full built race cars,” said Jadusingh.

He took his MINI One to the top step of the podium, and front-wheel drive class victory, after posting the fastest clean run of the event on his opening try. The competition then swooped in, starting with Lee Vaz, who came the closest in his Toyota Starlet, only to suffer mechanical failure before he could push further to beat Jadusingh’s time. He would then be challenged again by the Montegonian pair of Zidan Madden and Ian Wright, both coming close, but unable to perform penalty-free runs to take victory. Demar Lee, in his Subaru Impreza STi rally car was the fifth-fastest overall, unable to find the speed or avoid cones to challenge for the win.

“To be sure, I’m not sure what really gave me the advantage tonight. I think it was the amount of wetting they did to the track. It did help a lot. When you run on tarmac surfaces with my car, it’s very low on power, it doesn’t have a limited slip differential, and so when there is a lot of traction available it really suffers against the higher-power cars,” explained Jadusingh.

Wright would claim the PRO class in his Nissan Sunny. Vaz held on to the rear-wheel drive Limited Slip Differential class win.

James said the series will come to a close with a spectacular finale at Vernamfield, Clarendon, in November.