Mukilteo racer Carl Skerlong looking to win Champ Atlantic title

Published 6:38 pm Monday, April 28, 2008

In one moment Carl Skerlong realized what he wanted to do.

“It was love at first sight,” Skerlong said of his first racing experience. “My first go-kart win in Monroe, I said ‘Wow, maybe this could actually work some day, maybe this could turn into something.’”

Could it ever.

Just five years later Skerlong, 19, is in his second year racing in the Champ Car Atlantic Championship series, an open-wheel developmental series that lists among its alumni former Formula One champions Jacques Villeneuve and Keke Rosberg, and Indy 500 winners Sam Hornish Jr. and Dan Wheldon.

Skerlong, a Mukilteo resident, qualified third for the series’ 2008 season opener — the Grand Prix of Long Beach (Calif.) on April 20 ­— but finished last after pole-sitter Jonathan Bomarito pushed him into a tire barrier in the first turn.

While pitting to have a new nose piece put on his car, Skerlong was lapped by the field, but he still picked up a bonus championship point for turning the fastest lap time in the race.

“Without question we had the car to win,” Skerlong said after the race. “(After the incident) we chased the field and the fact that I set the fastest time of the race proves we had a great car.”

Skerlong recorded two podium finishes — a second in Houston and a third at Road America — in his rookie year in Champ Atlantic while racing for US RaceTronics. For his sophomore season, Skerlong will compete for Oxnard, Calif.-based Pacific Coast Motorsports, which merged with US RaceTronics.

Skerlong’s teammate at PCM this season is former actor Frankie Muniz. Muniz, 22, starred as Malcom on the television show “Malcom in the Middle” before deciding to quit acting to race.

“We looked at it as a two-year deal in Atlantic, it’s a very competitive series,” Skerlong said. “We figured we needed to take one year to learn the tracks, learn the competition, and then the next year, really go for the championship.”

Without a podium finish at Long Beach, the bonus point Skerlong earned for having the fastest lap may prove important during the remaining 10 races on the Champ Atlantic schedule.

“Our expectations are high, but our goals within the team are to finish every lap, every race,” said Shane Senevirante, Skerlong’s team manager. “Given Carl’s competitive nature, we know if he finishes, he’ll finish well … you don’t have to win every race to win a championship.”

Championships are nothing new to Skerlong, and a Champ Atlantic title would be a nice addition to his resume. But it may also serve as the final chapter of his open-wheel racing career.

Skerlong’s goal for the 2009 season was to move up the next step to the Champ Car World Series, which was, until March of this year, one of two premier open-wheel racing series in the United States.

The merger of Champ Car with the Indy Racing League may have ended a 12-year rift in American open-wheel racing, but it left an uncertain future for Champ Atlantic drivers.

Champ Car raced exclusively on road courses, but the IRL’s focus on banked oval tracks appears to be what the newly unified series will emphasize in the future.

That’s a future Skerlong does not see for himself.

“It’s a different style of racing — it’s good racing,” Skerlong said of competing on a banked oval. “It’s just not what I have a passion for.”

Skerlong won’t close any doors, but said that he considers sports car racing in either the Grand American Rolex Series or American Le Mans Series to be a more natural fit for him.

“Carl’s goal is to be in a position where he has the option to look at what IndyCar has to offer,” Senevirante said. “He did a Grand Am orientation test and did well, so the sports car side is definitely an option.”

If experience is a guide, whatever decision Skerlong makes will be well thought-out and comprehensively researched.

As a teenager, Skerlong asked his father and mother, Joel and Jean Skerlong, for his own go-kart after racing in a friend’s.

With no family background of racing, Joel Skerlong told his youngest son — Carl Skerlong’s brother Jason is 23 — to gather information about costs and where karts could be bought and raced.

“Being the ambitious young kid I was, the next day I had a full list of everything he wanted to know,” Skerlong said with a laugh. “It all started from then.”

Four straight championships followed — in four different and increasingly advanced divisions.

Skerlong won kart titles in 2003 and 2004, then moved up to open-wheel racing. He won rookie-of-the-year honors and a championship in the Formula TR Pro Series 1600 class in 2005, followed a year later by a title in the 2000 class.

After a four-race stint in England’s Formula Renault UK Winter Series at the end of 2006, Skerlong returned to the United States to race in the Champ Atlantic Series for US Racetronics.

Regardless of what the future holds, Skerlong wants racing to be part of it.

“(Racing is) a true passion of mine. I love everything about it,” he said. “It’s what I love to do. I can’t think of any other way I’d like to be spending my time right now.”