Farewell my scrutineer

October 29, 2020 was a sad day for me. I lost a critique, a mentor, a friend in the motoring and motorsports community. Atty.Jerome Neri, well known as "Jedboy” to our close friends and simply "Jed" to the local motorsports community, succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of 50.

I met Jedboy in the late 80s in one of the gatherings. He was my sister's classmate in Saint Benedict Learning Center and UP High so I was quite familiar with him and his cousins.

In 1991, our paths met again when we were head to head in the 2nd Tomas Osmeña legal drag racing in the North Reclamation. He beat me by a hair in the overall superstock category that day, which sparked a long and close relationship with him.

In 1996, Jedboy invited me to try karting in the new Cebu Business Park where they had a makeshift track.

In 2000, Jedboy and his cousin, Atty.Jess Garcia and his brother, Justin, spearheaded the first karting track in the south called Kartzone.

I was one of the first participants in this sport with Jed highly instrumental in guiding not only me, but the entire Cebu Racing Group (CRG) Karting Team to success in Manila.

 I had a good 15 years of karting and in those years, we had nurtured a solid relationship based on our common interests.

In 2007, when everything seemed to have shifted back to cars, Jed became my critique, a Scrutineer. He cruelly and passionately laid the standards of what was going to be a successful spite of Cebuano race car drivers. I vividly remember our training sessions in 2015 with Stefano Marcelo, a racecar driver Jed helped push to multiple crowns here and abroad. That day, we couldn’t do what Stefano was doing in the infamous first turn of Clark Speedway. Jed was furious. He said, “Better do it or go home”. That sentence I still carry up to this day.

We had a love-hate relationship. We passionately fought a lot but respected each other’s' opinion.

Jed was a genius, maybe too much. He was borderline, bonkers. I would like to think he pushed me to do great things. It's hard to think about doing something car related and not think of him.

After all, we grew up together, our interests as our binder.

He soon became my business partner and mentor in our automotive performance shop in 2011 called Group B. Jedboy's knowledge in tuning and performance was way ahead of what we would have understood. He also had a teaching style that made you think. He was not the type who would spoon feed.

He had an unyielding passion for performance cars and tuning. He despised drivers who had no idea of what it was all about. I have to admit, I learned a lot from his strengths as well as his weaknesses.

Jedboy was a master of innovation, if we could just understand some of his "out of the box" ideas. He was also a bad critique to those who could not comprehend him.

Most of all, I would say, he was my mentor. Ever willing to teach, if you had the patience to keep up with his horseplay. He enjoyed every bit of it.

He was a pillar in the local motorsports scene and he foresaw a lot of our sporting regulations. He inspired a lot of racing enthusiasts by laying the grounds of grassroots racing.

Jed will also be highly remembered as "attorney tuner", the guy who unselfishly uplifted the standards of automotive performance in the south.

To me, he will be remembered as a dear friend.

Farewell my scrutineer.