Gabby Chaves third at the Cleveland Grand Prix

06/24/2007

Cleveland, Ohio - Gabby Chaves, 13-year-old, says he has gas in his veins and that might just be true.

Chaves, the youngest driver in the Grand Prix at 13 years old, found the podium in his first national start with a third-place showing in Saturday's Skip Barber race. Chaves finished just 1.818 seconds behind the winner, Josef Newgarden.

"It's in my blood," said Chaves, whose grandfather, uncle and mother were all professional racers in South America. "Today was great. It was just fantastic." Despite his young age, Chaves is one of the more veteran competitors in the Skip Barber series. He began driving go-karts when he was 10 years old in his hometown of Bogota, Colombia. That experience and poise from his family's coaching has helped make Chaves a serious threat in the Skip Barber series.

"I think it is really awesome that he is here at age 13," Newgarden said of his new challenger. "I think he just proved how good he is right now on a national series. He is doing a really good job and if he sticks with it, he's got endless opportunities ahead of him."
Plain Dealer reporter Steve Silver contributed to this report.

Rounds five and six of the BFGoodrich/Skip Barber National Presented by Mazda championship was supporting the Champ Car Cleveland Grand Prix and both races were wheel to wheel affairs from beginning to end where we saw the debut of a 13-year-old Colombian making his first Skip Barber National start, one Gabby Chaves, who fought for and earned a podium.

Race one: On the first lap, polesitter Newgarden not only lost the lead to Chaves, the kid who’s barely into his teens and had qualified third, but had to slot into third behind Riley. With passes happening in every corner up and down the 30-car field, the next time around we saw Newgarden in the lead and Chaves third, Riley keeping P2. When Chaves and Riley started duking it out mid-race, ‘‘Newgy’’ opened up a small gap.  On the final lap, Riley timed a move through the front-straight chicane that gave him a run on Newgarden to the checker -- but the effort fell 3 feet short. Jeff Relic, who hadn’t been in a National in more than a year, was a superb fourth, while Conor Daly, the young son of Derek making his first pro start, came home an impressive fifth.

Race two was even more closely fought, with six drivers racing scarily close over the first 12 laps: Newgarden, Chris Wehrheim, Miller, Riley, Chaves and Ricky Taylor. Wehrheim led lap one, then Newgarden took over. With four laps to go, Newgarden succumbed to Riley and got within two-tenths of Wehrheim at the checker. Fifth was Taylor, Chaves sixth, with Stevan McAleer, Timmy Megenbier, Juan Carlos Sistos and Daly rounding out the top 10.

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