Jefferies impresses in the States

Sports Reporter
UNAIDS Ambassador for “Protect The Goal” campaign and international motor racing rising star Axcil Jefferies of Zimbabwe once again justified himself in the motorsport arena at the weekend. After proving himself in the United States in 2013 racing in Indy Lights in Mid-Ohio and Houston, Texas, he was invited to race again in the international acclaimed Indy Series by American Honda who sponsored him for the Honda 200 Indy event held in Mid Ohio this past weekend.

As part of the package, jefferies was also appointed as a UN Aids ambassador to raise awareness of the pandemic by racing with the UNAIDS and Protect The Goal livery on his race car and race overalls.

And Jefferies wasted no time in getting back on pace, by hitting the ground running in practice on Thursday finishing off 7th fastest for the day.
“I knew I had to prove myself after getting this opportunity and having not raced the Indy Lights car for over a year was going to be tough. But Belardi are a great team and won two weeks ago with the same car I drove so I was confident of a decent result.”

The team were pleasantly surprised by Jefferies’ performance and feed back and his unrivalled ability studying data with engineers.
On Friday, Jefferies kept his momentum going into qualifying and went one better to qualify 6th in what is clearly the strongest Indy Lights field in many years with British F3 champion Jack Harvey, GP2 runner-up and F1 driver Luiz Razia, Mazda 2.o champion Mathew Brabham amongst some of the best drivers globally competing in the Indy Lights series.

Saturday morning’s race started in damp conditions, and after a cautious start Jefferies lost two places on the first lap.
“I am clearly rusty having not raced anything for six months so I took it easy on the first lap to acclimatise to racing again. In hindsight, I should have attacked as it left me stuck behind slower cars for most of the race as Mid-Ohio is not a track where you can over take with all the high speed corners, and no hard braking stops.

“So with a few laps to go, I decided it was do or die and pulled off two very brave moves to get back to 6th where I finished.”