YAKIMA — The Righteous Racing 17 team placed seventh at the 2014 Apple Cup at Yakima Speedway earlier this month.
Thom and Jai VanGesen of Port Angeles own the team, and son Jon VanGesen of Port Orchard is the driver.
VanGesen drives a 5/8-scale 1937 Chevy Sedan in the U.S. Legends series. He is the 2007 Northwest Outlaw Compact Champion and 2009 Northwest Legends Masters Division Champion.
VanGesen placed second in the heat race Saturday, April 12, putting him in the sixth starting spot in the 23-car field for the 35-lap main event Sunday, April 13.
Racers from Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington competed in this year’s Apple Cup, which featured the largest field in recent history.
VanGesen timed in 23.25 (77.4 mph), 10th fastest of the field.
VanGesen lined up fourth in his heat race of 12 cars and immediately began battling Brent Mack of Burien for the lead.
Mack and VanGesen appeared to be tied together and the two drafted repeatedly down the long front stretch attempting to pull away from the hard chargers in the field.
Mack won the heat, followed by Ricky McNeil, also of Burien, and VanGesen rounded out the top three.
VanGesen’s adjustments to the car appeared to be paying off as he ran a lap of 22.86 (78.7 mph) in practice leading up to the main event.
After a 12-car invert from the previous day’s heat finishing orders, VanGesen started sixth in the main event.
Included in this extremely fast lineup were the six cars behind VanGesen who were running lap times consistently faster than the track record coming into the weekend.
That Saturday, Randy Schaaf shattered the record, running a lap of 22.35 (80.5 mph) on the flat half-mile oval. The previous track record was 22.75 (79.1 mph), also set by Schaaf.
After the green flag for the main event, VanGesen fell back to 11th place early in the race but began battling back to the front by turning in his fastest lap of the weekend, 22.85 on lap 10.
VanGesen continued to work, passing one car at a time, while dealing with lap traffic halfway through the race.
The race had two cautions, including one when Mack, who was directly in front of VanGesen, was battling another car and lost control of his machine coming off of turn two and pounded the back-stretch wall.
Mack was uninjured, but the rear of his car was destroyed from the impact.
VanGesen struggled with a loose race car late in the race, but was able to catch the sixth-place car before settling for seventh place.
“I am extremely happy with our race weekend,” VanGesen said.
“My dad, Thom, and Jerry West prepared a great car. Our team worked very hard to improve each practice, each race, and we did.
“We could not have had the valuable resources available to us to prepare this race car without the great support of the partners of our Righteous Racing team.”
Other North Olympic Peninsula sponsors for the Righteous Racing 17 team include All Metal Recycling (Port Angeles), Olympic Game Farm, Ruddell Auto Mall, Sean Clift Mortgage, Northwestern Territories Inc., Dockside Grill on Sequim Bay, Tranco Transmissions, The Auto Doctor, A1 Auto Parts, European AutoWerks, Bill’s Auto Detailing, Les Schwab (Sequim) and JZM.
