Jonathan Summerton Banquet report

Jonathan Summerton Awarded the Jovy Marcelo Trophy for Sportsmanship

During the annual Atlantic Championship Banquet at the Portola Hotel in Monterey, California, all the drivers, teams, owners and guests gathered for a great evening and the Presentation of Awards.

Throughout the evening some great action photographs taken by Phil Sedgewick were shown on the big screen alongside many humorous shots of all the teams, owners, and drivers that had been captured throughout the season.

Jonathan Summerton was awarded the prestigious Jovy Marcelo Sportsmanship trophy which is presented to the driver who exemplifies a true sportsman, family man and racer behavior on and off track. Jonathan afterward said, "It is a great honor to receive an award like this. I believe that racing is made up of a really big family where everyone is friends. Even though I race hard against the other drivers on track they can still be friends off track and the Atlantic Championship group are all great friends. I would like to thank the Marcelo family for giving me this trophy."

Jovy Marcelo raced in the Toyota Atlantic series in 1991. He won races in Lime Rock Park and Nazareth Speedway. Marcelo won the season championship, beating Jimmy Vasser by four points.

In 1992, Marcelo graduated to the CART PPG Cup. He had a pre-season test with Derrick Walker's Walker Motorsports, and earned a seat with the Euromotorsport team owned by Antonio Ferrari. Marcelo competed in three CART PPG Cup events, finishing 14th in Surfers Paradise (Australia), 19th in Phoenix and 19th in Long Beach. (He did not score points in these events; CART points only awarded to 12th, plus pole and most laps awards.) In May, Marcelo was entered in the Indianapolis 500 driving a Lola T91/00-Cosworth DFS and participated in rookie orientation and practice for the event.

On May 15, 1992, during warmups, Marcelo's car snapped around at warmup speed and impacted on the right side entering turn 1 at 172 mph which killed Jovy instantly at such a pace. Jovy was 26 at the time of his death, left behind his wife Irene, son Karsten and an unborn son at the time who was given the name Jovy Nicolai.

-credit: www.jonathansummerton.com