Zach Veach Looks To Continue His Successful Results On An Oval In The Last Oval Race Of The Season
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[/media-credit]NEWTON, IA (June 20, 2012) – Andretti Autosport driver Zach Veach heads to Iowa Speedway this week to once again test his skills on an oval in the Star Mazda Championship series. At Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, the first oval of Veach’s career in the Star Mazda series, he was successful at placing his No. 77 K12 Mazda on the podium in the third position. With his love for ovals, besting his result from Indianapolis isn’t out of the question for the teen.
“I’m really excited to be back in the K12 Star Mazda car, especially going to a track like Iowa,” said Veach. “Being that Iowa is full throttle the whole way around, it’s going to be like a super speedway for our cars and coming off of a successful ‘Night Before the 500’ race, I feel it’s going to carry a lot of momentum into this weekend. We’ve made a new seat and I’ve been working hard off the track too. The Andretti Autosport guys have been working extremely hard too and if things come together right, I feel we can give the K12 team their first win of the season!”
While making his first start at Iowa Speedway in 2010 in the USF2000 National Championship Series, Veach qualified third and put in a top-five result. He returns to the 7/8-mile oval prepared to improve on his previous result at the track, which will be just his second stop at the rural Iowa racetrack.
The 17-year-old Ohio native considers this one of his favorite races on the 2012 season schedule because of his love for racing on ovals. With his first appearance on an oval in the Star Mazda car behind him, Veach has experience running the car in this setup.
“I’m maybe even more excited about this race than I was about racing at Lucas Oil Speedway because I now have a feel on how far I can push the Star Mazda car until it bites back,” continued Veach. “At Iowa Speedway the cars run flat the whole way around and there is a lot of banking so the straightaway’s become just as important as the corners. The track isn’t forgiving, and I am looking forward to the challenge and testing my driving skills on the oval.”
Veach has been keeping busing off the track as well, recently completing his junior year of high school at The Ohio Virtual Academy, an online public school that pairs state-certified teachers with the curriculum provided by K12 to individualize education. K12 has partnered with Veach to form a partnership for the remainder of the 2012 season, including a new paint scheme for his racecar. Racing since age 12, Veach has always taken his education and studies very seriously and this program allows him the opportunity to continue as an aspiring athlete while keeping up with his schoolwork. Veach plans to enter his senior year of high school this coming fall.
Per usual, Veach typically hits the ground running upon arriving in each race market and prior to the race this weekend, he will be partaking in the Racing for Kids visit at the Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, IA alongside IZOD IndyCar Series driver Justin Wilson and former driver and team owner Robbie Buhl. Before returning to the cockpit of his car, Veach will participate in media interviews and interact with fans via Twitter during his usual pre-race Twitter Chat. This week’s chat is with @IowaSpeedway on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. EDT.
Practice for Veach opens on Fri., June 22 at 1:45 p.m. EDT before Veach races the only other oval on the 2012 calendar Saturday, June 23 at 6:20 p.m. EDT as a lead up to the headlining IZOD IndyCar Series race. Live timing and scoring is available throughout the weekend via www.StarMazda.com/timing or by downloading the Race Monitor app. Further, the race will be prepared for network distribution via tape delay on Discovery’s Velocity Network and globally on ESPN International. In the U.S., the race is set to air on Velocity on July 28 at 12 Noon.
Veach’s 2012 effort in the Star Mazda Championship is primarily supported by K12 with additional backing provided by: the Young Marines youth organization, Zakosi Data Backup, ADS IT Solutions, Replay XD, OMP, and Arai Helmets.
Sanctioned by INDYCAR, the Star Mazda Championship is one of two series part of both the Mazda Road to Indy ladder system and the MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development driver program. Andretti Autosport is currently the only INDYCAR team to compete in each level of the Mazda Road to Indy.
For more information, please visit www.ZachVeach.com or www.AndrettiAutosport.com.
About Zach Veach:
Zach “Ziggy” Veach is a 17-year-old autoracing driver who competes in INDYCAR’s ‘Mazda Road to Indy’ Star Mazda Championship Series, an important open-wheel stepping-stone to a career in the IZOD IndyCar Series and Indianapolis 500. In 2012, Veach captured the Formula Car Challenge Winter Series Championship and in 2011, he secured the USF2000 Cooper Tires Winterfest Championship and was voted the “Most Popular Driver in USF2000”. Named by ESPN The Magazine as a NEXT athlete in motorsports, Veach keeps an active pace both on and off the race track. In 2010, Michael Andretti signed Veach to his team, Andretti Autosport, while also being named one of CNN’s “Intriguing People” and being nominated for the Sports Illustrated “Sports Kid of the Year” award. In addition to his racing, Veach is an advocate for safer driving as the national spokesperson for FocusDriven, an advocacy group for victims of motor vehicle crashes involving drivers using their cell phones and has campaigned for Oprah Winfrey’s “No Phone Zone.” Veach designed a phone application through his phone-app building company, ZaAPP, releasing urTXT, in the Marketplace for Android to help consumers avoid dangerous text messagingwhile driving. Like most of his peers, Veach was bullied as a kid and works to combat the growing epidemic as part of the Cyber Safety Academy’s “No BULL Challenge” as a key ambassador. Veach has been a guest or profiled on a variety of national platforms including NBC’s The Today Show, CNN’s Headline News, ABCNews.com, Oprah Radio’s The Gayle King Show, The Los Angeles Times, AOL.com and is a blogger for RACER magazine and The Huffington Post. The son of a national truck and tractor-pulling champion, Veach is sponsored by K12, Zakosi Data Backup, the Young Marines youth organization, Replay XD, Arai Helmets, OMP, ADS IT Solutions, and artrotondo.com. He enters his senior year of high school this fall and released his first book, 99 THINGS TEENS WISH THEY KNEW BEFORE TURNING 16, in 2011. For more information, please visitwww.ZachVeach.com.
About Andretti Autosport:
Based in Indianapolis and led by racing legend Michael Andretti, Andretti Autosport fields multiple entries in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Andretti Autosport competes in Firestone Indy Lights, the Star Mazda Championship and in the USF2000 National Championship. The company boasts three IZOD IndyCar Series championships (2004, 2005 and 2007), two Firestone Indy Lights titles (2008 and 2009), one USF2000 championship (2010) and has won the Indianapolis 500 twice (2005 and 2007). For more information, please visit www.AndrettiAutosport.com.
About the Star Mazda Championship Series:
For 2012, the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear will again be a major part of the “Mazda Road to Indy”. The 2012 schedule consists of 17 races on 10 weekends, most with IndyCar. Rising stars from around the world will compete on road courses, street circuits and ovals in front of more than a million fans as they battle for prizes valued at $1.5 million, including a scholarship to move up and race in the 2013 Firestone Indy Lights series. Drivers 16 and older are welcome to compete and the Star Mazda Championship also features the Expert Series for drivers 30 and older. The Star Mazda Championship features standing starts, wheel-to-wheel racing at 160 mph and budgets a fraction of other top open-wheel ladder series. For more information on the Star Mazda Championship and its drivers, as well as the Mazda Motorsports ladder system, please visit www.StarMazda.com.
