It’s been an eventful few weeks out here in North America.

After a successful race at Mosport Canada – closing the points gap on the current Star Mazda championship leader Peter Dempsey – we travelled down to Road Atlanta where we were joined by the rest of the team. Arriving here was JDC Motorsport’s newest team member and my team mate for the rest of the season, Chris Miller, who has joined us after competing in Formula 2000 earlier in the year.

The test went really well. It only took a few laps to work out the track basics, but figuring out the blind corners was the trickiest part. It was a hot day, and it didn’t feel like there was much grip. Improvement throughout the day was steady. I was fastest with a small margin – a good end to the day – and we left the track knowing we should have good pace for the next event.

After testing I managed to get a bit of time to go back home to Birmingham, England. I was only there for a week but it’s always good to get some time there. I saw my family and meet up with a few friends during the weekend. Training continued as normal, but I did manage to make it to the Grand Prix Shootout on the Tuesday at Bruntingthorpe Airfield.

The event was attended by six international drivers. Three drivers went and did their evaluations in the morning and I was one of the three doing mine in the afternoon. I managed to meet with Peter Windsor, the man in charge of the New F1 team, USF1, then during my evaluation I was let loose in a Fiat 500 Abarth Spec. The little car performs like a missile, and punched out a good 130bhp from its turbo charged engine (though unfortunately it didn’t quite handle like my Formula Star Mazda!). Still, it was fun to see how far you could push it.

My evaluation was done by Rob Wilson. It was quite strange having some one sitting next to me, marking me. It felt like I was having my driving test all over again, except this time I didn’t have to stick to speed limits! It was definitely enjoyable, but different to what I’m used to. Firstly I was driving a front wheel drive car, secondly the race car had a roof, and last but not least, it’s unusual for me to be sat so high up whilst driving.

The evaluation went well. I didn’t have any ‘offs’ or detours, and I got on really well with all the guys at The Shootout. I must thank David Fleming for organising the event and being patient with my travel arrangements to and from America!

I spent the rest of time at home working until Thursday when I got back on a plane – this time to Indianapolis. This is where the majority of the Indy Car teams and Indy Lights teams are based. I travelled to the Vision Motorsports workshop where I got to meet all of the crew and had a seat fitting. Their workshop is unbelievable. The building is huge, they have at least 10 car bays for the Indy lights, Indy Cars and some of the older models too. They also had the two trucks in there as well as their own paint booth, machine shop and everything else a Indy car team needs to be successful.

Later that day I took a trip to California to meet my current team JDC Motorsports for another test at Laguna Seca – and the track didn’t disappoint at all. In truth, it was awesome!

I’d never been before, but I’ve played on Grand Turismo enough to feel like I know it well. Still, that doesn’t make it easy. I only had one test session before I was heading into qualifying, quickly followed by the race. The main aim for the weekend was to learn the track and get a good setup for the final round of the championship, and thankfully the day went really well. I won both my races, but unfortunately these aren’t point scoring events, however I’m planning on taking my success and repeating my finishing positions in the final round.

Monday morning wasn’t a time to relax; I was on another fling back across America to mid-Ohio. Here I was testing in an Indy Lights car; a 450hp beast of a machine, almost double the horse power of the Star Mazda and with a great deal more downforce. Here I worked with Bryan Herta (ex-Indy car race winner and Indy Lights champion) and Steve Newey the engineer of vision Bryan Herta motorsport.

The test was a good experience. It was another steep learning curve as I had to learn the track as well as the car. I was reaching nearly 160mph at the end of the back straight, but the downforce helps to slow the car down beautifully for the corners. I ran wide a few times but managed to keep the car off the grass, running respectable times and the Vision Bryan Herta crew were impressed with my improvement throughout the day. I ended up just over half a second off the fastest time, completing the 3rd fastest time of the day. I would like to think that if I spent another day in the car I would be right on the pace.

The next few days I spent my time in Indianapolis training and preparing for the next round at Road Atlanta. During my few days there I spent much time at Pit Fit where many of the drivers go to train with sports and race car enthusiast Jim Leo, drivers such as Dario Franchitti (Indy car), Scott Dixon (Indy Car), Townsend Bell (Indy car) and some of my Star Mazda rivals. On the Sunday I also made my way to the HQ of racefanradio.com where I conducted an interview with two of my closest championship rivals – talking about racing in America, next weekend’s race and our individual plans for next year.

Over the weekend I also met up with a few of the Indy Lights drivers to watch the Japan Indy 300, just before I had to pack my bags once more and get ready to head off for this weekends round 12 of the Star Mazda championship race at Road Atlanta.

It’s back to the race, and I’m really looking forward to an excellent weekend on the track.

Fighting through a weekend of adversity, Star Mazda Championship contender Adam Christodoulou continued to tighten up the championship points race with a podium finish at Mosport International Raceway in Round Eleven of the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear. Just as the Mosport Circuit features ups and downs and twists and turns, so too was the path Christodoulou would take over the course of the race weekend.

The weekend looked promising from the start with the Birmingham, United Kingdom resident quickly jumping to the top of the time sheets in the early stages of the opening test session before the first twist of the weekend would strike.

“I was fastest at the time and everything was looking good until I made a minor error out of corner three, just clipping the grass on the exit, I tried to save it but the grass was damp and I became a passenger. I ended up making contact with the tyre wall, taking off my front wing and causing damage to the front left corner of the car,” Adam commented. “Once we got the car back to the trailer Dave my mechanic was straight onto the job and through a tremendous effort the car was fixed just before the next session.”

Back on track in the second session and looking to climb the charts once again Christodoulou suffered his second setback of the weekend after a bump at the apex of the flat out sixth gear turn two sent his #11 Molecule Labs / Alpinestars/ JDC Motorsports Pro Formula Mazda off the circuit.

“I hit the small bump on the inside of the track, lifting the front wheels and once the car landed it bottomed out and before I could save it I was on the grass going backwards down the hill. I realized it wasn’t going to be good so I braced myself for impact and I hit the wall with some serious speed causing even more damage than the previous session,” He revealed. “The Mosport safety crew were at my wreck within seconds; I got out the car and was checked over by the paramedics. Luckily I was ok, and the strong structure of the Star Mazda had taken all the impact. Once again we had a big job of getting the car fixed and I’ve got to thank everyone from the JDC Motorsport team for all their support and help putting the car back together, every one chipped in, the crew worked late hours, and the car was fixed by the morning.”

Returning to the circuit for the second day of practice Christodoulou would work on putting the previous days events behind him and after cracking the top ten on old tires in the morning session was pleased to post the second fastest time in the final practice session, just five-hundredths off the fast time from the session.

Adjustments made in anticipation of the morning qualifying session were washed away as torrential rains had swept across the track over night and though the storm had relented during qualifying the track surface was still wet enough to require a wet setup and a heavy fog made visibility a challenge. “Several red flag periods for cars that went off chopped up the session and I was a little bit annoyed only qualifying 4th, but we had the car set up for the wet conditions and the track dried up quicker than expected,” Adam stated. “Still I was happy that I out qualified my main championship contender Peter Dempsey.”

With an early morning qualifying session and a late afternoon race the weather forecast became the obsession of the day as the teams watched and waited to see if the storms would return and how to adjust their cars for the conditions. As the afternoon arrived it became apparent that the race would be run in the dry and attention was made to getting the cars just right for the 45 minute race.

As the green lights went out for the standing start everyone worked their way through turn one safely for what would be a caution flag free event. Battling his teammate Alex Ardoin on the opening laps, Christodoulou was able to gain the upper hand and move into the third spot and started focusing on catching up to the leaders. As the leaders started to encounter lapped traffic, Adam was able to climb into second place as race leader Conor Daly spun after making an outside pass attempt in turn eight before recovering and returning to the circuit. While the lapped traffic would initially help Adam it also cost him later in the race.

“I was now in second but it wasn’t going to be easy as Conor didn’t lose much time and was chasing me down. Traffic was all about timing and trying to get around the lapped traffic without losing time or speed,” Adam said. “Conor was getting closer lap by lap and I could see him trying to get the draft down the straight, unfortunately he finally got the run he needed to draft past down the straight and went down my inside. The flag came out and I brought the car home in 3rd. It wasn’t quite the win, but I was more than happy to finish 3rd after the disastrous start to the weekend and the main thing was I closed up the gap in the championship. I went into round eleven, 10 points shy of the championship, and I’ve now reduced it just 7 points.”

With two rounds left in the championship the series now heads to Road Atlanta for Round Twelve of the Championship during the Petit Le Mans race weekend on September 23-25.