By Pat Griffith
AJ Nealey is another WDCR member who has entered his second season racing in the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup, and he feels a new approach to this season will help him in the championship chase.
“This year, I’m a lot more relaxed,” he said. “I’m working more on the mental approach and getting my head straight at the task at hand. Last year it was the fear of failure, and it affected how I was driving.”
AJ is also trying to copy the path Timmy Megenbier took to the series championship last year – staying clean and trying to accumulate points.
“He and Andy Lee [series runner-up] ran smart, methodical races, and that’s what I want to do,” he said.
Through the first three rounds, the plan has worked – he finished third and fourth in the opening two races at Virginia International Raceway, then two weeks later at New Jersey Motorsports Park, he finished fifth after qualifying 10th.
He also thinks the year’s experience will help him as well because, except for running a new configuration at Miller Motorsports Park and a race in Mexico at Autodromo AMOZOC, it’s a similar schedule this time around, and the cars are exactly the same.
“I didn’t really think I’d be eligible to compete again because of my age, but Volkswagen grandfathered returning drivers in,” he said. “I looked around, and the TDI Cup is a good professional series for the money. It’s a legitimate series and has a lot of notoriety. It was the best decision for me.”
TDI Cup drivers begin each race weekend with a track walk where they go corner to corner with tutelage from one of the series driving instructors. “We’re all vigorously taking notes and writing stuff down. It’s input, input, input.”
Drivers are contractually obligated to not drive on track at all before the race weekend – no races, no trackdays, nothing. For AJ, he watches YouTube videos, and even for a track that he knows well like VIR and Mid-Ohio, he still spends time studying videos leading up to the race.
He said one of his most memorable races last year was on a track he had never been to – Road America. It was a wild race with a frantic battle up front and remembered for WDCR member Devin Cates (who’s racing this year in the Grand Am series) rolling his Jetta, and AJ ended up on the podium in second place.
“It was Saturday evening at dusk, so the lights were on around the track, and all the cars looked really good,” he said. “As far as atmosphere and track layout, Road America was a fun weekend. It’s an awesome track.”
Helping with sponsorship this season is Brimtek, which provides technical products to the U.S. government and military. Headquartered in Ashburn, Va., AJ was introduced to the company’s CEO, Dave Tilton, at a MARRS weekend at Summit Point by Tristan Herbert, who races a Brimtek-sponsored ITB Golf in the series. AJ showed Tilton his sponsorship proposal, and “he liked what he saw” – Brimtek came on board for the last few races of 2009 and agreed to continue support in 2010.
“Some may call it luck, but it was really opportunity meets preparation,” AJ said. “I sold everything – my truck, my racecar, my motorcycle – to finance last season and use it as a front to approach sponsors.”
With Brimtek’s government audience and Tilton’s background as a Navy SEAL, AJ is supporting the Wounded Warrior Project this season. Before each race weekend, he calls to veterans centers and invites wounded warriors to the track for what he called “full hospitality access.
“They sign a star on the hood of the car and get the red carpet treatment,” AJ said. “It’s just really cool to support them.”
Although AJ plays online in iRacing, which has many of the same tracks that the TDI Cup visits, he mainly focuses on physical training to prepare for racing. He started doing Bikram Yoga, which he said is “pretty intense – you can burn up to 1,200 calories a session. You experience the same heat as behind the wheel of the car, and it pushes your body to its limits.”
AJ began his motorsports career in 2002 autocrossing a turbo Civic in Street Modified, and he quickly realized it wasn’t the car for the class. He kept it simple by finding a second-generation Honda CRX for G-Stock (“after I de-riced it,” he said with a laugh) and famously missed his senior prom to autocross at the SCCA Pro Solo at Virginia Motorsports Park. He did 40 events his first year and then co-drove with WDCR member Mike Neary in his D Street Prepared Acura Integra.
“Autocross contributed heavily on my car control skills,” he said. “It’s a cheap, low-risk way of learning the limits of the car.”
For the three years after that, he raced shifter karts all along the east coast.
“I raced at Road Atlanta – all the big tracks – and that was an awesome way to get into road racing,” he said. The “chess game” of drafting on the bigger tracks helped hone his racecraft.
Next, AJ dabbled in the open-wheel ranks after attending a Skip Barber School (where he was classmates with Frankie Muniz of “Malcolm in the Middle” fame), but after doing a few regional races, he realized he couldn’t take the financial burden.
“I dreaded getting in the car and I was so happy to get out of it,” he recalled. “I was racing against these CEOs who didn’t care about contact and could just write a check if they wrecked. That’s when it hit home.”
He went back to a familiar — and inexpensive — car, a Honda CRX, finding one that had been used for autocross and track days. It had a rollcage and other safety equipment and was pretty much just a turn of the key away from Improved Touring. And since he worked as a mechanic at Hondamans in Pasadena, Md., which if you can guess is an independent Honda repair shop, he said he was excited about racing a car in which he had “all the parts for in the shop.”
He drove it to an ITA MARRS Championship and third place at the American Road Race of Champions at Road Atlanta, and then came the TDI Cup.
As for after the TDI Cup, AJ said he’s researching on what’s the best next step. He wants to stick to sportscars and ultimately race in the American LeMans Series and at the 24 Hours of LeMans, but for now, he’s comfortable just making that next step that makes sense logically as well as financially. Most of all, he wants to continue the enjoyment of coming to the track.
“I have the mentality that I’m here to have fun,” he said. “I don’t get that aching feeling of nervousness before getting on track.”
You can follow AJ on Facebook, Twitter and his personal Web site.
