🏁 2025 Season Recap | Jerami’s FA24 FRS: Heart, Heat & the Grind That Makes It Worth It

Heading into 2025, the mission was simple: find consistency, hit every mark, and chase that extra tenth hiding between corners. Years of building, tweaking, breaking, fixing, and learning had led to this. The moment to see if all the miles, sweat, and stubbornness could finally pay off.

And somehow… it did.

🏁 GridLife South Carolina

From Paddock Problems to Podium Glory

Last year we left South Carolina with a new lap record and our first podium. Coming into 2025, the goal was simple: go faster and get back on that box. Easy on paper, but brutal in reality.

Before leaving false grid in Session 1, a broken driveshaft sent us crawling back to paddock. Panic. Tools everywhere. Dewey saved the day, tossing us a part off his BRZ so we could stay in the fight. Once swapped, we battled rain delays, tricky conditions, and the usual paddock chaos.

By Sunday, something clicked. Jerami pushed harder than ever, laying down a 1:41.967 — his fastest lap of the weekend — and crossed the line for his first-ever GridLife win.

From paddock panic to podium glory. That’s why we race.

And before the adrenaline even wore off, it was time for Road Atlanta.

🏁 Special Stage Road Atlanta

Redemption on the Georgia Beast

Some tracks leave marks on the car, the ego, and the memory. Road Atlanta is all three. The last time we came here in 2019, Turn 1 spit us back out on a tow strap. That sting never faded.

This wasn’t just another weekend, it was a reckoning.

Day 1: A Fire Drill on Four Wheels
Session 1 was chaos. Five cars dead in minutes. Traffic, grenaded engines, flags everywhere. Session 2 was no kinder. Threading needles between yellows and overzealous sends. Session 3? Four laps before the checkered. No clean laps. Survival mode.
We ended the day P6 — not perfect, but alive.

Day 2: Rainout Reality
Saturday came with sheets of rain. High risk, zero reward. We parked the car, stayed dry, and lived to fight another day.

Unglamorous? Sure. But Road Atlanta owed us closure , and this year, we left on our terms.

🏁 Midwest Festival

Club TR Battles, Broken Parts & a Gingerman Podium

South Carolina lit the fire. Road Atlanta sharpened the edge. Midwest Festival? Midwest brought the mayhem.

Day One: Breaking Barriers
The FA24 swap and off-season tweaks finally came together. Jerami broke into the sub-1:40s, a personal milestone years in the making.

Day Two: Heat Check
Brutal heat slowed everyone down. Instead of chasing ghosts, Jerami used the day to refine lines and learn. Not every gain shows on the stopwatch.

Day Three: Podium Sprint
Out lap: a rattling noise. Gut punch.
Decision: back off or go full send?
Choice: full send.
Result: P2 and first-ever Midwest Festival podium.

Six years of grind — finally paying off.

🏁 Road America

Learning, Fighting, and Fuel Math

Road America doesn’t care about feelings. It cares about horsepower. And the K-swapped cars had 8 mph on us down the straights all weekend.

Friday: Strong Start
Jerami settled into P3. Car felt planted. Confidence growing.
Then, during a Verus oil pan swap, we found a cracked header runner. Welding replaced wrenching. Silver lining? We gained ~2 mph — nearly a second saved.

Saturday: Holding the Line
Car felt alive. Jerami pushed deeper, trusted the brakes, and fought smart against faster cars.

Sunday: Frustrations
Podium Sprint misfires, both literal and mental. Lap timer issues. Lost focus. P4 for the weekend. Still P2 in the season standings.

New Toys, Big Gains
A Link ECU request turned into a full AIM dash upgrade. Live fuel. Live oil pressure. Real data. Real control. Real advantage.

Next stop: Lime Rock.

🏁 Lime Rock

Curbs, Confidence & Close Calls

Tuesday: After-work road trip. Dyno at IAG. +8 hp and torque. Alignment fixed.
Thursday: Early arrival, prime paddock real estate.
Friday: ABS chaos until we dialed in “2.” Coilovers full soft. Car woke up. New confidence in T1, Uphill, and Turn 3.
Friday Night: Splitter tweaks + fresh stickers for spiritual speed.

Saturday: Cool weather. New tires. Sharp rotations. Mid-58s.
P3 held by 0.082 seconds. P3–P5 within a tenth. Club TR shows no mercy.

Sunday: No track time…long haul home.

Lime Rock reminded us: corner speed is king.

🏁 Barber Motorsports Park

Home Track Heat

Barber was the “reset weekend”, lighter vibes, sharp lessons.

Humidity: 1000%.
Atmosphere: family, friends, calm paddock energy.
Track: hot, slick, rude, and one off-line kink snapped a splitter rod. Quick fix.

Biggest gain?
Delta Motorsports ABS finally unlocked full trusting-the-car braking.

Later braking. Better trail. More confidence. A weekend meant for recovery turned into one of the most productive of the season.

🏁 Pitt Race Finale

A Farewell We Won’t Forget

Result: P6 out of 27.
Feeling: A gut punch.

The pace was there, but we just didn’t extract it.

Pitt demands aggression and commitment. Sometimes we had it. Sometimes we blinked. Watching the footage later burned that lesson deep.

Saying goodbye hurt. The flow, elevation, rhythm; Pitt has soul.

Cool-down lap wave to every worker, a quiet thank-you to a track that shaped our journey.

📸 Media Wins

Grassroots Motorsports cover.
More features in earlier issues.
Two podcast appearances — Heat Exchanger and IAG Thursday Thing.

Not for ego, but validation that the grind, the sweat, the road trips, the 2 a.m. wrenching… it all mattered.

🛠️ The Grind

People see speed.
They don’t see the 20-hour hauls, the stripped bolts, the mental spirals, the Mondays where coffee can’t save you.

Lime Rock nearly broke my body.
Road Atlanta nearly broke my patience.
Pitt Race nearly broke my heart.
South Carolina reminded me why I chase the pain in the first place.

And in the rare quiet moments, there’s a hug for my wife. The one who keeps the chaos organized, keeps me grounded, and keeps this whole dream possible.

🧠 Growth & Reflection

2025 wasn’t about raw pace, it was about mastery. About sharpening instincts until the car feels like part of you.

Advice to start-of-season me?

Practice more.
Take Mondays off.
Lean into chaos.
Trust the process.

And always — always — hug your wife.

🔧 Partners Who Make It Happen

Boosted Performance Tuning + Graham
The wizard. Cuts through every overthinking spiral with scalpel precision. Tunes engines, but more importantly, tunes confidence. If the car talks, he listens, and makes it scream better.

EBC Brakes
Predictable. Repeatable. No fade. No fear. Late braking becomes a weapon.

Link ECU
Fuel, oil, data; alive and precise. Turns uncertainty into clarity.

Verus Engineering
Six seasons. One splitter. Zero compromises.
Built like a tank. Acts like one too.

Together, they don’t just make the car faster, they make the season possible.

💪 The Quiet Force

And then there’s my wife.
Photographer. Team manager. Chaos coordinator.
The one always handing tools, tightening straps, tossing cold drinks, or reminding us to breathe.

She celebrates the wins, absorbs the losses, and keeps this circus functioning — even when I skip our anniversary to chase a podium at Lime Rock.

She is the pulse, the backbone, the quiet fire behind this entire feral operation.

🔮 2026 Season: More Fire. More Speed. No Limits.

2025 taught us everything. How to win, how to lose, how to learn fast, and how to survive the chaos.

The Mission:
Go faster. Push harder. Leave nothing on the table.

Consistency:
Lessons applied. Mistakes fixed. The rhythm refined.

Aggression:
Sharper instincts. No hesitation. Road Atlanta will see a different driver.

Trust:
In the car.
In the setup.
In the team.
In the vision.

We’ve tasted victory. We’ve felt heartbreak. Both are fuel.

2026 isn’t about showing up.

It’s about commanding respect. One corner, one lap, one tenth at a time.