Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
Following a successful rookie campaign at Sunset Speedway, Jordan Latimer is set to return in 2016 to race once again in the Sauble Falls Tent and Trailer Park Limited Late Model division. Notably, with the track’s NASCAR sanctioning, he has the ability to compete against drivers from across North America via the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series program.
The new year already has him excited, knowing that the level of competition is going to rank right up there. Most of the familiar faces are returning, but there have been changes, as usual with any off-season. There will be new additions to the division including past Super Stock Series Champion Lane Zardo and past Ontario Legends Series Nick Ledson, as well as some drivers with new equipment, including past Barrie Speedway Champion Gord Shepherd.
“With the new rules including no tire doping, I think that this year is going to possible be one of the toughest and closest competition that any track has seen in a while,” he commented. “We are running the same car we had last year but are working on it over the off season, same as everybody else does. Clean the car up, new parts to replace some old ones, maybe some changes on it. But my head is in the game 100% this year.”
Latimer adds that he plans to follow the known JL Motorsports team motto that has stuck since he started in go-karts – first year in a new class is for learning, but all years after that are game time. He followed that motto when he raced thunder cars at Barrie Speedway, using the first part of the year to learn, before picking up a couple wins during the second half of the season en route to a top-five finish in points in the following year.
Last season at Sunset Speedway, Latimer posted a few solid top-15 finishes to start the year, before turning up the heat during the second half of the season with three top-five finishes and eight top-10 finishes. He would finish 13th in the final standings, though more importantly, picked up the Rookie of the Year Award at the year-end banquet.
“When I look back on my 2015 season I think of things like dedication, hard work, late nights, but also being the Rookie of the Year at Sunset Speedway just like 2014 at Barrie Speedway in Thunder Car,” he said. “That’s awesome! As a whole last year could’ve been better, but in our eyes as a team it was pretty good to still come out with Rookie of the Year and running for the lead and fighting inside the top five considering some of the bad luck we had with the DNFs this season.”
Looking back on the season as a whole, Latimer adds the biggest thing he is learned is getting a good feel for the car, and how it reacts to certain situations on track.
“But also learned to have more patience, save equipment in endurance races – just everything that goes into these LLM cars that make them work,” he continued.
Now looking ahead to the new year, it’s all about contending for wins and possibly breaking through with his first feature victory.
“We have goals just like every year but mainly our JL Motorsports team just wants a checkered flag in are hands in victory lane at some point this season,” he said. “This season we expect to be able to run up there with all the big names like we did most weekends in 2015, but realize we will have off nights where something goes wrong on set up or just on the track, but also hope it doesn’t happen.”
JL Motorsports has already began putting together their marketing partners for the new season, and is proud to welcome Kitchen Tire, KICX 106, 104.1 The Dock and Spencer Lewis Promotions back for the new year. The teams continues to search for marketing partners, and has marketing packages that fit any company’s budget. Any interested companies can contact JL Motorsports at latimer.laurie04@gmail.com for more information.
Be sure to follow Jordan on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/LatimerJordan, and like the JL Motorsports facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/JLMotorsports/304091730527.
