Two photographers talked Joseph Brown (72) into racing Wednesday night. It resulted in Brown’s best finish of the season — a fourth-place. It came in the 602 sportsman feature at Bridgeport Motorsports Park in New Jersey.
“I went to Bridgeport to be a crewman for my teammate Steve Davis,” Brown, 20, of New Egypt, New Jersey, said. “I had no intention of racing Wednesday night, but I was talked into it by [photographers] Stephen Sabo and his son Steve Sabo.
“They said, ‘We came all the way to Bridgeport to see you race. There is a car available, so you need to drive it.’ I’m happy that it turned out to be an awesome night.”
Brown earns a living as a landscaper. He spends his night works on his team’s three crate sportsman cars — one for Brown; another for Davis, of Cream Ridge, New Jersey; and one more that they both share. The shared car, owned by Jeff and Kristen Masker, is what Brown raced at Bridgeport Motorsports Park. The run at the South Jersey track was a much-needed shot in the arm for Brown.
“I was down in the dumps last season,” said Brown. “I broke a bunch of times and had to bring my chassis back to New York twice so Jerry Higbie [of Hig Fab Chassis] could straighten it out.”
This year has started better for Joseph Brown. In addition to his fourth at Bridgeport Motorsports Park, he has a fifth at BAPS Motor Speedway in York Haven, Pennsylvania. Both have come in the car owned by the Maskers. While he looks to apply what’s working on that car to the one he owns, he remains thankful for that encouragement from the Sabos. Perhaps he took it because of his own connection to race photography.
“My dad, Jim Brown, has been a racing photographer my entire life,” Brown said. “My sister, Paige Brown, followed in our dad’s footsteps. I’m the one who always wanted to be photographed driving a race car.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
