Jeffrey Vos had the race of his life going in the Elkhart Lake AMA 250 Grand Prix in June of 1999. In the rain Vos and Roland Sands split from the rest of the field. They had a completely different approach to tackling the wet Road America circuit. Sands was racing the classic lines, going right over the slick patches with his foot down. Vos was going in very late on the brakes in spite of the conditions, but doing his best to ride around the sealer patches. The result was a great back and forth between the duo in their battle for the lead.
Late in the race Vos ran out of fuel, but in one of the more brilliant moves ever, as he coasted he saw Colin Gilbert broken down and sitting on a guardrail. Vos pulled over and told Gilbert what was going on. Gilbert took the tank off his bike and began pouring the fuel from his tank into Vos’ machine. Amazingly Vos got back underway, but the fairytale soon came to an end when Vos crashed trying to quickly make up lost ground. Still it was one of the best attempts at staying in a race you’re likely to ever see.
Jeffrey Vos had the race of his life going in the Elkhart Lake AMA 250 Grand Prix in June of 1999. Battling for the lead on a wet Road America, late in the race his bike ran out of gas. He saw a fellow competitor broken down on the side of the track and got fuel from his bike in one of the all-time great efforts to stay in a race. (Henny Ray Abrams photo)
Rider Files 
Jeff was/is a great competitor. I rode the same race; I also had the “race of my life”, just because I was trying to hang onto a two stroke 250 in very wet conditions. Rich Oliver gave me some great coaching on wet set up that made the bike really fun to ride in the wet.
Another memory of Jeff, that I share with all my bike friends, was Jeff and Geep Taranova (sp) battling to pass each other at Mid Ohio, maybe the same year? They were dead even in speed going down the front straight. Finally Jeff reached over, and pulled himself past Geep by pulling on Geep’s right shoulder; all while Geep was beating on Jeff’s hand with his left hand. I was laughing so hard I nearly overshot the left hand turn at the end of the straight. When I asked Jeff what he was doing, he replied nonchalant, “It was the only thing he could think of to get around Geep”. Jeff always was one of the original thinkers in the 250 gang.
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