On Mondays he is Jacob Person, an electrical engineering sophomore at ASU who spends his time between classes in the library, but some Saturdays he is much more.
On Saturday, April 16, in particular, he spent his time working on a winning formula.
Person won his first Lucas Off Road Racing series event in the Super Light group at Speedworld Offroad Park in Surprise.
The excitement was more visible than the 15 feet of space between his truck and the ground on the short track.
“As soon as I hit that checkered flag I was asking if I could do doughnuts,” Person said. “I was so happy you couldn’t wipe the grin off my face with duct tape. It was the best feeling ever.”
The first win is out of the way, he said, and the flood of orange Jacob Person Racing shirts, and one mother with tears in her eyes, quickly flooded the awards stage after the race.
Although it was the 20-year-old’s first time standing on the top of the podium, it was clearly a place where he belonged.
“I now know why the top of this box is so great because I can see everybody out here that makes this happen for me,” he said, trophy in hand. “This is for all them, this isn’t mine.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a first victory without some level of drama.
A crash on turn one with just several laps remaining stalled the race for 10 minutes. The lead he built up had disappeared, and each restart brought angst from the sea of orange.
“They’re trying to give me a heart attack,” Mercedes Person, Jacob’s mother, said in between shouts and screams from the top of the bleachers.
But, each time he was able to pull away, and each time his fan base erupted in cheers.
Jacob’s father, Brad, was much more subdued during the race than his wife, but as a former driver himself, the passion was far from absent.
“I went through the gamut of emotions,” Brad said. “He’s getting better, he’s making less mistakes and he’s creating less opportunities for them to get by him.”
Then the emotional rollercoaster took another turn, even after Jacob crossed the finish line.
An inspection prior to the race found his truck to be above the minimum ride height, but an inspection after the race found it to be just 3/16 of an inch too low.
The difference: He wasn’t in the truck during the first measurement.
“They let us scrape all the extra mud weight off the truck and I went in and sat on the side of my seat, turned left at the end, didn’t touch the brakes, but we ended up clearing,” Person said. “I could hear the ground-clearance thing scraping the whole way across.”
They couldn’t take this one away. A history of family racing that goes back three generations was expanded and a new winner was added to the timeline. Then he went out and did it again on Sunday.
In the same truck, on the same short course, and in the same Super Light group, Jacob pulled away from the pack and led by nearly 15 seconds before the race was regrouped. Then he pulled away again and finished almost five seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
Jacob had his first victory on Saturday, and now he has his first winning streak, which he hopes to continue to be on top of the podium when the team travels to the Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, Calif., on May 21 and 22.
“I don’t want to stand anywhere else on that box ever again,” Jacob said.
These wins open up an opportunity.
A couple of victories spotlight his name and his team in a sport that so proudly shows off its sponsors.
“It definitely opens up more opportunities for us, but it still doesn’t change our game plan,” Brad said. “This is part of the life plan for Jake. I enjoy doing it, but he’s good at it and he’s gaining life experiences doing this.”
The father role is clearly visible in-between the team management and the life coaching. The mantra is still “school comes first” from Brad.
Jacob knows this, and he quickly knew whom to mention before the confetti streamed across his face at the podium.
“My mom and dad, they’re the best out here,” he said. “Without them I wouldn’t be anywhere.”
But Monday comes again and the focus shifts from hitting a 180-degree turn at 40 mph to dodging traffic during a 40-minute drive from Peoria to the Tempe campus. The formulas switch back to derivatives and the focus returns to solving equations.
Then again, weekends at the track is embedded in his DNA.
“We’ve been doing stuff like this for all my life,” Jacob said. “I really don’t know anything different.”
Reach the reporter at nathan.meacham@asu.edu
