Jacob Mercer Takes Home Another 3rd Place Finish from a Busy Racing Weekend
From a very early age, most racers learn that consistency is the key to any degree of success at the weekly racing level. Heading into the Championship Clash – Saturday, September 3rd – at Peterborough Speedway, 15-year-old Jacob Mercer was 2nd in the Late Model point standings; only 31 markers out of the top spot. Much of what the 3rd generation racer was able to accomplish came as result of a season long string of top-5 finishes.
Hard work by the crew after contact with the 3rd turn wall in the night’s opening qualifying round kept the car in the show and allowed the youngster to take the green flag from inside the 2nd row for the final regular season main event. Mercer quickly moved into a side-by-side battle for the lead with his championship rival.
His No. 81 machine ran some solid laps but dropped back a couple of positions as the field worked through some slower traffic with less than a handful of circuits remaining in the 25-lap headline dance. As the checkered flag waved, the softspoken youngster finished the show exactly where he’d started, in 3rd spot.
The night before his 2022 local season wrapped-up, Jacob Mercer and his Sine’s Flooring, Durmach Precision Tooling, Facility Services, Courtice Septic, Kawartha Metals, Office Line, Cressman Tree Maintenance, Beyond Signs & Design, Mediavandals, Lynch, Rutherford, Tozer Certified Accountants, Richter Law, Press Any Key Computer Solutions, Quantrill Chev Buick GMC Cadillac, Ross Funeral Home, M&M Food Market – Port Hope, Doner Custom Carpentry, Dairy Farmers of Ontario, Cliffshore Excavating, Epic Racewear and Clarke Motorsports Communications team made the first-ever trek to Delaware Speedway for the track’s 70th Anniversary Shootout.
The first year Late Model racer time-trialed 23rd out of 24 starters but gained some valuable track time on the Western Ontario half-mile oval. During the night’s opening heat race, the team realized their goal of making the field for the 70-lap main event with a 6th place effort. At the checkered flag, Mercer finished in 19th spot. A respectable finish considering it was his maiden voyage at the track and the first time in his young stock car racing career that he’d run a feature race longer than 25 laps.
Follow Jacob Mercer’s progress through the remainder of the year at 81 Mercer Motorsports on www.facebook.com or 81mercermotorsports.com.
