JASON CHERRY: MAKING IT WORK
By: Pat Sullivan - USAC Media
For the full-time members of the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship, Eastern Storm is a pivotal moment in the quest for a title. Professional teams put in extra time in the shop refreshing engines and building the requisite spares to be prepared for the unforeseen.
This is not the world Blandon, Pennsylvania driver Jason Cherry lives in. To be sure, Cherry has dreams of his own, but these are colored by a heavy dose of reality and are calibrated to the resources at his disposal.
Cherry is a welder by trade, and in his offhand and self-deprecating way, he claims his vocation was born of necessity.
“I got into that because of racing,” he said. “I broke (stuff) and needed to fix it. The first micro sprint we had, I built from the ground up. I don’t like relying on other people to fix my car. If I broke stuff, I tried to figure out what I needed to do to fix it.”
Jason began his career in Massachusetts, but eventually matriculated to the Keystone State. He spent years in the micros before moving to the 358 sprint cars at Lincoln Speedway. When Selinsgrove Speedway moved to 360s, he followed suit, and soon he was racing with the long-established URC series. He enjoyed it, but the introduction of the USAC Rapid Tire East Coast Sprint Cars presented by Capitol Custom Trailers proved to be a game changer.
“We tried racing wingless,” he says, “and really liked it, and we have been doing that ever since. It is a little easier on the car and puts less stress on the engine, so they last a little longer. It also seemed a little more fun. The atmosphere was not so cutthroat. There wasn’t that diehard, you must win type of mentality. It was just guys out having fun with cars again. That is what we love to do. We are not very competitive, but we just want to go out and have fun at the track.
Given this as a backdrop, signing up with the USAC National series for a week of racing seems a bit out of character. Dig a bit deeper and you learn that there were other motivating factors.
“This is kind of a bucket list thing for us,” Cherry said. “I wanted to run a car like this with my father. He is getting up in age and we are looking at things possibly changing in the future. So, we are trying to hit some things we have always said we wanted to do but were never able to get to.”
Cherry planned for Eastern Storm months in advance. He began the task of putting a car together, and when it looked like he could pull it off, he took a week’s vacation. Just getting to the track was an accomplishment.
“We picked up a 410 in the offseason at a flea market,” he said with a laugh. “It is an used engine, and we haven’t rebuilt it.”
The powerplant had been used by Port Royal racer Kody Lehman, but the constructor assured Jason that the piece would stay together for several races. Describing his finished product Cherry says, “It is bargain basement cheap. Eighty percent of this car is made up of used components.”
The color scheme is attractive and makes full use of the owner’s last name. This is a story as well.
“I play with the graphics,” he said. “I do all of that myself with a little $150 eBay vinyl cutter. I try to do all my own vinyl to keep the costs down.” Summing it up, Cherry says, “I do what I can with what I have.”
The goals are modest. “It is all a learning experience,” Jason said. “We know coming in we are not going to win a feature. Our biggest goal is to qualify straight up, be fast enough to make the feature, and run in the pack with these guys. That would be an accomplishment.”
His peers understand this program. At most races, the crew includes Cherry’s father, wife, and sister. He says many in the East Coast series are there to lend a hand or a part when needed. He thinks they appreciate the nature of his operation. Thus far, he finds a similar reaction from the national teams.
“Oh, they all love it,” he says with a broad smile. “They think it is great that we are out here to have fun.”