Complete The Goof - 20X1

[Rollo75]

Round 1 - The Indiana Brick Company Golden Brick​

One of the biggest questions over the off-season was where reigning champion Ellie McIllan would land after McIllan Racing closed its doors after 26 seasons. As Kane McKane had taken up the second seat at the Holden works team, that left Jean Paul Cassell looking for a driver. He was more than happy to sign Ellie McIllan and bring her #1 plate to the Pizza Hat team.

As expected, Team Yellow Toyota (previously Toyopet) arrived with six cars; having secured the services of Sticks Baja at the end of last season as well as picking up Miles Prower, Hatsune Miku, and Amy Rose, all on lease arrangements. Toyota brought their 3UR V8 from various Lexus road cars but it, like the rest of the field was running desmodramic camless valves.

The biggest surprise in the paddock was the arrival of Mercedes-Benz. They were sporting two factory cars for their in-house driver Andy Harrington, as well as Natalie McIllan who became a free agent at the end of last season.
McAlpine Racing had decided to run four cars for Kayleigh McAlpine, Michelle Oxford, newcomer Marnie Roxy, and Koffing who had brought his own charter. McAlpine Racing had also fabricated two cars for Mario Mario and Donkey Kong; after they couldn't find terms of agreement with the Mercedes-Benz factory.

The B-Heat Race:

The opening round of the season is unusual in that there aren't any previous results from which to draw the lists for the A and B Heat races. Thus, rather than the fastest 36 cars from the previous round, the two lists were simply just made up of every other car going into the race; based upon competition number.

The first round of the new season is often like the first day back at primary school. The kids are often rowdy and unruly. Maybe it was because of increased safety provisions due to the virus but the first two corners of the 20X1 season were decidedly bad tempered.

Al Yankovic put his Ford on pole and Kayleigh McAlpine's Holden was on the outside of the front row. Yankovic held the field back because he'd set the car up with slightly shorter gearing and was hoping to scoot away but before the green flag fell, he was being given bumper Morse Code by Garfield Arbuckle who was immediately behind him. That set the tone of the opening lap.



Way down in 14th, Go Mifune pulled across the bow old Asuka Langley Soryu and she was livid. In less than a mile, her brand new Mitsubishi Celeste had been dented and seeing as there was still almost all of the 80 laps to go, she exacted her regent almost immediately and speared underneath his left rear quarter panel.
That triggered a reaction where Mifune was hooked and sent barrelling onto his roof and Dr George Claw was also turned and sent backwards into the armco barriers.

Robie Robie came down the racetrack and collected Sherlock Holmes' tartan Chevrolet; while Samuel Touquanne gave rookie and debutante Olivia Micina a side stripe.
The first car which cleared the carnage unscathed was Andy Harrington in the Mercedes Benz. He had a box seat to watch the mayhem play out in front of him and was lucky as it parted like the Red Sea.



Thirteen different manufacturers are represented in The Goof for 20X1; with support ranging from direct factory ownership, all the way to customer entries. Two of the new manufacturers in 20X1 are Jaguar who have supplied four engines of occluded origin and Honda who have appeared because of one dealership in Chiba. Hondas engines look suspiciously like the Nissan VK50 V8.

For their first time out, Jaguar managed to get two cars to escape the heat races while Honda was only able to get one to make the grade and even then, Byuti Nanako only made it to the last qualifying place in the A-Heat Race in 18th.

This shot of Patrick Mann's Toyota Century, Natalie McIllan's new Mercedes Benz 500 and reigning champion Ellie McIllan's Holden Standard putting a lap on the Jaguar XJ8 of Minch Yoda and the Honda Legend Type-R of Don Patch, will be a typical sight; in that five different manufacturers are within eyeshot of each other.

Having said that, neither Yoda nor Patch would escape from the B-Heat Race and will return to the next B-Heat Race in Round 2. Both Jaguar and Honda might have to find some more power in those engines going forward.



Mazda went away over the off season and did some further testing on their Skyactiv derived five litre V8. Their engine is basically two of their 2L in-line four cylinder engines, cut at 45° through the crankcase and welded together. Thus, they have done what Cosworth Engineering did with the FVA to create the DFV but on a larger engine.
It appears to have worked for then because of the six Mazdas that were entered in this season, all six escaped the heat races and did so handsomely.

If 20X0 was a treated as a learning experience then 20X1 appears to be them putting that experience to work. Sakamoto didn't score very many points last season and in just this one heat race, he scored more points than his total haul last season.

Sakamoto had a pretty quiet kind of race. After sitting behind the carnage of the opening lap, he quickly tucked in behind Patrick Mann's Toyota and then gradually picked off spots methodically. By the halfway point when most cars came in for tyres at lap 40, he was already up to third place and then took ages to pick off Robie on lap 55 and then Bruno Gourdo on lap 69. He was then left in relative peace as every car that he put between himself and Gourdo, meant yet another small buffer.

Behind them, Robie Robie came in third; which might be an indication that after a less than ideal 20X0, that Team Yellow Toyota might be in place to have another tilt at the title.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Tse Sakamoto
6 - Bruno Gourdo
4 - Robie Robie
3 - Kayleigh McAlpine
2 - Al Yankovic
1 - Kane McKane

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:

In a clear demonstration that January means that it's winter in Indianapolis, the temperature fell from 68° to just 53° as the clouds rolled in and everything became grey. The air of gloom wasn't exactly helped by the grandstands being empty, owing to crowd restrictions in place due to the ongoing pandemic caused by the Dyspoxic Endemic Asthmatic Disease or DEAD-19. People were still allowed to stand around the track, just six feet apart from each other.



The Goof management opened up the engine formula to allow any configuration to go with the KERS system; limited to 5L. GM and Ford were completely on board with that, as were Mazda, Toyota and Nissan; and so the number of manufacturers expanded to thirteen.

Among the new manufacturers was a pair of Ferrari powered cars from Osko Motorsports. They had procured the engines from a junked Ferrari sports car team and transplanted them into the control chassis to create the completely unauthorised Ferrari 500 Daytona. This example is being driven by Judge John Judd. Neither of the Ferraris would escape the heat races but the fact that they both completed the race albeit after being lapped, is still encouraging.

In this shot, Judge John Judd is chasing down Amy Rose in the second of the 00 Motorsport Toyotas. Team Yellow Toyota would have been the registered owner of six cars if it wasn't for the objections of other teams. Rather than face criticism or protest from other teams, Hatsune Miku agreed to continue to run her own car as well as Amy Rose's, out of her workshop.
Effectively that meant that Team Yellow Toyota bought out the entire operation of Sticks Baja's team from last year; with her #66 becoming #6 and #82 retaining its number.



Among the new manufacturers is the semi-factory effort of Subaru, which is being run by Oglivy Maurice. This is now the fourth marque that he has driven for within the space of two calendar years.
Subaru have decided to experiment with a flat-12 arrangement for their engine; which looks as though it relies heavily on the parts bin which was developed for the WRC.
During the A-Heat Race, Maurice became a mobile chicane and after qualifying with the 72nd fastest time across both heat races (aka 'last'), he then managed to finish the race in 36th (also aka 'last'). This particular shot is of Kerrod Edmundson being boxed in behind him while rookie Bob Nikoban flies past.

Edmundson who had campaigned with Miles Prower last season, became a free agent after a mutual parting of the ways. Prower landed a drive at Team Yellow Toyota and Edmundson secured himself a drive in Ricardo Sasquini's second car before that whole team was acquired by Mazda. Edmundson quite happily changed his entry number back to #51.

Neither Sasquini or Edmundson had expected so much speed out of the Mazda, which had had an okay run in 20X0 but now had a proper amount of factory backing behind it. In the A-Heat Race, he was shooting for the podium but gave up third spot to Bob Nikoban on lap 62 and fourth spot to Dr Ivo Robotnik on lap 78 after the tyres faded considerably.

Bob Nikoban on the other hand was not expected to be doing this well in his opening race. On the island of Bellefield he was frequently described as being 'lazy' by other citizens and had decided to go motor racing after having his driving license confiscated for repeated speeding violations.

Bellefield Racing bought the two ex-Red Bull Racing Fords from last season after they built two new chassis. Rather than bothering to do any orginal engineering of his own, Nikoban bought some 302 Windsor crate engines from Ford's competition department and the whole operation of the team is like looking at someone's yard sale. Behind the pit wall, instead of nice looking haulers, there are couple of utes and pickup trucks, a caravan, and lawn chairs arranged around an ash can.

Out on track though, Nikoban who had no expectations and no qualms, put the car on tenth place on the grid and then gradually rose through the rankings over the course of the 200 mile event.



Up front though, the on track battle between Darth Vader and Hatsune Miku was intense.
Vader had made some changes to the Ford Galaxy over the off season, which included switching back to the 302 Windsor after running Coyote V8 power. His black machinery which had been largely anonymous last season now became a phantom menace in people's mirrors.
Hatsune Miku on the other hand, had had a fairly good 20X0 and she thought that with proper backing from Toyota, that she would have a decent tilt at the title.

The B-Heat Race showed that Team Yellow Toyota had built some pretty decent machinery and Bruno Gourdo's second place finish showed that Ford power was certainly up to the task.

After very quickly dispensing with Dr Ivo Robotnik on lap 2, only either Vader or Miku would actually end up leading a lap save for lap 39 when Edmundson led that lap because of pit cycling.

As the two of them had practically identically handling cars, Vader was able to hold out Miku until lap 68 when he lost just enough time behind Bandit Heeler and Miku found a better line going into Turn 1. Vader had to sit behind Heeler until he exited Turn 2; by which time Miku had already passed Natalie McIllan's Mercedes-Benz and the battle was lost.

The rectangular Speedway at Indianapolis is sufficiently long enough that cars tend to space themselves around the 2½ miles fairly evenly; so any progress that Vader did end up making was undone again by having to follow Miku in lapping traffic. Vader never got any closer than the 2.7 seconds that he lost and settled in for a solid second place behind Hatsune Miku's Toyota; which never missed a beat all afternoon.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Hatsune Miku
6 - Darth Vader
4 - Bob Nikoban
3 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
2 - Kerrod Edmundson
1 - Jack Raymond

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:

As with previous seasons, the two heat races of 36 cars both send the top 18 to the Main Feature Race. Those 36 cars then become the next round's A-Heat race field while the bottom 18 become the the next round's B-Heat race field.
In a format that with be pretty normal for 20X1, the two heat races were both 200 miles and the mail feature was 250 miles, or 100 laps of the Brickyard.



Leading off into the wilderness was the Holden of Jean Paul Cassell, the Chevrolet not of Dr Ivo Robotnik but his niece Eggatha, the works Holden of Henri Cornelius, the Mazda of Kerrod Edmundson, and the Jaguar of Mike Wazowski.

The entry of four cars by Jaguar Cars Ltd. is a curious thing. The opening up of the engine regulations meant that they were free to run a 5L variant of their V12 engine. Long time campaigner Kermit Cleveland had previously run Fords; so Ford V8s would have been a logical choice but that wasn't to be. Jaguar were adamant that they wanted to develop their V12 engine as a kind of last hurrah in the Internal Combustion Engine era of cars.
The team was also quite lucky in terms of numbers choice in that #14 and #15 were recently vacated by the parting of ways of Prower and Edmundson, and the #16 was also made vacant with the retirement of Philip Monroe. Thus, Jaguar have four consecutive numbers.

Elsewhere down pit road, Jean Paul Cassell very quickly had to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to be the lead driver in his own team upon signing the reigning champion Ellie McIllan. Nevertheless, the fact that he accepted this at the beginning of the season instead of the kerfuffle of last year, made this far more harmonious.
The entire field for the main feature race was separated by less than a second in qualifying; so there wasn't exactly a lot of difference in performance between the cars. Even so, Jean Paul Cassell was still happy to be out in front and putting one over the works Holden team.

It should be said that because the banking is quite gentle at 12° at Indianapolis, the very large radius of the corners should make for reasonably high cornering speeds however, the slipperiness of the brick surface means that the track behaves more like clay than concrete. Cars tend to go through 150mph four wheel drifts and tyres which are rated to last for 150 miles, rarely get there if ever.



By about lap 10 though, it became apparent who had set up their car better for the long run at Indianapolis. Team Yellow Toyota settled into their very nicely working tandem strategy which had served them well two years ago and and they bubbled up from 10th and 11th to 3rd and 4th by about lap 25.

However the two Toyotas found that when they'd got to the front, that they couldn't get past the two Fords of Al Yankovic and Bob Nikoban who had also formed a temporary tandem strategy.
It all proved to be academic though. Nikoban ran a conservative race and pitted on lap 34 and then lap 67, Yankovic ran short and pitted on lap 46, Gojira who had come onto the back of the group then ran long and pitted on lap 55, and the two Toyotas cut the race in twain.
Gojira would end up being the best of this small cohort and finish 8th in the race and a lap down on the leaders who managed to lap everyone up to him.

Bob Nikoban and Bellefield Racing is one of more curious privateer teams to have come forth over the last few years. Nikoban's sponsor of Dark Time Pizza, is owned and operated by none other than Bob Nikoban himself. Although the #28 car has found sponsorship from Pepsico, he more or less funds the team from his own pockets. Thus any prize money that he should attain, will be rolled back into the team's budget.
Unfortunately, Nikoban found the competition stiffer in the Main Race and didn't score any more points in the weekend. Still, to have scored anything at all on opening weekend is an achievement in itself.



The latter half of the race saw a change in the running order as drivers who had been running a more measured race, slowly came to the front. The two Holdens of Kane McKane who was now in works machinery and Ellie McIllan who was in his ex-seat at Jean Paul Cassell's teams, pulled along the Ford of Bruno Gourdo, and the Mazda of Tse Sakamoto. McIllan's tyres faded in performance and she was passed by both Gourdo and Darth Vader's Ford Galaxy, the latter of which was completely unadjusted from the A-Heat Race in which he came second.

McKane wanted to put some amount of space in between himself and Gourdo and so started putting in fastest laps as the fuel load lightened and as he found moments of calm in the traffic.

In a tale that always seems to keep on repeating itself at Indianapolis, Kane McKane ran his front right tyre all the way down to the cords and then beyond. The tyre exploded on lap 99 of 100 and so rather than just throw his chances of picking up any kind of result, he deliberately avoided the pits and drove the final lap on effectively three wheels.
He had been scored in second place at the end of lap 99 and maybe for the briefest of times he could have been in the lead but his last lap saw him fall down the order to finally cross the line in seventh.

That should take nothing away from Bruno Gourdo who after coming second in the heat race, went one better and won the feature race.

Last season the team had backing from both Red Bull and Caltex but neither of them renewed their sponsorship after a pretty lackluster season. Kurt Langer couldn't find anyone who would support the team through his network of former colleagues in Germany and Gourdo was in danger of being sacked. The team was saved during a chance encounter in an airport lounge, when Langer met the 3IC of Golden Fleece Petroleum. Thus, the mostly blue Ford team remains mostly blue.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Bruno Gourdo
17 - Darth Vader
15 - Ellie McIllan
12 - Tse Sakamoto
10 - Hatsune Miku
8 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
6 - Kane McKane
5 - Gojira
4 - Al Yankovic
3 - Robie Robie
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Bandit Heeler

Points Standings after Round 1:
26 Bruno Gourdo
23 Darth Vader
21 Tse Sakamoto
19 Hatsune Miku
15 Ellie McIllan
11 Dr Ivo Robotnik
7 Robie Robie
7 Kane McKane
6 Al Yankovic
5 Gojira
4 Bob Nikoban
3 Kayleigh McAlpine
2 Kerrod Edmundson
2 Go Mifune
1 Jack Raymond
1 Bandit Heeler

Round 2 will be held at the old Silverstone GP course (1949-75 configuation) on the 25th of January.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 2 - The Lucas Toaster​

Round 2 at Silverstone kicks off the first of three rounds in the UK. Previous seasons had been to Brands Hatch and Mallory Park but the calendar had never actually visited the airfield in Towcester before.

The B-Heat Race:

There is very little in the way of height variation around this 2.9 mile complex and so that means that the corners are mostly flat. Cornering through a flat surface, tends to load up the outside of the tyres; so tyre wear on the front left is an issue around here.



The opening lap of the race had one of the more controversial starts to a race for a long time. Most of the field had poured through Stowe fairly cleanly but evidently Johnny Dollar in the Philadelphia Life Insurance Chevrolet didn't give Hochi Samyang in the Samyang Ramen Chevrolet enough room, and the two came together. She suffered a fishtail coming out of Stowe and then hit the rear left quarter panel of Dollar's car as he came by to pass her. Dollar claims that the second accident was a deliberate act on the part of Samyang and Samyang claimed that the initial incident which caused her to lose control was a deliberate act on the part of Dollar due to his impatience.

Both incidents were then put under investigation and The Goof management couldn't actually determine what was accidental and what was malicious. They decided not to hand out any penalties because by that stage, both drivers had flat spotted their tyres badly, come into the pits and even just trying to qualify in the top 18 for the main feature race was virtually impossible for both of them. Whatever penalties that The Goof management could impose, would be moot at that point. The man with the "million dollar expense account" may find it a lot more difficult to explain the situation to his backers at the Philadelphia Life Insurance Company though.



Apart from the first lap incident, the race is not exactly one to live long in one's memory. Mad Cat in the #11 Team MAD Chevrolet tore off into the lead with Stripe Heeler in the Hammerbarn Ford behind him. They would remain in sight of each other for quite some time.
This meant that interest lay further back down the order and this is more of a technical discussion than anything else.

Mitsubishi arrived in this year's championship with two Mitsubishi Celestes for Mari Illustrious Makinami and Asuka Langley Soryu. The engine which is merely labelled as M508 in the documentation is presumably some derivative of their 3.5L V6 engine but with two extra cylinders and then bored and stroked to 4998cc.
Makinami's car certainly had the speed to maintain the pace but on lap 34 of 70 it shredded the internals and blew clouds of smoke all the way from Abbey to the pits.

Behind her is the Toyota Century of Amy Rose; which is the second of the Goodsmile Racing entries. Quite exactly how the six Toyotas fit together, whether they are one, two or three teams, is still something of a mystery. Officially all of the cars are built and prepped in the workshop of Team Yellow but they sometimes act as three separate teams on site. Other teams have of course objected to the ambiguous nature of running six cars in one team (or not) but The Goof management is unsympathetic to these objections.
The quality of the engineering of Team Yellow Toyota was demonstrated today when they got all six cars into the main feature race. This kind of reliability ought to put fear into the chasing pack.

Behind that car is the Honda of Tennosuke. There are four Hondas in this year's championship; which is an interesting departure from the usual route of starting out small. Speculation is still rife as to where Honda got its engines from as none of the documentation gives any indication of where or how the engines were developed. They as yet have not proved to be a potent force, as only two of their cars have ever escaped the heat races.



The only lead change of the race happened on lap 52 when Stripe Heeler who had pitted on the lap before passed Mad Cat going into Maggots, as Mad Cat was stuck behind Konata Izumi's Subaru coming out of the pits.
The gap of three seconds which opened up as a result, was just sufficient to mean that Heeler could consistently put exactly one car between himself and Cat.

Admittedly this was not the most hard fought of victories and also being a B-Heat Race it wasn't against the stiffest of competition but a win is a win, no matter how it arrives.
Stripe reported that early on in the run, the car had a lot of grip but as the run wore on, the grip levels dropped off and he was able to put the car into power slides. Stripe was happy to put one over on his olde brother Bandit, as it was him who got the team's first ever W.

The Brisbane based team had been on a shoestring budget and had bankrolled the team themselves last season but after having bought the two ex-Mcillan Engineering Mustangs (which included the championship winning car) and with backing from the hardware store Hammerbarn, the team's future is looking bright.

As expected, Mad Cat came in second place and way down the road, Amy Rose brought the Toyota Century home in third.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Stripe Heeler
6 - Mad Cat
4 - Amy Rose
3 - Olivia Micina
2 - Miles Prower
1 - Bo-bobo Bo-bobobo

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:

Not to be outdone by the B-Heat Race, the drivers who were in the A-Heat Race brought their own particular kind of madness to Sunday's racing.
In a stunning turn of events it was raining in England but this soon passed and where it had been double digits Celsius for the B-Heat Race, it was only 5°C for the A-Heat Race. Getting heat into the tyres on a freshly cleaned track, would be a problem.



Silverstone is somewhat narrower than some of the speedways and so going three wide into a corner is generally not advisable. Going five wide into a corner requires an extra amount of insanity and although the leaders had cleared out, everyone from sixth place back, was trapped in a log jam.

Walter Kronkyet held the outside of the corner going into Copse and he was pushed wide by both Go Mifune and Bruno Gourdo. Kermit Cleveland and Stanley Spidalski merely added to the madness by trying to slide on past on the inside.
There was no way that five cars were going to fit through the corner and Spidalski clipped the pit exit wall, which in turn spun both himself, Gourdo and Cleveland. Kronkyet moved inwards and Mifune had nowhere else to go but into a hole which was narrower than the width of his own car.

Dr Ivo Robotnik who was the first to make it around the melee, told his spotter over the radio:
"Someone should have really brought along a bunch of extra wigs, red noses, and funny shoes, because it' like being at clown college out here, except that the joke isn't all that funny... especially the five."

Indeed this was the second major incident in two rounds that #5 driven by Go Mifune has been involved in. Go was dropped from the drive at the end of 20X9 sat out 20X0 because their father Daisuke thought that he was immature as a driver. In Go's place his older brother Kenichi was brought in. This season though, Kenichi was moved from the #5 to the #4 to replace Daisuke who has finally hung up his helmet.

While all behind had practically lost any hope of winning the race, out front Tse Sakamoto, Patrick Mann, Ellie McIllan and Kayleigh McAlpine streaked off into the distance. The gap between fourth and fifth place by the end of the first lap was more than a minute.



From here the race settled back into a more sensible groove for the long haul. Sakamoto's Mazda 989 was either shorter geared or it simply lacked the power as it was soon passed by both the Toyota Century of Patrick Mann and the Mercedes Benz 500 of Kayleigh McAlpine. It was possibly slower by as much as 10mph on the run from Chapel to Stowe and from Abbey to Woodcote.

The contrast in the two driving styles couldn't have been any more stark. Patrick Mann was precise and would brake exceptionally late before punching out of the next corner; whereas McAlpine tended to load the car up with more instability and put the car into a four wheel drift; especially through Woodcote.

The lead swapped back and forth as McAlpine threw the Mercedes up the inside of Mann but would lose the lead shortly after as he pulled out of a corner. Nowhere was this exemplified more than when they were pulling out of Chapel, when McAlpine generally held the line on the inside after exiting Maggots but Mann would just knock the car back a gear and show her a set of red lights.



This dispute wasn't properly settled on the track at all and although Kayleigh McAlpine more than likely had the capability of getting around Mann, she held the orange and blue Mercedes in behind the Team Yellow Toyota and bided her time. McAlpine's patience was rewarded and she would eventually pull away from Patrick Mann at the final pit stop on lap 46 of 70 when she pulled into the pits and he didn't; only to stop at lap 47 and she came out just two seconds ahead after the cycle had shuffled through. Mann could never close the gap because both of them were on falling fuel loads and both were improving speed all of the time.
Behind them though, Robie Robie was twenty seconds behind Patrick Mann and Tse Sakamoto was a further seven seconds behind him. More than half minute behind Sakamoto though, was a repeat of the opening lap chaos.

This shot is of Jack Raymond in the number π Holden who has just passed Antony D'Tigrette and Bruno Gourdo who were both a lap down. Also carving their way through the slower traffic is Henri Cornelius and Dr Ivo Robotnik.

The two Telecom Holdens were set up vastly differently for this race. Chloe Ankha went out in the B-Heat Race with softer C compound tyres and didn't really find any advantage from the slightly cooler track on Saturday. The team decided to send out Raymond's number π Holden with the hardest A compound tyres. Although he reported that he could skate the car through corners, it made zero difference to on track performance and so at the first pit stop the team switched to B compound tyres; which also made no difference.
In fact, Raymond spent the entire of the 65 laps after the first pit stop, gently falling down the order; eventually to 11th. The points getters who took up 5th and 6th, were Dr Ivo Robotnik and Ellie McIllan; both of whom made up places through the pit cycle.

Still, after Kayleigh McAlpine had passed Patrick Mann at the final change, she was never challenged for the lead again. The team which had expanded form three cars to four for 20X1, executed well and made this win look relatively boring.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Kayleigh McAlpine
6 - Patrick Mann
4 - Robie Robie
3 - Tse Sakamoto
2 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
1 - Ellie McIllan

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:

It was expected that the main feature race at 255 miles and 88 laps would too far for drivers to make their tyres last for a third of the race. It was generally accepted that three stops and not two would be the order of the day and that lap times would be significantly faster as a result. Those assumptions were wrong. With the exceptions of Marnie Roxy and Koffing who both decided to go for two stops because they were so far down the order, everyone else stopped three times.



In what was quickly becoming a lap one meme, there was yet another accident on the opening lap.

On the inside of the corner at Stowe there is a wall; which was put there to stop drivers from cutting the corner. That makes the exit from Stowe virtually blind.
Jack Napier in the #333 Smylex Holden clipped the front right quarter of Jack Raymond's π Holden and the two of them were hooked into the front of Samuel Touquanne's Chevrolet.
The three cars all slid through Club corner and struck the bank on the outside; turning all of them into car turtles on their back.

Samuel Touquanne climbed out of his car from the upside down position and ran down the road to see if he could render any assistance to his fellow competitors but instead found that the two Jacks were already out of their cars and engaging in fisticuffs. Touquanne declined to render assistance.

"Just because I am a rookie in this series doesn't mean that I also have to be a target for other people's incompetence and badness. If he (Napier) can't keep a car pointed in a straight line, then he should consider whether or not he should be even driving a motor car. If he wants t-bones like that, then maybe he should consider going back and getting a job in a steakhouse."
- Jack Raymond, to ITV4.

"It was a simple case of hard racing. We tried to put three cars into a space meant for two, and three into two don't go. It's a bad joke and nobody's laughing."
- Jack Napier, to ITV4.

The onboard camera on Koffing's Mercedes clearly shows that Jack Napier dipped a wheel into the dirt coming out of Stowe and that his subsequent death wobble was due to a difference in traction while on cold tyres.



Fourteen drivers managed to lead a lap in this race; including (amazingly) Koffing who had started the race in 33rd spot.

Kayleigh McAlpine who had won the A-Heat Race had an early race dice for the lead with Robie Robie but neither of them would score a point in the end. Even though they finished first and third respectively in the A-Heat Race, the conditions at Silverstone proved so variable that what worked earlier in the day, didn't work at all in the main feature race.

Reigning champion Ellie McIllan and Al Yankovic traded paint for a while as the lady in the Texaco Holden tried to assert that last year's championship was no fluke. Ultimately, both of their races would be decided by their respective teams' pit strategy and race strategy; with Yankovic finishing in 6th and McIllan having tyres that faded far too much in the end, to put her in 12th.

This race would be decide by a series of decisions way way down the order.



Dr Ivo Robotnik who was way down the order, actually managed to completely cut out the middle pit stop by running the whole race on the very hard A Compound tyres. Although he never looked like challenging for the lead at all and although he was consistently slower by as much as two seconds a lap, he pitted on lap 30 and 60 and saved an entire 50 seconds by not stopping a third time. By the third round of pit stops which he managed to avoid, he was catapulted from 17th to score the last step on the podium.
He posed a real problem for Garfield Arbuckle late in the race, when the driver of the orange works Chevrolet got held up but couldn't overtake the good doctor (?) in practically identical equipment.
His niece Eggatha in her first season, who also employed a similar strategy, took the #12 Egg'N'Burger Chevrolet to a respectable 10th.

Also of note was the 11th place finish by Jack Raymond in the number π Holden. He had been scored in last place at one point and had been upside down as well. The car while beaten and bent, was not defeated and the team carried on as though they were fully expecting the car to expire at a moment's notice. It did not.

However the decisions which finally determined who the winner would be, happened at the final pit stop and were then played out on track.

Darth Vader's #77 crew actively disobeyed the man in black's decision to put C compound tyres on the car and instead put him on Bs. That meant that initially he was running slower than he otherwise would have wanted to but by about lap 80, he was carving his way through traffic and hit the front.
All the while, he was being chased by Patrick Mann who was looking for to go one better than he did in the heat race. Mann however had help.

Mann noticed that the #6 Toyota Century of Sticks Baja was several seconds up the road and as team principal of Team Yellow Toyota, he made the promise that if she was able to hold up Vader and he was able to win, that she would be paid the prize money which he would win. She duly obliged and was able to baulk Vader to the tune of almost seven seconds on lap 85 of 88.
She also ended up being baulked by Sherlock Holmes' Chevrolet but by the time that Vader had caught and passed her, Mann had already caught up a nine second deficit and flew past, going down the front straight on the way to Copse.

This is a rivalry which stretches back at least a decade; with Vader finishing runner up to both of Patrick Mann's Championship victories in both 20X4 and 20X5. The latter Vader lost after being an unfortunate and unwilling participant in a now infamous 22 car 'big one' at Ontario Motor Speedway at season's end.

There was nothing that Vader could do when he saw Mann breeze by and so he resigned himself to coming in second place; and as championships are built out from consistency, he was happy to lead the championship standings at the end of the round.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Patrick Mann
17 - Darth Vader
15 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
12 - Garfield Arbuckle
10 - Greg Rellings
8 - Al Yankovic
6 - Henri Cornelius
5 - Gojira
4 - Hatsune Miku
3 - Eggatha Robotnik
2 - Jack Raymond
1 - Ellie McIllan

Top 20 After Round 2:
40 Darth Vader
28 Dr Ivo Robotnik
26 Bruno Gourdo
26 Patrick Mann
24 Tse Sakamoto
23 Hatsune Miku
17 Ellie McIllan
14 Al Yankovic
12 Kayleigh McAlpine
12 Garfield Arbuckle
11 Robie Robie
10 Gojira
10 Greg Rellings
9 Stripe Heeler
7 Kane McKane
6 Mad Cat
6 Henri Cornelius
4 Bob Nikoban
4 Amy Rose
3 Olivia Micina

Round 3 will be held at Brooklands Motor Speedway on 15th Feb.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 3 - The Count Zborowski Chitty Bang Bang Cup​

The B-Heat Race:

The bumpy banking at Byfleet hosts its first round of The Goof in 20X2, as the second leg of three races on British soil. For these three races, the 72 drivers and crews moved as group, trying to maintain integrity of the bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.

It must be said though that it is literally impossible for some drivers to get the virus. Gojira is a lizard, drivers like Jack Raymond, Bob Nikoban and Garfield Arbuckle are cats, and Koffing is a floating ball of gas. Koffing was originally thought to have been a superspreader but appears to contain mostly gaseous and flammable chemicals. Not only is it impossible for Koffing to either get or transmit the virus, it is entirely possible that Koffing is in fact self-sanitising.



Perhaps the most surprising things of the weekend was when Oscar Roscoe put the #16 Jaguar on the pole for the B-Heat Race. The Jaguar team had always promised to bring a ton of speed to the championship but now they were actually starting to make good on their promise. To prove that this was no mere fluke, the outside of the front row completed Jaguar's lockout, as Mike Wazowski in the #15 Jaguar came in at just two thousandths of a second slower.

It was short lived for the #16 as the engine mysteriously lost power on lap 3, sank like a stone in the running order, and was parked behind the pit wall soon after.
This temporarily put Johnny Dollar in the Philadelphia Life Insurance Chevrolet into the lead but he too would blow a set of piston rings and also bow out of the running. The confusion put Kermit Cleveland into the lead in the #17 Jaguar; with Kerrod Edmundson's Mazda close behind.

Edmundson's biggest problem would prove to be the defining feature of the races this weekend. His Mazda had sufficient power to get close to the Jaguar but as soon as he was dropped out of the draft and had to punch his own hole in the air, he lost as much as 10mph. Thus, he came to the conclusion that Cleveland was unpassable on track and they'd have to use pit strategy instead.

An unexpected player in the top ten was Hochi Samyang in the second of the MAT Team Chevrolets. Her #08 car built and prepared by Ultraman, showed a lot of short run speed but that couldn't be sustained. The #08 car would be parked behind the wall at the round of pit stops on lap 39 with no explanation given. The official race report merely reads "Retired: Mechanical Failure."



76 laps around the 2.6 mile venue means that the race distance for the heat races was just shy of 200 miles. Typically most drivers wanted to snap the race in half, here like other races. However some drivers thought that there was an advantage to be gained by staying out longer.

Mike Wazowski in the #15 Jaguar was followed by Dr George Claw in the #10 Chevrolet; who was also being followed by Tenosuke in the blue #83 Honda and Stanley Spidalski in the second of the Team UZKA Fords. Wazowski couldn't actually break the draft and so he was the first to blink on lap 40 when he pitted. Spidalski who had the benefit of being at the end of train, also peeled off into the pits.

That left Dr Claw out in front to see just how far he could stay out. Tenosuke's Honda overheated on lap 47 and Claw who was left on his own, didn't come into the pits until there was an obvious degradation in performance on lap 55.
Unfortunately for Claw, literally everyone who had peeled off behind him, had benefitted by as much as 4 seconds a lap comparatively and when he did finally come into the pits, he filed back into 19th position and had to struggle to catch up with the end of a new seven car conga line. He failed.

There simply wasn't enough available power to catch, let alone pass Kane McKane for the final qualifying place for the feature race and so Claw finished in abysmal 19th; with no more of the 18 cars in front of him failing to finish the race.


In welcome news for the team of green machines, Jaguar brought all three cars that survived, home in the top 18 and thus qualified for the main feature race. What makes this all the more remarkable is that it is only the team's third outing in this configuration; with Kermit Cleveland having previously run Fords in the past.

The winner of the B-Heat Race was Stanley Spidalski in the second of the Team UZKA Fords. He ran a quiet race and remained within the top 5 all day, save for those odd laps where the order was confused during a pit cycle.
He finally caught and passed Mike Wazowski for the lead on lap 72 of 76, going through Turn 4 (which confusingly at Brooklands is the second last turn as Turn 3 is the right hand kink).

Amazingly, Spidalski and Wazowski lapped the entire field all the way up to third place. Only two cars finished on the lead lap and although it is tempting to put that down to superior pit strategy, the less exciting reason is that they simply posted more consistently faster laps.
Spidalski said after the race that the team looked at the opposition and determined that theory only real rival was either Dr Claw's Chevrolet or one of the Mazdas. He drove his race according to whatever their strategy was and then only changed after team principal Al Yankovic came over the radio and said that it was too weird even for him.


Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Stanley Spidalski
6 - Mike Wazowski
4 - Go Mifune
3 - Kermit Cleveland
2 - Walter Kronkyet
1 - Jean Paul Cassell

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:

The 20X1 season while again having 72 drivers, has also managed to have no less than 13 different manufacturers represented. They vary from works teams, through teams which are independent but enjoy full manufacturer's support, to those teams who have decided to purchase and buy equipment and develop their own intellectual property.



Among those was EVA, running two cars which were entered as a Mitsubishi Celeste, despite that company never actually having produced any car called a Celeste nor having produced a 5L V8. The engines are theorised to have been developed from the V8 in the Mitsubishi Patrol. The other seemingly random manufacturer is Ferrari, with Team Splat running two of them. Exactly how and where Team Splat acquired their engines or even what they are derived from, is a complete mystery.

It must be said that the 16th place in the B-Heat Race at Silverstone marks the only occasion this year that either of the Mitsubishis have actually made it to the end of a race. Yet again, here at Brooklands, both cars would suffer from mechanical gremlins and fail.



As the heat races were 76 laps long, most teams elected to pit at around about laps 37-39. Three drivers were notable in that they stayed out longer.
Mario Mario avoided coming in because he was still punching in reasonably quick lap times, Stripe Heeler avoided coming in because the Heeler Brothers' racing team only has seven pit crew members between two cars and that meant that almost the entire crew had to run down pit lane to the other warwagon to effect a pit stop; Tse Sakamoto avoided coming into the pits because he was getting an effective draft from the two cars in front and was able to make some fuel savings.

When Sakamoto did finally come into the pits on lap 42 of 76, he had built up enough of a lead to burn; so that he would file back into a points paying position. The crew was able to fuel the car and change four tyres so efficiently that the only car which came past was the then third placed Patrick Mann.

As Brooklands is a very big kidney shaped oval with a right hand kink in what would have been the back straight, it is very easy to break a draft. Sakamoto was sufficiently far enough ahead of Al Yankovic's Ford that even if Yankovic did manage to get a tow coming out of Turn 2, it was broken in the kink. Sakamoto then made sure coming off the final corner that Yankovic was never going to latch onto the back and therefore have to cut his own hole in the air. This small amount of racecraft ensured that Yankovic never had a chance to even look at an overtaking move.

For a while, the running order was Vader, Heeler, Mann and Sakamoto and remained that way because while they were all in visual contact with the car ahead, both the track itself and lapped traffic conspired to string out the field.



To some degree this was a race of attrition. With cars briefly touching 190mph before having to slow down for the kink and then come back up to speed all over again, it put more stess on the engines than a normal oval would have done.
In the last quarter of the race, the Mazda of Greg Rellings expired from 4th place on lap 60, the '59 Ford Mustang of Stripe Heeler expired from 2nd place on lap 63, and the Toyota Century of Patrick Mann made it all the way to lap 71 before it too expired from 2nd place.

In front of all of this was the black Ford Galaxy of Darth Vader who towards the end of the race, was complaining about the oil light intermittently blinking, the car occasionally bottoming out and causing a tyre rub, and the fuel light also coming on. He had no choice towards the end but to keep his boot nailed to the floor and to hope for the best.

As it was, his car also expired 150 yards from the finish line but because he was still carrying a ton of momentum, the car rolled across the line without any power. Immediately a protest was lodged by the Shell Mazda team, arguing that as the black Galaxy hadn't actually crossed the line under its own power, that it should be technically considered as a DNF.

Mr Vader upon hearing this, promptly collected his crew and matched down pit lane and threatened to slice Sakamoto's warwagon in half by the use of the a laser sword. He needn't have bothered as The Goof management didn't see a technical infringement within the rules and awarded him the win anyway.

"Petty allegations like this are foolish and bring great dishonour to the sport. These nefarious individuals should be forced to pay some kind of penalty for bringing the sport into disrepute, and I will be happy to personally ensure that that penalty is paid."
- Darth Vader, to ITV4.

"The man clearly has anger management issues. I wouldn't be surprised if he accidentally kills someone with that kind of attitude."
- Nigel Levins, team principal Shell Mazda team, also to ITV4.

Behind all of this commotion, Al Yankovic and Dr Ivo Robotnik were having their own private scrap, with Yankovic pulling out a lead over the first half of the circuit and Robotnik who had set his car up to run way lower in the turns, losing it all through the kink but making it all back by the time that they hit the stripe.
The distance between the noses of the two cars at the end of the race was just 19 inches or 0.005 seconds.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Darth Vader
6 - Tse Sakamoto
4 - Al Yankovic
3 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
2 - Hatsune Miku
1 - Miles Prower

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



Following on from a period of animosity last season, Jean Paul Cassell still wanted to exact some kind of unpleasantness against Kane McKane who had jumped ship for the works Holden team. The frenchman decided to enter into a technical alliance with the another independent Holden team, Blue Cat.

As a result of the melee at Silverstone, Blue Cat had to build a new chassis for Jack Raymond and when Jean Paul Cassell arrived at the team's workshop on a small island, they agreed that Cassell would supply them with engines in exchange for all of the data that could be logged. Thus, when the two Telecom Holdens of Jack Raymond and Chloe Ankha arrived at Brooklands, they were both fitted with Cassell supplied engines.

It proved somewhat underwhelming. While Cassell had indeed scored a point in the B-Heat Race and Ellie McIllan had put the #1 Texaco Holden on pole for the feature, that was really as far as the rewards went.
At the end of lap 1, the running order would be #1 of Ellie McIllan, #5A of Chloe Ankha, and #π of Jack Raymond but they would all slowly fade back into the field; so that by the end of the race, the best of them was Ellie McIllan who placed 13th for zero points.

Also playing in the rarefied airs of the front of the field was Byuti Nanako in the #86 Hoppy Honda. The car simply didn't have the outright speed to remain at the front and this was coupled with Nanako's lack of experience but the team was happy that they'd not only managed to get it home but that it came home in the top 18 twice in a weekend.



As the early fast running Holdens were brought back to the chasing pack, they were caught in the first instance by the same drivers who had done well in the A-Heat Race. Dr Ivo Robotnik led a few laps before he was passed by Al Yankovic on lap 12. They were both passed by Garfield Arbuckle on lap 14 after he'd had a fantastic series of corners and a brilliant run coming off of Turn 5. On lap 22, the lead was then assumed by Marnie Roxy in the #960 Mercedes Benz.

However, would only hold the lead for a few laps before the Mazdas of Ricardo Sasquini and Kerrod Edmundson both flew past her, going through the kink on lap 26.
In the reasonably cold ambient air temperatures, the Mazdas probably had a slight horsepower advantage. Sasquini and Edmundson had worked out that they could make use of tandem drafting and have the car behind push the car in front. The plan wasn't exactly perfect as the kink broke up the back straight and Turns 1 and 2 were longer than they of otherwise would have been had this been a regular track.

They may have gotten well away with the win had the #51 of Kerrod Edmundson not developed a strange misfire and by lap 32, it was apparent to all and sundry that a two stop strategy was the way to go.
After the first round of pit stops. The running order was Sasquini, Edmundson, Roxy, Robotnik, Yankovic and Sakamoto.



Someone may very well had been planning for a Mazda 1-2-3 but it was never going to turn out that way. Edmundson's car developed a misfire, Sasquini was chased down over the long run and experience seemed to pay massive dividends as old hands picked their way through lapped traffic. At the second round of pit stops, the race off of pit row on lap 64 was Sakamoto, Yankovic, Robotnik and Robie Robie who had spent all day rising slowly from 25th on the grid.

Robie was duly rewarded for his supreme patience when he found no more than half a second a lap but passed Yankovic on lap 71, Robotnik on lap 76, and finally Sakamoto on lap 80.
After 96 laps and not quite 250 miles, the car to roll across the line first was the Toyota Century of Robie Robie. Robie's race was one of utterly boring precision. Although the fastest lap of the race probably went to Darth Vader with a 56.999, Robie consistently put in 59.8s.

Behind him was the Mazda of Tse Sakamoto, who consistently had to contend with drivers who had moved over for Robie and were then unprepared for him.
Sakamoto stepped up to the role of lead driver at Shell Mazda this year and has taken on that role quite admirably. To say that the actual racing at Brooklands was dull although accurate, sort of misses the point. What we witnessed was an entire weekend without a single caution being thrown; and speeds which topped out at 207 mph. This was a track where the furious pace, rather than the fury of other drivers claimed its bounty.

Although he didn't score any points in the main feature race, Vader retained his place at the top of the standings but the points haul by both Sakamoto and Robotnik has meant that it is getting rather crowded up there.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Robie Robie
17 - Tse Sakamoto
15 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
12 - Al Yankovic
10 - Garfield Arbuckle
8 - Marnie Roxy
6 - Miles Prower
5 - Gojira
4 - Kayleigh McAlpine
3 - Ricardo Sasquini
2 - Kane McKane
1 - Walter Kronkyet

Top 20 After Round 3:
49 Darth Vader
47 Tse Sakamoto
46 Dr Ivo Robotnik
31 Robie Robie
30 Al Yankovic
26 Bruno Gourdo
26 Patrick Mann
25 Hatsune Miku
22 Garfield Arbuckle
17 Ellie McIllan
15 Kayleigh McAlpine
15 Gojira
10 Greg Rellings
9 Stripe Heeler
9 Stanley Spidalski
9 Kane McKane
9 Miles Prower
8 Marnie Roxy
6 Mad Cat
6 Henri Cornelius

Round 4 will be held on the streets of Birmingham on the 8th of March and this completes the British leg of The Goof championship.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 4 - The Birmingham Superprix Super TT​

The B-Heat Race:

The third and final leg of The Goof's jaunt to the United Kingdom was an experiment on the streets of Birmingham. The Birmingham Superprix street circuit had hosted the RAC Tourist Trophy many years ago but had not held anything since.
The steel lined 2.75 mile circuit was extremely bumpy and drivers did tend to tiptoe around the place; which meant that this was also a test of bravery in addition to racecraft.



In a stunning turn of events, it was raining in England and because the rain came late in the day, it meant that the fastest lap of qualifying fell to the pole sitter in the B-Heat Race rather than the A-Heat Race.
Surprisingly, the front row was a Mercedes-Benz lockout with Marnie Roxy on pole and works driver Andy Harrington on second. Unfortunately for Roxy, when the lights turned green, she bogged the start and the Silver Arrow along side her, made it into the narrow chicane at the start before her.

Roxy then spent the opening portion of the opening lap madly looking for a way around Harrington and the two of them exchanged paint and stripes with each other, before the opening lap had concluded.

Mercedes-Benz had intended to field four cars this season but budgetary constraints meant that the factory team was limited to just two. Their first recruit was Natalie McIllan who was let go from McIllan Racing in 20X9 and who was a free agent. Andy Harrington who was already a test driver, took on the job, not really being prepared for the pugilist nature of motor racing. The Cornishman rose to the challenge and has tried to stay out of trouble.

Team McAlpine under management of Kayleigh McAlpine, expanded from three cars last season to four this season; with rookie Marnie Roxy taking over the ex-number 32 of former owner Cave Johnson; with Koffing bringing his #109 to the team.
Marnie Roxy who was already suffering from some kind of electrical issue, decided that her best policy would be to go as hard and fast as possible and hope that the car would stand up under the strain. It didn't.

After briefly leading, the #960 Mercedes-Benz dropped like a lead parachute through the standings and it wasn't until the round of pit stops on lap 36, that her crew was able to do a reset of the ECU. She would fall from 1st to 22nd and then spend the last 36 laps playing for the last place to qualify for the feature race, of 18th.
Harrington on the other hand, lost a stack of positions on pit row and would only manage to finish fourth.

The real winners of all of this was dual champion Patrick Mann in the Toyota, Holden runner Harleen Quinzel, and GaZ driver Bernie Bernie.



Very late in the race, Mad Cat in the second of the Team MAD Chevrolets managed to lay down the fastest lap of the day because he had worked his way into a patch of calm. As the leaders were fighting their way through lapped traffic, Cat laid down a whole slew of quick laps; being untroubled in the process.

He was so much quicker than the rest of the field that he was able to chip away as much as four seconds per lap and in doing so, completely overcame a half a minute deficit to his team leader Dr George Claw.
Claw had spent the latter half of the race in sight of eventual race leader but that gap ebbed forth and back, as though they were attached at either end of a spring. Cat on the other hand, was only making up time.

On lap 70 of 72, Dr Claw drew up behind Greg Rellings in the Shell Mazda at the hairpin. Mad Cat who had already thrown something of a Hail Mary pass and had already overtaken both Sticks Baja and Sherlock Holmes going into the corner, arrived at the apex way too hot and would have buried the nose of his Chevrolet into the driver's side door of his boss's car.
Dr Claw, having a very good sense of spatial awareness as well as a healthy sense of self-preservation, threw out the anchors and came to a virtual standstill while Cat came up the inside.

Claw was utterly furious and gave Cat a two fingered salute as the grey machine went past and subsequently past the Mazda ahead. Almost immediately, Cat ran into the same kinds of problems as the rest of the field had already experienced and he was able to make up no more time on the leader. Team MAD would come across the line in a 2-3 form finish but whether or not that was intentional or whether Claw had merely got a better run coming out of the last corner and wanted to pip Cat at the line, is unknown.



The incident between the two Mercedes-Benz in the lead, more or less handed the race win to Patrick Mann on a platter. He breezed past them and was never challenged for the lead even once.

The Toyotas hadn't been the fastest in terms of speed; so Mann decided to dial them into the track for the long run by making their suspension settings softer than he would have liked. In doing so, the tyres were preserved for a longer time over the run and the drop off in lap times towards the end wasn't as dramatic. In saying that, neither was the driving styles of the Toyota drivers, as they were now dealing with a floatier car.

For most of the latter half of the race, Mann saw Dr Claw in his mirrors but knew that unless the Chevrolet pounced early, that it would never find the necessary speed to overcome the deficit.

As for the other two drivers who had benefitted from the Mercedes melee, Harleen Quinzel and Bernie Bernie still finished in a very credible fifth and sixth place respectively.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Patrick Mann
6 - Mad Cat
4 - Dr George Claw
3 - Andy Harrington
2 - Harleen Quinzel
1 - Bernie Bernie

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



For reasons which remain unknown, the Birmingham Superprix circuit seemed to favour the Holden runners (at least in the A-Heat Race). Maybe it was because of the higher ambient air temperatures or maybe because the stop-start nature of a street circuit just suited the torque curve of those engines better but whatever the case they held a slight speed advantage.

All of that advantage was destroyed in an instant for Henri Cornelius on lap 9 when having been so quick, he hadn't expected to see the Jaguar of Mike Wazowski in the middle of exit of a corner.
Some of the corners towards the end of the circuit are completely blind and due to the fact that there are buildings everywhere, drivers' spotters and crew chiefs are often at a loss to convey adequate enough information to their drivers.
Cornelius hadn't expected to find Wazowski bang in the middle of the exit of corner and took impulsive action which unfortunately for him, buried the #91 Holden into the tyre bundles.

After the car was cleared from the corner, it wasn't capable of getting back to the pits under its own power and so Cornelius had to make the long walk back to the pits by himself.
That meant that another Holden assumed the lead of the race; with yet another one close behind. Those being the entries of Jack Raymond and Ellie McIllan.



After having inherited the lead from his fellow Holden compatriot, Jack Raymond in the number π Telecom Holden wasn't able to pull away from those in pursuit. Immediately behind him in very similar equipment was reigning champion Ellie McIllan in the Texaco Holden.
Although it his rookie season, Raymond showed an incredible amount of levelheadedness to place his car in sufficiently annoying enough spots on the track, so that McIllan wasn't able to pass.

She however did in fact lose her patience and tried to shove the black car into a space where it definitely would not fit. The resulting thud into the rear left quarter panel of the #π Holden while it was turning into the left handed at X, was enough to not only spin the car but as the outside tyres gripped the road, throw it into it's roof. He was then immediately passed by McIllan, Arbuckle, and Vader, before the marshalls were able to yellow flag the area and put him back on his wheels again.
Although the car was perfectly able to get back to the pits and would have been good enough to continue circulating for the rest of the afternoon, by the time the crew inspected the damage, he'd already gone a lap down and was resigned to 35th place. Naturally, the crew put the car on a set of dollies, pushed it into the garages and shut up shop for the day.
For her efforts in knavery, Ellie McIllan was awarded with a ten second stop and go penalty, for having caused the accident. She fell to fourteenth but would recover to third by the end of the day.

That put Garfield Arbuckle into the lead and his Chevrolet was certainly on song. Arbuckle was three seconds ahead of yet another Holden Competitor, Kane McKane, who then had the benefit of two sets of spotters looking out for him.
When Arbuckle pitted, he found that he was caught out by traffic but because McKane also had the crew of Henri Cornelius now working for him, McKane's car was put back into a clean spot on the track and actually in front of the orange Chevrolet.

From this point on, McKane wasn't harassed by Arbuckle and because he had the advantage of picking his way through the traffic first, he was quite often able to put at least one lapped car between himself and Arbuckle.



Having qualified in 17th, Kane McKane had a determined and disciplined run to climb to 10th at the first pit stop and then to lead the race after the second round of stops.

Jean Paul Cassell let him go towards the end of 20X0 and picked up the season's newly crowned champion Ellie McIllan in his place. McKane however, was able to do a deal which saw him fill the retiring Phillip Monroe's seat at the works Holden team; with the #16 being renumbered as #92.
McKane had usually managed to win a race of some sort in previous seasons but has never really had the outright speed to challenge for championships. This season this far has now been a lot different; with McKane bumbling towards the bottom of the points standings in a number of races but yet again never really managing to extract much else from the car. Here though, he was able to make up time going into braking zones; which is more like the skills of a road course specialist, like Ricardo Sasquini.

Indeed of the eight Holdens entered, four of them qualified for the main feature race; with Harleen Quinzel taking the #665 car to the points in the B-Heat Race and both of Cassell's black Holdens escaping the heats. McKane's team mate Henri Cornelius would have come in sixth place except electrical gremlins as a result of his shunt with the tyre bundles caused a misfire and a terminal loss of power on lap 66 of 80. That was later tracked down to a melted connection caused by a loss of a heat shield; probably due to a bump with another car, which is a common occurrence around this steel lined concrete canyon of a race track.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Kane McKane
6 - Garfield Arbuckle
4 - Ellie McIllan
3 - Al Yankovic
2 - Tse Sakamoto
1 - Ricardo Sasquini

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Race:



Sunday morning qualifying for the Main Race again saw Marnie Roxy throw the kitchen sink and the pots and pans at the wall and for all her sound and fury, she was awarded with yet another pole position. With 46 races in the complete season, it simply makes zero sense to award any points for pole, and so she may have reason to feel hard done by.
She had no reason to feel hard done by at the start of the main feature race when just like in the heat race, she bogged the start and gave up four spots before they reached the first corner. Still, dropping to fifth place is better than starting further back and dropping to an irrelevant place. Just like in the A-Heat Race, Roxy would finish eighth but pick up 5 points instead of 0.

Immediately behind her was Darth Vader in the Ford Galaxy; which meant that he was boxed in and was passed immediately by the two Mazdas of Ricardo Sasquini and Tse Sakamoto. Behind them was Gojira in the Datsun.

Vader and Gojira would ultimately be involved in a long running battle of increasing irrelevance in this race as neither of them really dialled their cars into the track as all. Gojira would go on to salvage a solitary point for his efforts but Vader would finish two car lengths behind in thirteenth. He may have just as well finished in 36th because he got absolutely nothing from the weekend except losing the top spot on the championship ladder.
At 250 miles plus change, the 91 lap journey was split into roughly 30 lap segments except for Kerrod Edmundson in the Mazda who decided to start the race on a short fill and then went 15 laps, and then two segments of 38 laps.



Edmundson's decision would ultimately pay the best dividends. He fell to dead last on lap 16 and then found himself all alone and with nobody in his way. Thus, he was able to make a ton of speed by putting in quick laps unimpeded and unbothered.
By the time of the second round of pit stops, in theory he was on the same amount of fuel for the run home but because he pitted earlier, he ended up passed a bunch of cars while they were stationary and he was out on track. In this shot, he is passing underneath Stanley Spidalski in the pink Team UZKA Ford for seventh place.

Spidalski who was momentarily distracted by Edmundson flying past, then came under a very concentrated attack by Bruno Gourdo in the #33 Golden Fleece Ford.
As The Goof has a five litre formula which allows basically any engine from the manufacturer, including derivatives, Team UZKA runs Windsor 302 V8s whereas the Golden Fleece Fords are running Coyote V8s. There wasn't much more than a cigarette paper of difference as they fought it out on the streets of Birmingham, except to say that as they were fighting with each other for position, they held each other up.
That allowed a very opportune Walter Kronkyet in the GaZ to frequently get in touch with the two Ford and eventually he had enough and jammed the red Chaika up the inside of Gourdo going into the hairpin. Spidalski invariably scooted away to solidify his fifth place but these momentary flashes of competence from the Ukrainian cars is still enough to remind everyone that if they ever their act together they could well be a force to be reckoned with.

Garfield Arbuckle in the #9 Chevrolet was quick to realise that Edmundson had pulled a very deft trick on the field and decided to play follow the leader; so Edmundson's charge back up through the field, was shadowed by the cat in orange.



The story that unfolded late in the race, was a kind of tragedy. Patrick Mann who had won the B-Heat Race quite comfortably, decided to work with his teammates of Robie Robie, Hatsune Miku, and Amy Rose. The four Toyotas moved as well trained militia and effectively bullied their way up the order.

On lap 74 of 91, Hatsune Miku's Toyota suffered an unexplained fault with the MGUK and the loss of the additional hybrid power was enough to see her fall all the way back down to 22nd. Five laps later, a similar fault also struck Patrick Mann's Toyota and the instruction to both Robie and Rose was to drive as fast as they possibly could and hope that if their cars also experienced this as a common problem, that they might pick up some points in consolation.

Amy Rose and Robie Robie shot to the lead and for a while rumbled around as a 1-2 pairing.
On the very last lap of the race, Amy Rose also would fall victim to the fault and although she was passed by both Robie Robie for the lead and Kerrod Edmundson, she did just enough to roll around the final sector and finish three lengths ahead of Garfield Arbuckle and claim third place.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Robie Robie
17 - Kerrod Edmundson
15 - Amy Rose
12 - Garfield Arbuckle
10 - Stanley Spidalski
8 - Walter Kronkyet
6 - Bruno Gourdo
5 - Marnie Roxy
4 - Samuel Touquanne
3 - Ellie McIllan
2 - Kane McKane
1 - Gojira

Top 20 After Round 4:
51 Robie Robie
49 Darth Vader
49 Tse Sakamoto
46 Dr Ivo Robotnik
40 Garfield Arbuckle
35 Patrick Mann
33 Al Yankovic
32 Bruno Gourdo
25 Hatsune Miku
24 Ellie McIllan
20 Kane McKane
19 Stanley Spidalski
19 Amy Rose
19 Kerrod Edmundson
16 Gojira
15 Kayleigh McAlpine
13 Marnie Roxy
12 Mad Cat
11 Walter Kronkyet
10 Greg Rellings


For Round 5 we head to Lakeside in Queensland in 3 weeks' time; on Mar 30th.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 5 - The Queensland Cane Toad Cup.​

Queensland's Lakeside hosted Round 5 of The Goof this year and the 1.497 mile track did not fail to entertain.

The state that hails itself as 'Beautiful one day; perfect the next' was shrouded in mist and rain this year; which was different to the nation being on fire the year before last. Lakeside was brought in as a replacement to the Mungo Scrubs Grassdrome which was undergoing a rebuild.

The B-Heat Race:

Occasional position getter Asuka Langley was joined by Mari Makinami in the second of the NERV Engineering cars this year, as they switched from running a Mercury to running a pair of Mitsubishi Celestes. The experiment has not gone entirely well.
Five races in and the engine program appears to be a dud. Lakeside which is one of the kinder rounds of the year, with lots of changes of direction and chances to cool the engine down, shouldn't be a round where a car expires due to engine overheating. That's precisely what Mari Makinami's Mitsubishi Celeste did and yet again, neither of the two cars escaped the heat races.

The bright pink Mitsubishi Celeste qualified well enough, splitting the Team Yellow Toyotas of Miles Prower and Sticks Baja for sixth place but whatever trouble lurks beneath the bonnet, made its presence felt yet again. Makinami's pulling off the circuit and into the pits had the effect of uncorking the Mazda of Go Mifune, the Holden of Jack Raymond and the two Toyotas.



With the Mitsubishi well behind the wall Jack Raymond tried to chase down the Mustang of Bandit Heeler but what could have been an exciting Holden v Ford grudge match never eventuated as Raymond looped the π Telecom Holden into the left hander before the hill. He bogged the car in the mud and would eventually abandon the car, with no hope of making it into the top 18.

This left Go Mifune out front and the Toyotas on Prower and Baja were free to chase him down. Prower would pass Mifune for the lead on lap 43 but it was a pyrric victory as he lost it in the round of pit stops, one lap later.



Not long after the first round of pit stops, the two drivers who made the most of fresh rubber were Greg Rellings in the Mazda and Kayleigh McAlpine in the Mercedes-Benz. Neither of them had a horsepower advantage over the other and so the distance between the two cars as they left pit lane on lap 44 did change dramatically.

About the only real difference between the two drivers was how they approached the carousel. The carousel is either two ninety degree corners back to back, or one hairpin; whatever line people take going into it, will upset the car coming out of it. McAlpine would brake later and deeper going into it and Rellings took the more traditional approach.

On lap 71, McAlpine became the new leader at the carousel, having managed to throw the Mercedes-Benz up the inside. Rellings took his usual line and cut back under her at the apexes but the Scot who had already straightened up and was applying full power, pulled the orange and blue machine into the lead.

Behind this pair, Bandit Heeler had streaked away from Henri Cornelius, leant on the door handles of Go Mifune, and bump tapped Miles Prower to claim fourth place. On lap 87 he broke ranks and pitted early; which meant that he blended back into clear space; where as the rest of the top six all came in on lap 88 and then found themselves trapped behind Tenosuke and Byuti Nanako who were having their own private Honda squabble. Heeler who had just put in a fantastic lap on his fresh rubber, made the undercut work brilliantly.



It should have come as no shock to anyone that the agitator for getting Lakeside on the calendar, should have also romped away with a heat win. Queensland's favourite son Bandit Heeler in his '59 Mustang Mk0, knew the track intimately and was more than able to climb around a relative lack of performance because of it. Having previously built their own Fords, the 20X1 Dodgy Bros. Mustangs are actually the Team McIllan cars from last season. Bandit's in particular is the championship winning car that Ellie McIllan took to her maiden and rookie championship.

In the hands of a team with a vastly smaller budget, the car is still reasonable but might lack the absolute edge that the bigger teams have. Around here though, the old dog could make the tail wag through the corners and drift the car under full power at places where nobody else except his brother Stripe could.

It should be noted that when placed against stiffer competition in the Main Race on Sunday, Bandit's best efforts would only pocket 14th place and zero points. Still, to have given a Queensland car driven by Queensland driver, at Lakeside in Queensland, would have been enough to get the XXXX Bitter flowing that night. Behind him, Kayleigh McAlpine in the #3 Mercedes-Benz found the short little dog leg track to her liking and made the orange and blue machine sing its own flat crank plane song of happiness. She wasn't able to take back the lead after having surrendered it at the second pitstop but 6 points is still a welcome reward for the race.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Bandit Heeler
6 - Kayleigh McAlpine
4 - Greg Rellings
3 - Miles Prower
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Henri Cornelius

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:

The rain came down for the A-Heat Race and it looked like it had settled in for the afternoon. Pole sitter Kermit Cleveland in the Jaguar led them out on the first tour and was followed by Ricardo Sasquini's Mazda and the Datsun of Gojira. After the rain came though, there was a mad dash into the pits for fresh tyres and the front two swapped positions. They were joined by the tweed Chevrolet of Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes had acquired the car almost on a whim and while the gentleman consulting detective turned gentleman driver hadn't exactly disgraced himself, he wasn't exactly turning heads either. His performances in the car have been mediocre to barely adequate at best but flashes of brilliance like this suggest that with a bigger budget, he could very well turn into a motoring pugilist yet.



Quite literally apart from the series contingency sponsorship logos, the car is entirely funded out of his own pocketbook. Whether or not the great detective can continue to fund this hobby remains to be seen. Holmes' dour fourteenth place in this race meant that he qualified for the main feature race but wasn't exactly the most spectacular of performances.

Neither Cleveland nor Sasquini could fare much better and Cleveland embarrassingly lost the lead when he had a brake lockup coming into the front straight; which speared him off into the mud and he grazed the guardrails. Thankfully the green machine only suffered from a case of rivet rash and he would end the race in a rather forgettable eleventh. Sasquini thought that he developed a misfire and after leading the race for a while, the Mazda kind of bumbled back down the order to end in tenth and back in front of Kermit Cleveland.



Rain tyres have a habit of not lasting as long as slicks and that meant that most teams switched from a two stop to three stop strategy. When Sasquini and Cleveland pealed off on lap 33, that gave Holmes the lead before he too discovered that that much wear on the tyres led to excessive skating.

The four drivers who did not change strategy, were Hatsune Miku, Ellie McIllan, Patrick Mann and Robie Robie. Miku held on to lap 40 before she too changed tyres; Ellie McIllan who tried to be as kind on her tyres as she possibly could lasted all the way to lap 58 but Patrick Mann and Robie Robie who had the intention from the start of running to a set lap time, went an amazing 66 laps on their rubber.

They would periodically swap the lead between them as they looked to cool down the tyres and prevent degradation due to block warping and rubbing. When you throw more than 500 brake horsepower through a rain tyre, the little blocks of rubber between the grooves, get hotter and wear faster than they otherwise would on a wet surface. By finding patches of damp, they prolonged their tyres excellently.

In the end though, careful conservation doesn't produce outright speed and Ellie McIllan came back at them after lap 99 and Al Yankovic who made his third set of tyres last until lap 101 had the advantage of a semi drying track and decide to risk it by going out on C compound slicks.



The latter half of the race saw the dominance of the two Toyotas upfront broken. After Patrick Mann muscled past Robie Robie, the little yellow robot was then picked off by defending series champion Ellie McIllan. She was quite surprised to see her old '59 Mustang in blue warpaint win the B-Heat Race, and hoped to do likewise in her new black Texaco Holden but the opposition was far stiffer.

She powered her way past Robie Robie who was still running at a deliberate pace to a set of times but when she came to the rear end of Patrick Mann, she found that the dual champion ahead of her was pretty wily and could make that yellow Toyota exceptionally wide.

What neither of them had counted on though was that 20X6 champion Al Yankovic was also pretty clever and he was making his Ford dance upon the slivers of dry road left behind by the car in front of him, upon slick tyres. Yankovic's high wire act was anywhere between three to five seconds a lap faster than those following and because the wetness that he did encounter effectively preserved the life of the tyre even longer, he gave it maximum attack virtually everywhere around the circuit.

Yankovic would go on to lap everyone to eighteenth when he came to the back of Darth Vader's Ford Galaxy which was embroiled in a battle of epic proportions with Dr George Claw's Chevrolet, in a gloriously pointless fight.

Towards the end of the race, they were so far ahead of the nineteenth place car that it almost didn't matter what they did. They were also both so far behind Marnie Roxy's Mercedes-Benz in sixteenth that they weren't even going to make a vague impression on the gap. What we saw was two black cars who were pretty evenly matched, trading corner for corner, like two kids fighting over the last cupcake. Yankovic arrived behind this on lap 108 and thought better of it and so became a spectator at distance to the hundred mile an hour stupidity.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Al Yankovic
6 - Patrick Mann
4 - Ellie McIllan
3 - Robie Robie
2 - Bruno Gourdo
1 - Hatsune Miku

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:

As the rain came down ever harder for the 166 main feature race, the teams surmised that they would have to take three stops. 55 laps would simply be too far for even then most timid of drivers. Most teams stopped on lap 41, 82, and 123 but there were some variations.



The first quarter of the race started out as a 14 way royal rumble. Patrick Mann led the initial part of the squabble but Ellie McIllan, after riding the door handles of Stanley Spidalski's Ford, tagged him in the rear quarter panel at the carousel and sent him into a spin. Her actions were deemed to be morally hazardous for the effort and had to serve a drive through penalty.

Go Mifune would assume second place and he spent the better part of ten laps fending off charges from Kermit Cleveland and Garfield Arbuckle. They were all made to look foolish when on lap 23, Bandit Heeler got an absolute monster run coming down the hill and was on the verge of losing the car altogether but kept the boot in a gave it a full power drift, dragging his rear wheels in the dirt at 125mph.

Always lurking around in about fourth place was Ricardo Sasquini who in similar equipment to Go Mifune, was learning where the white Mazda was quick and then adjusted his own lines in his green and red Alitalia Mazda accordingly.




The first round of pit stops on lap 41 was a fight onto pit lane and a fight back off of it again. Patrick Mann and Ellie McIllan who had fought her way back from her drive through penalty, won the race off of pit lane; with a train of eleven cars behind. Way down in the queue, Kermit Cleveland had his engine management computer fail as he was leaving pit lane and had to do a reset from the driver's seat. This concertinaed the field behind him and created a breakaway group up front.

They very soon came to the back of Miles Prower's Toyota, who although he had dribbled down the order to sixteenth place, stayed out and passed everyone else while they were in the pits. He could offer zero defence against the hoard of cars behind him and gave up the lead before he made it back to the pits himself.
Curiously, later in the race when he played the same trick and the rain got worse, he not only passed a bunch of cars to arrive in fourth place, he was able to hold out and maintain the position until the end of the race.

Still behind him, Ellie McIllan and Patrick Mann continued their squabble. Mann had been informed that McIllan had been given a moral hazard penalty earlier in the race and he correctly guessed that he could play the part of the bad man and bump tapped her for fifth place. Going down the front straight on lap 146, the two of them came to blows as they rammed their sides like ancient triremes in a Greek sea battle.
Watching this play out in front of him, Go Mifune hung back and hoped that they would take each other out but that never came to pass.



The unexpected champions of the day were Kayleigh McAlpine, Dr Ivo Robotnik and Al Yankovic.

Yankovic who had won the A-Heat Race by playing as the consummate rain master, again watched the mayhem play out in front of him and waited until the third round of pit stops before he even attempted to make a charge. From lap 120 to 166 he knew that he only had to find one second per lap to assume the lead from his then 40 second deficit. Unfortunately for him, although Yankovic passed a bunch of cars by getting the undercut when they pitted on lap 123, Robotnik and McAlpine were running similar tactics.

Dr Ivo Robotnik who had started the race in 36th place after failing to set a time in qualifying but having won his place into the main feature by finishing a rather boring eighth in the A-Heat Race, at no point even attempted to engage in a direct battle with anyone except at the end of the race. At the three stops and thanks to repeatedly running longer on the tyres than perhaps was sensible, he was 22nd, 14th, and finally second. His last stop on lap 133 meant that the only car in front of him at the time was Al Yankovic; who had no reply to the Chevrolet on ten lap fresher tyres.

Equally running the race on her own was Kayleigh McAlpine who had finished second in the B-Heat Race and could only do one better in the feature. Her charge up through the field began on lap 146; with the benefit of having run long at the last stop. Her run upwards saw her pick off Spidalski, Sasquini, Mifune, McIllan, Mann, Prower, Yankovic, and Robotnik who himself was embroiled in a battle with Yankovic.

McAlpine's cavalier pass from way down town on lap 160 saw her lose the rear end of the Mercedes-Benz as she locked up the rear brakes, and she drifted into a weird J-turn like maneuver as if she had had put Micky D's trays underneath a the rear wheels of a front wheel drive car and pulled to hand brake.

"She was very brave to have attempted a move like that."
- Dr Ivo Robotnik

"I just saw her fly past as though she was in real trouble. I surrendered the corner for fear of being taken out."
- Al Yankovic

"You know what you do when you've bitten off more than you can chew? Keep on chewing. I lost it. We were completely ****ed and I knew it. It still didn't stop me from putting the foot through the floor and giving it the beans."
- Kayleigh McAlpine

Just six laps from home, Kayleigh McAlpine pulled off the self-confessed most insane move of the year and neither Robotnik nor Yankovic was willing to stop her, lest they be wiped out in the ensuing mayhem. Fortune and stupidity sometimes favours the brave.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Kayleigh McAlpine
17 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
15 - Al Yankovic
12 - Miles Prower
10 - Patrick Mann
8 - Ellie McIllan
6 - Go Mifune
5 - Ricardo Sasquini
4 - Stanley Spidalski
3 - Kermit Cleveland
2 - Darth Vader
1 - Garfield Arbuckle

Top 20 After Round 5:
63 Dr Ivo Robotnik
57 Al Yankovic
54 Robie Robie
51 Darth Vader
51 Patrick Mann
49 Tse Sakamoto
41 Garfield Arbuckle
41 Kayleigh McAlpine
36 Ellie McIllan
34 Bruno Gourdo
26 Hatsune Miku
24 Miles Prower
23 Stanley Spidalski
20 Kane McKane
19 Amy Rose
19 Kerrod Edmundson
16 Gojira
14 Greg Rellings
14 Go Mifune
13 Marnie Roxy
12 Mad Cat

Round 6 of the championship will be held on 19th April at the monster mile of Dover.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 6 - The Monster Plate​

Four very large C-17 Globemasters took off from Brisbane Airport to make the long haul across the Pacific Ocean and thereon to Dover, New Hampshire. The Monster Mile at Dover has become one of those turning points on the season; where if you haven't put any points on the board by then, then the run home for a championship is nigh on impossible.

The B-Heat Race:

Also, by the time that Round 6 rolls around, both drivers and teams are already thinking about finding both pilots and rides for the following season. The term 'silly season' implies not only that drivers are looking for a different horse on the merry-go-round but that the teams are also hoping to fulfill their best outcome before the music stops.



The very first announcement of note was that Konata Izumi had secretly signed for the works Datsun team for 20X2 without telling either her fellow Subaru driver Oglivy Maurice, or the Subaru team itself. She always had a zero notice escape clause in her contract; and seeing as the Subaru Flat-12 engine program had simply never produced anything near to the potential that it promised, it was clear that she wanted out as quickly as possible.

Subaru which had virtually no experience in circuit racing, had hoped to use the series as a way of developing an engine for Le Mans. Two of its 2.5L flat-6 engines basically welded together on a common crankshaft became the 5.0L flat-12; which in theory should work well on paper. Motor racing is not conducted on paper but on ribbons of tarmac and getting ideas from an engineer's head to the road is not an easy process.

The expectation is that Izumi will take over the #25 entry currently piloted by Dennis Menace; which has also underperformed this season. Exactly where this leaves Maurice or Menace for 20X2 is anyone's guess.

Pole sitter Jack Raymond wound out to an early lead with Samuel Tocquanne and Eggatha Robotnik close behind. The nature of The Monster Mile is that as the straights here are reasonably short, the drivers are constantly working; which means that building a lead can very easily lead to a blowout. Unfortunately for X, he wasn't able to establish dominance over the field and was reeled in at the first pit stop. He fell back to fourth with X assuming the lead and X and X falling in behind.



Having said that, Round 6 at The Monster Mile at Dover didn't go particularly well for Oglivy Maurice either. He was minding his own business and tried to move out of the way of race leader Mad Cat in the #11 MAD Chevrolet, when he got tagged in the rear left hand quarter panel; which turned the front desk his Subaru into the Mitsubishi of Mari Illustrious Makinami and while she grazed the wall, he was sent spinning down the main straight like an involuntary blue tornado.

This naturally brought out a caution and Maurice's Subaru while not being so badly damaged that it couldn't limp home to the pits, it was so badly damaged that the crew upon inspection, didn't think it worth the effort to try to put it back out and make minimum speed. The blue Subaru was unceremoniously pushed behind the wall and that was that.

Mad Cat on the other hand, had escaped with only a minor ding inn the front fender and he still managed to retain the lead of the race.



The race went along pretty smoothly from this point onwards and the grey Chevrolet would have been unchallenged if it were not for some nifty thinking by the Mazda pit crew of Kerrod Edmundson. He was doing enough to hold only Cat towards the end of the race and at the final round of pit stops on lap X, Cat had all four tyres changed but Edmundson only had the outside two tyres changed. He won the race off of pit row and was able to put the Mitsubishi of Asuka Langley between him and Cat.

In any given race, ultimately the margin of victory is irrelevant and only the mere fact that you did win matters. With two new outside tyres Edmundson knew that he could use the tractive ability to roll through the turns but also knew that with practically no bite from the inside two tyres, then he always ran the risk of being tight in, loose out, and tail whipping the wall if the rear right got scrubbed too badly. His tactic therefore was to run as slow as possible while at the same time trying to maintain a one or two car buffer between him and Mad Cat.

The tactic worked just well enough until lap 179 of 200 when Cat encountered a four wide wall of cars which didn't properly resolve itself for a whole lap.

That small break gave Edmundson an additional five second advantage and Mad Cat lost his visual reference to the red Mazda in front of him. It was at this point that conservation became his goal rather than a heat victory and Mad Cat decided to be less mad and sensibly accepted the 6 points for coming in second place.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Kerrod Edmundson
6 - Mad Cat
4 - Jack Raymond
3 - Samuel Tocquanne
2 - Eggatha Robotnik
1 - Amy Rose

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



The A-Heat Race started with an eleven car multi-way slugfest as not only were conditions perfect for motor racing but the margins between the cars was thinner than a cigarette paper.

Ricardo Sasquini who led the madness was able to do quite a good job of holding down third place while unpleasantness and unkindness raged behind him. Kermit Cleveland in the Jaguar and Miles Prower in the Toyota had had a disagreement on the opening lap and by about lap 5, they were openly banging doors with each other. Dover does not bother to enforce track limits, so although there is no competition penalty for going below the apron, there is a speed penalty by operation of the laws of physics. Cleveland was hoping to force Prower to go low and wash off a ton of speed. He would win the immediate battle but in the long run, Prower would finish 8th and Cleveland would come home in 16th. Both would qualify for the feature race but neither would score any points here.

Mercedes-Benz came to Dover with an update to their M113 engine, adjusting the capacity from 4966cc to 4994cc with a change in stroke. It is hope that they can get the mandated 400kW more reliably because so far this season, the factory squad still hasn't lived up to expectations. McAlpine Motorsport declined the updates; citing that their own engine program has already produced better results.
Natalie McIllan was able to stay up front with the leaders for a period of time but over the long run, the speed still wasn't in the car. She would eventually fade to 19th and just outside the qualification places for the feature race; behind Bobo-Bo Bo-Bo-Bobo, whose Honda



Slightly ahead of the swirling maelstrom of chaos, the two Team Yellow Toyotas of Patrick Mann and Robie Robie were making unhurried laps. The Monster Mile isn't long enough to make tandem drafting viable but they were able to cut their way through traffic as a pair quite effectively.
Rather, Patrick Mann was able to cut through traffic and Robie Robie was forced to act as tail gunner.

"Me wan go through now."
"No, we're sticking to the plan."
"This wasting our time."
"No, you stay behind."

Like a good solider obeying orders, Robie Robie stayed behind Patrick Mann despite his own wishes but with an ever increasing amount of annoyance. Despicable this being a heat race and only worth 9 points, the little yellow robot was offended that the very principle of motor racing was being violated; moreover he was personally being affected.

Behind them, Al Yankovic had escaped from the whirlwind and could just about make visual contact with them. By lap 66 of 200, he began to lose touch and eventually surrendered fourth place to Greg Rellings' Shell Mazda. In just a few short years, Nigel Levins has made the transition from owner/driver to Team Principal of a four car operation; replacing himself with two young guns. Greg's father George won the championship 14 seasons ago and so it is not all that surprising to see a Rellings in the Levins stable, a generation later.

Behind them, Kayleigh McAlpine was turning solid laps after qualifying 33rd



In one of the sneakiest race wins of the year, Dr Ivo Robotnik spent the first 150 laps following the two Team Yellow Toyotas and then with a handy amount of team work in the pits, held out one lap longer than them at the final change and secured an overcut.

While double stacking is not a problem for the teams (they all have their own independent pit crews) Robie was still annoyed that he came out behind Patrick Mann and was then told to stay there as they went back out on the circuit. Robotnik on the other hand, entered a completely empty pit lane and left with an equally empty pit lane. Half a second at 120mph is about 88 feet and it is that kind of gap that Robotnik was able to overcome, when he took the lead. Apart from having to blend in behind Ellie McIllan's Texaco Holden, his very small cushion was just enough to allow him to ignore the two Team Yellow Toyotas behind him.

Robie spent the rest of the race behind Mann but he made it increasingly known over the radio that he was not happy. His crew chief however, did not relay this to Patrick Mann; who ordered him to hold station. Exactly why Mann wanted him to do this is unclear but Robie faded behind on lap 194 and then after having established a decent enough gap, went out and scored this category's first sub-25 second lap with a 24.999. He finished third; after staring down what he thought was a denied opportunity for a race win.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
6 - Patrick Mann
4 - Robie Robie
3 - Greg Rellings
2 - Al Yankovic
1 - Kayleigh McAlpine

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



As always the main feature race was slightly longer than the two heats but at 250 miles, that merely meant adding an extra pitstop. 66 miles around this concrete saucer is all that Goodyear were prepared to certify their tyres for.

In an unexpected turn of events, the early race leaders were Jack Raymond and Kylo Ren. Ren was sent out by Empire Racing as a hare to go out and establish what kinds of speeds could be run as the mercury climbed beyond 30°C. Dover being an unsealed surface has something of a reputation for cutting up tyres at the best of times and seeing as Ren was way down the overall championship order, it seemed worthwhile to the team to roll all the dice at once and see what works.

What they hadn't expected was that going out and setting a blistering pace early world also encourage others to do likewise. Chloe Ankha having finished 16th in the B-Heat Race to qualify and never having made it to a feature race until now, absolutely gunned her Holden because going hard early and then hoping, was as good a strategy as any.

Ankha's run up front came to an unceremonious early end when an errant plastic bag blew onto the track and she was unfortunate enough to collect it on the front air dam.

"What temperature does water boil at?"
"Er... a hundred?"
"We've got a hundred and thirty and we're still going up."
"Bring it in. We're not making a pot noodle out there."
"I don't know what that is."

The #5A Holden came down pit lane shortly thereafter; the crew cleared the plastic bag and threw both water and a bucket of icy Gatorade into the engine bay. The incident was enough to ruin her chances of scoring any points but she had definitely made her claim that she had potential to produce results.

Behind this pair, four Toyotas ran line astern; being Hatsune Miku, Patrick Mann, Miles Prower, and Robie Robie. Whatever set up they had was clearly working for them and the fact that there were six cars that could work together was a signal to the other teams that this might be a tactic employed in future.



By the third set of pit stops the running order had settled down into Cornelius, Miku, and Robie; the latter of whom having been unleashed was now climbing up the standings.
In theory the Toyotas of Miku and Robie should be close to identical, having both been built and prepared by Team Yellow but Miku's car should consistently hold the bottom; whereas Robie was forced to run higher and higher to make lap times by rolling out of the turns at higher speeds. For all the robot's complaining in the A-Heat Race, there was very little that he could do by himself when faced against comparable opposition. It would appear that Patrick Mann may have been proven right by his decisions, only hours earlier.
Robie would eventually pass Miku but in the meantime and by the end of the race, they would both be passed twice and Robie's reward would be third place.

On lap 207 and after the fourth round of pit stops had rolled through, a charge came from Henri Cornelius who had drafting help from his fellow Holden team mate Kane McKane who was two laps down. The #92 Holden had been involved in an accident earlier in the race when he bruised the wall coming out of Turn 2 and was basically turning laps to keep the sponsors happy. For a brief period of time McKane worked with Cornelius; acting as the pick through traffic and when they came to the back of both Miku and Robie, he provided drafting help so that Cornelius got a tow.

For a while they both rolled around the top side of the racetrack and this was enough to hold Robie down lower than he wanted to be. By the time that Cornelius had effected the passes, McKane backed off to act as a screen.

This shot is some time after, when Cornelius encountered Felix X. Felix who had been brought into replace Gordon Schumway has not even so much as scored a single point this season and so his position is looking increasingly tenuous. Unlike Samuel Tocquanne and Anthony D'Tigrette, Felix has not brought independent sponsors to the Chevrolet team and the IBM backing comes via Garfield Arbuckle's efforts.
This brief run alongside Cornelius may have at least shown that Felix is capable of putting in laps comparable to the leaders but whether that is enough to warrant retaining his services remains to be seen.



Henri Cornelius may have had a car which was better than the Toyotas but not even he had an answer to the Datsun of Gojira. Gojira ran his entire race without a first gear after the gates jammed just after the start. It meant that on restarts he expected to be toast but this whole weekend ran without a caution. Accidents were cleared up quite quickly and the track marshalls never thought that there was sufficient cause to halt proceedings.

Without a first gear, Gojira had to start from the pits in second but as he'd qualified way down the order, his pit box was also right up the back. With a 55mph speed limit in pit lane, he could get up to speed quite reasonably and out on the circuit, first gear is an irrelevance.

Gojira was content to ride the top line all afternoon and came down below when it was necessary. Just like Cornelius who passed the Toyotas while riding the top, Gojira passed Cornelius while rolling out of Turn 4 and onto the main straight while riding the top.

That happened on lap 164 of 200 and Cornelius might have thought he'd been in with a chance but the lack of a first gear isn't exactly something that a team broadcasts to the rest of pit lane.
He only mentioned it in the post race interview in passing; which made the other teams wonder if this is the herald to a second half of the season charge. We shall yet see.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Gojira
17 - Henri Cornelius
15 - Robie Robie
12 - Hatsune Miku
10 - Mad Cat
8 - Greg Rellings
6 - Stanley Spidalski
5 - Kermit Cleveland
4 - Bruno Gourdo
3 - Darth Vader
2 - Kerrod Edmundson
1 - Dr Ivo Robotnik

Top 20 After 6 Rounds:
73 Dr Ivo Robotnik
73 Robie Robie
59 Al Yankovic
57 Patrick Mann
54 Darth Vader
49 Tse Sakamoto
42 Kayleigh McAlpine
41 Garfield Arbuckle
38 Bruno Gourdo
38 Hatsune Miku
36 Ellie McIllan
36 Gojira
30 Kerrod Edmundson
29 Stanley Spidalski
28 Mad Cat
25 Greg Rellings
24 Miles Prower
24 Henri Cornelius
20 Kane McKane
20 Amy Rose

Round 7 of the championship will be held on May 3 at Spa-Francorchamps.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 7 - Le Coup de Stella Artois​

The Goof circus headed to Belgium and to the circuit at Spa-Francorchamps. The nearby town of Stavelot would normally swell by about 900 as the teams for 72 cars arrive. Things are different this year as the pandemic continues to rage on.
There was some dispute at customs and passport control at Antwerp Airport when heat cameras designed to detect elevated temperatures in humans, were confused by the rag tag assortment of species coming through the gates. When they got to Robie Robie who is a small yellow robot the reading was just 14°C and as for the floating ball of gas that is Koffing, he has a temperature of 49°C. (Never mind that Koffing not only has a passport as well as an IUPAC Chemical Data Sheet).

The B-Heat Race:

Round 7 of any given season is around about the time of year when drivers and teams start to consider their immediate and longer term futures. 20X1 has been no exception. These are three such takes of uncertain futures.



At the beginning of the year Subaru had promised to run their team for three years; with the long term goal of shooting for a tilt at the title in 20X4. By hiring Konata Izumi and Oglivy Maurice, they hoped that they would have a driver with experience and who was able to act as a mentor to a rookie. What Subaru discovered is that just like Dr Ivo Robotnik in 20X0, and Miles Prower in 20X9, is that Maurice "Sonic" Oglivy has an ego which is massive and has a disinterested work ethic. Konata Izumi told Radio 101 that she felt "leaderless" and was "floundering". For their efforts, Subaru have promised to round out the season but they have not made any formal announcement for 20X2.

Likewise, Hochi Samyang who is running the #08 car out of the MAT Ultraman stable, although having an all right opening season, felt as though could and should do better. She was the first to hint that she had already tied up another drive for 20X1 but was not at liberty to say what it was.

Harleen Quinzel of the Axis Chemical Corp. team, was very adamant that the whole experiment wasn't the abject failure that it appeared to be despite the team not scoring a single point between the two cars. She was utterly prepared to go down with the ship and there would be no sign of surrender.

These cars all made it home to the finish of the B-Heat Race but they would finish 34th, 35th and 36th places respectively.



The round of pit stops between laps 22 and 25 was one of the most confusing sets of things to work out. As there were no caution laps because the circuit at Spa Francorchamps is a tad over 4 miles long, it meant that the race off of pit lane was done under green flag conditions. Getting in and out in a hurry was paramount.

The leader of the race before the round of pit stops was Samuel Tocquanne with Ellie McIllan some way behind. He was the first to break off into the pits which left McIllan out in front and then came this multi way lucky dip.

Natalie McIllan in the Mercedes-Benz finally had a circuit on which she was able to exploit the power of the silver arrow and she did a sterling job of keeping out Koffing in a customer Mercedes-Benz, the Chevrolet of gentleman racer Sherlock Holmes and the Ford of Stripe Heeler but she would also have to peel off the front of the peloton and get new tyres. Her coming into the pits meant that Koffing had a clear track in front of him and he responded by collecting the two fastest sector times up to that point but he then came up behind Natalie's twin sister Ellie and his progress was immediately blunted.



Nobody was more surprised at the result of the race than the winner, Koffing. He had driven what he thought was a pretty boring race and when the team put him out immediately behind the then race leader Ellie McIllan, he realised that he had a chance at winning a race. His boss Kayleigh McAlpine was one of his most enthusiastic supporters and every time McIllan and Koffing came down past the bus stop and into La Source, the team went all kinds of crazy.

McIllan's Holden was wearing the number one plate by virtue of her being the reigning champion and for Koffing to beat her in a battle would be that much sweeter. The problem was that she was also in pursuit of points, race wins and maybe more Championships. Koffing eventually passed McIllan in the second of the right hand bends coming back down the hill and while Ellie McIllan put up a valiant effort, she could never catch him.

In fact the B-Heat Race would have three of the six points paying positions filled by Mercedes-Benz. Natalie McIllan would finish fifth and Marnie Roxy would come in sixth.

Way down the order, the three Jaguars of Mike Wazowski, Oscar Roscoe, and Minch Yoda, had worked out that they were more effective when working as a drafting train. The green machine hadn't had a particularly good Saturday and all three cars had qualified in the low 20s. However, by running as a drafting train, they overcame a deficiency of speed by finding as much as 15mph down the straights. This would pay dividends as they finished in 16th, 17th, and 18th, and secure the last three qualification places for the feature race.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Koffing
6 - Ellie McIllan
4 - Samuel Tocquanne
3 - Sherlock Holmes
2 - Natalie McIllan
1 - Marnie Roxy

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



At just a shade over four miles long, it means that most cars will come into the pits on mostly identical tyre strategies. There will usually be a mad dash for the pits, which is then followed by a second mad dash for the pits as the cars that stayed out because of either double stacking reasons or trying to get an overcut, all have to come in.

The front two cars of Kerrod Edmundson and Bandit Heeler had made decisions because of double stacking in the pit lane. Spa-Francorchamps has a notoriously long pit lane which starts all the way before the bus stop and ends on the other side of Eau Rouge. They had both been here before and this was not a new phenomenon to them.

First time entrant at this circuit Bobo-bo Bo-bobobo, suddenly found himself in third place and in front of a stack of drivers who he passed while they had pitted. He was now having to defend his place against a horde of drivers who were all on fresh rubber while he was on tyres which were more than a hundred miles old.

He performed admirably to hold back the flood of fury behind him with equipment no more useful than a pitchfork but his Honda while having reached an acceptable level of reliability, still did not possess an adequate amount of horsepower. All cars run broadly identical GNS55 Type 6 chassis but the drivetrains vary wildly. The Honda R5000 is estimated to put out 490bhp which is woeful in comparison with the Mazdas which are rumoured to be making more than 600 horsies.

He was passed by Kylo Ren, Miles Prower, Patrick Mann, Amy Rose, Stanley Spidalski, and Bruno Gourdo, before he even made it back to the pits. The #84 Honda then sunk like a rock down the order as a bunch of cars flew past while it was in the pits.



By the end of lap 24, Ricardo Sasquini had assumed the lead with Bruno Gourdo and Hatsune Miku close behind.

One of the consequences of any form of sport is that everyone competing is always looking for an advantage while at the same time, seeking to knobble everyone else. Team Yellow Toyota accused Mazda Rosso of running illegal engines, based upon nothing more than the sounds coming out of the exhaust. Naturally the Team Principal of Mazda Rosso, Nigel Levins, said that this was "complete and utter nonsense" and that Patrick Mann should actually provide proof before making any kind of accusation. If there was proof, then it certainly didn't manifest itself here.
Sasquini couldn't keep up with Robie heading through Eau Rouge and up the Kemmel Straight, he would be passed by Hatsune Miku on lap 27, then by Bruno Gourdo going through La Source, and then collapsed to finish 9th. Meanwhile, Team Yellow Toyota and their customer team at Goodsmile Racing, not only managed to get five of their six cars into the main feature race but with Robie and Miku being the fastest through the speed traps, it was untenable to make an argument that they suffered from a power disadvantage.

On lap 35 while Darth Vader was holding down 5th place, he managed to spin the black Ford Galaxy at La Source. It what seemed like an eternity for him, he had to wait for a seven car train to pass; which also included Kerrod Edmundson and Kane McKane. Vader would assume 7th place in the order but never got close enough to the back of Edmundson's Mazda to effect a draft, much less pass him. 7th place earns zero points but he was still grateful to have an unbent car to contest the feature race in.



Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise but after the round of pit stops, it was none other than the man in black, Dr George Claw who got his Chevrolet motoring the best.

He'd spent the first half of the race sort of bouncing around 10th place behind the Mazda of Ricardo Sasquini but after the pit stop and a fresh set of tyres, it was as though he was a man on a mission.

The distance between the Doctor and the then leader of the race, Hatsune Miku, was 38 seconds. If he could do better than 2 seconds per lap than whomever the leader was, then he'd be set. Most drivers opted to take the Medium compound B tyres but Claw radioed in for a set of the hard A compound tyres and intended to absolutely abuse them. He promptly did so.

In a drive which was utterly fitting for a three times champion, Claw easily made his goal of 2 seconds per lap; passing nine cars for a dominant heat win. After the race, he promptly ran through the pit complex and found the nearest toilet; evidently suffering from a case of the squits.

Robie Robie having passed Miku for second had no answer to Claw and kind of gave up trying to try and chase him back for the lead, once it was obvious that Claw was very much in his element.

If there was any controversy to Claw's win, it was on the second last lap when he asked Mad Cat in the other Team MAD Chevrolet to throw a block on Robie. Mad Cat was a lap down and in 17th; so it cost him nothing to follow team orders, however dastardly they were. Robie was of course annoyed but could scarcely do anything in reply.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Dr George Claw
6 - Robie Robie
4 - Hatsune Miku
3 - Bruno Gourdo
2 - Kane McKane
1 - Kerrod Edmundson