Complete The Goof - 20X1

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Rollo75

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No.
The Main Feature Race:

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After having just demonstrated something of a master class in tyre management, Dr George Claw used those same tyres and stuck his Chevrolet on pole position for the main feature race. In an effort to perform the same trick twice, he then put on another set of A compound tyres and started the race on them.
Unfortunately for him, as most of the rest of the field started on B compound tyres, they all got the jump on him at the start and while he made a valiant attempt to keep the baying pack of wolves behind him, that effort only lasted until the end of the Kemmel Straight when Kermit Cleveland and Jack Raymond both scooted past him.

Cleveland's Jaguar certainly had the power but Raymond's #π Holden had a slightly different set of ratios in the gearbox and diff; which meant that he could punch out of corners more effectively. Before they made their way around the top end of the circuit, Raymond had already passed Cleveland and although Cleveland tried to find a way past, he wouldn't do so until lap 3; also while going up the Kemmel Straight. Jack Raymond was therefore credited with leading the first two laps, which is a good milestone for a first year team to have achieved.

As for Dr Claw, his Chevrolet ran reliably for the rest of the race but the long run speed that he had found in the A-Heat Race eluded him. He was forced to conform to a two stop strategy like everyone else and ended up spending a lot of the afternoon just fumbling around in the low teens to eventually pick up the scant reward of the last point for twelfth.

Kermit Cleveland did even worse. The 12 cylinder symphony up front sounded like a ruckus and far from being a happy place where the long legs of the cat could run, the Jaguar spent the day having a whinge and could only manage 28th.

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Hoping to get an overcut, at the time of the second round of pit stops on lap 40, both Kerrod Edmundson and Ellie McIllan stayed out.
Edmundson's Oxo Mazda probably had a horsepower advantage over the Texaco Holden of McIllan but the defending champion made use of the draft and sat in behind him. As she had a pit box around the corner at La Source and he had his pit box before the hairpin, she had hoped that her crew could get her out before him. This plan simply didn't work.
The Texaco Holden crew all raised their hand and dropped the #1 car off the jacks, just in time to mean that they would have had an unsafe release into the door of the #51 Mazda. Thus, when the two cars left pit lane, they did so in exactly the same formation as they had entered it.
Edmundson needn't have bothered about McIllan in the long run because the black Holden started blowing smoke and was retired.

A little distance ahead of them, Kane McKane tried to hold Bruno Gourdo behind him. Gourdo clearly had a faster car but McKane made his Holden sufficiently wide enough to be an issue. It took Gourdo seven laps to get around McKane, which he eventually did by effecting a bump to the rear end of the Holden through the long left sweeper before the Bus Stop. McKane protested over the radio but the blue Golden Fleece Ford was already streaking off into the distance.

Unfortunately for McKane, the bump in the rear was more than just a simple love tap. As he rounded La Source, he reported a serious vibration at the rear of the car. By the bottom of Eau Rouge it had developed a smoking habit and by the end of the Kemmel Straight, the car had lost all drive. There was no option left but to park the car behind a wall and call it a day.

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Bruno Gourdo after having seen what had happened McKane became spooked when after passing the place where the stricken Holden was parked, a lap later, felt an uncanny vibration through the steering wheel. It made sense that the impact which had eventually taken out McKane, would also take him out.
The rest of Gourdo's race was a preservation run, with the plucky Italian nursing the Ford like a hurt bird. He would lose second place to Hatsune Miku and then third place to Ellie McIllan.

With the feature race being 60 rather than 46 laps, the organisers had hoped that teams would adopt a two stop strategy. 35 of the 36 starters did stop twice but the race winner Gojira did not.

It is not illegal to wander around the pits either before, during, or after a race and Datsun Team Principal, Toshiro Gamera, admitted after the race to doing some reconnaissance and looking at the stack of tyres laying out the back of the Team MAD garage. The A compound tyres had been worked pretty hard but were still in reasonably good knick. If they could do 24 laps, it was thought that maybe they would do 30 and thus avoid a second pit stop.

Gojira assumed the lead on lap 22 by virtue of not stopping and would hold it until lap 30 when the Datsun team brought him in. By that stage, the tyres were worn right down to the cords and so the team knew that they were taking a gamble. The plan for the rest of the race would be to concede every position until lap 40 and then hope to reinherit the lead. That plan worked and while there was always the option of replacing these tyres as well, it was never exercised.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Gojira
17 - Hatsune Miku
15 - Ellie McIllan
12 - Bruno Gourdo
10 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
8 - Kerrod Edmundson
6 - Robie Robie
5 - Ricardo Sasquini
4 - Darth Vader
3 - Natalie McIllan
2 - Tse Sakamoto
1 - Dr George Claw

Top 20 After 7 Rounds:

85 Robie Robie
83 Dr Ivo Robotnik
59 Al Yankovic
59 Hatsune Miku
58 Darth Vader
57 Patrick Mann
57 Ellie McIllan
56 Gojira
53 Bruno Gourdo
51 Tse Sakamoto
42 Kayleigh McAlpine
41 Garfield Arbuckle
39 Kerrod Edmundson
29 Stanley Spidalski
28 Mad Cat
25 Greg Rellings
24 Miles Prower
24 Henri Cornelius
22 Kane McKane
20 Amy Rose

Round 8 will be held at the Kidney Bean Raceway at Trenton, NJ, on May 24.
 
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Rollo75

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No.
Round 8 - The Trenton Tourist Trophy

The B-Heat Race:


The Goof rolled on to Trenton NJ for Round 8 of the championship, as a replacement for the Mungo Scrubs Grassdrome which is being redeveloped. This not quite one and a half mile speedway is a bit like Brooklands in that it features a right hand kink; which should technically mean that this is a kidney bean oval but it officially has four turns and the kink.

Qualifying saw a front row lockout by Team UZKA with Stanley Spidalski on pole and Al Yankovic on the outside. This was significant for reasons that will become apparent later on in this report.

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The Goof management held talks with the teams about iterations of the formula for 20X2 and beyond. Currently the formula is for 5L engines and hybrid drivetrains, however a consortium led by the works teams from Chevrolet, Ford, Mazda, and Datsun has expressed annoyance that the formula might allow exploitation by teams running different engine configurations. When a vote was called for on the basis of one vote per licence, the result was 56/72 that all cars should run a V8 in 20X2 and that manufacturers would be limited to nine in total; running 8 cars each.

The immediate consequences of this was that this solidified Subaru's intention to leave and disband their team, and the four cars running Ferrari V12s, and the Honda and Jaguar team running V12s would either have to organise or they too might be collateral damage.

It must be said though that the two Ferraris of Team Splat and the other two DK Ferraris have not seen the success that they had hoped for. Even at this round, they were all bumbling around in the bottom half of the B-Heat Race; with only Donkey Kong making the cut and qualifying for the feature race.

Sam Inkling, the driver of the #47 Ferrari 500 GTS said after the race that:
"We're a little team who buys what we can off whoever we can. The factory teams will be fine. Us little teams will also be fine because all of this is happening way up above us somewhere. It's the teams in the middle who will be squeezed the most by this"

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During the round of pit stops and after Spidalski and McAlpine had pitted, they came up behind the Chevrolet of Antony D'Tigrette who was still out on the tyres that he'd started the race with.

The really curious thing was that almost immediately after the meeting between the teams and The Goof management, Garfield Arbuckle announced that all of the four drivers in the team would be retained for 20X2. It was already clear that the silly season had begun in earnest and that Chevrolet was keen to nail down everything that wasn't already nailed down as quickly as possible.
Since D'Tigrette wasn't really under any pressure, the team decided to send him out for as long as possible and hope this they could get some kind of overcut. This backfired miserably. As he'd already fallen what amounted to a lap behind anyway, holding him out didn't really help. On lap 71 when the car did finally come in to stop, D'Tigrette reported that there was no grip anywhere and that the car was both tight in an loose out. No matter what kind of line he took, the car's handling had deteriorated beyond all reasonable sensibility.
Unfortunately for the team, they had a kind of bad weekend and only Arbuckle escaped the heat races.

Once D'Tigrette pulled into the pits, we saw possibly the most intense battle for the lead this season. Spidalski rolled around the top of the circuit because his car was happier running at a higher cruising speed but this came at the penalty of having to go further.
Through the kink, Spidalski would waft to the middle of the track and then climb back up the banking.

McAlpine was forced to take the tighter line at the bottom of the track; which was mostly fine except that as the race wore on, the lowering grip levels made the handling more imprecise.

On lap 93, Spidalski came up behind Rodan in the Datsun and that was enough to make him lose as much as 25 mph down the straight as he took avoiding action. McAlpine simply rolled out of the bottom of the track and then slid up to take away Spidalski's line.

In turn, McAlpine came across the GaZ of Walter Kronkyet and was baulked. She surrendered the lead to the other Team UZKA Ford, and it was #62 and not #26 which assumed the lead of the race.

Where Spidalski was baulked by traffic, Yankovic as the 20X6 champion, was skilled enough to use the traffic to his advantage. McAlpine had no obvious plan of attack and she continued to roll the bottom; despite not having the outright speed to run down Yankovic.

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This race didn't resolve itself until Turn 4 of lap 120 of 120.

Al Yankovic on equally as old tyres as Kayleigh McAlpine, just didn't have the ability to turn down the racetrack and put a block on. McAlpine on the other hand, admitted that she was running a setup similar to what she had run at Dover; which meant that she was always on the ragged edge of running loose. Her Mercedes-Benz running exceptionally twitchy, could turn in faster with the thought always running in the back of her mind that the tail would snap out violently and end in the wall.
It didn't.
Yankovic was also able to hold his line to deny McAlpine the space to come back up the racetrack.

It became a drag race down the final stretch and in the end the margin of victory was only 3/4 or a car length.

"I only had to beat him through one corner in the end. I just wanted to make sure that I was peeling off laps until I could make it happen."
- Kayleigh McAlpine

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Kayleigh McAlpine
6 - Al Yankovic
4 - Stanley Spidalski
3 - Patrick Mann
2 - Andy Harrington
1 - Rick Sanchez
 
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Rollo75

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No.
The A-Heat Race:

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The A-Heat Race started later on Saturday afternoon and in theory the track should have heated up. Nevertheless, the 120 lap race was still slated to run the fill 177 mile distance.
The action on track however was white hot from the green flag and had barely even gone half a lap before carnage was strewn all over the place.

Pole sitter Kenichi Mifune in the #4 Mifune Motors Mazda 989, bogged the start and was relegated to third. He followed Dr George Claw and Mike Wazowski through the first two corners and then stayed low coming out of Turn 2 which put him on the outside as they went through the kink. He snuck past Claw and would have passed Wazowski expect the inexperienced driver of the green machine pulled to the outside which would have set him up to be on the inside of Turn 3. Whether Wazowski turned too early and didn't leave room or whether Mifune should have just backed out is a matter to be debated for weeks in the media but touch they did and the front right of the Mazda clipped to rear left of the Jaguar.

That turned the Jaguar into the path of Dr Claw's Chevrolet and the three cars slid back in front of the field of 36 starters. Caught among the carnage was Bandit Heeler, Kane McKane, Miles Prower and his Team Yellow Toyota team mate Sticks Baja, and Jack Raymond. As Trenton's local rules are to run from flag to flag without cautions, this made for some interesting situations as the stricken cars attempted to make it back to pit lane.

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McKane tried to limp his Holden back to pit lane so that the team could effect repairs and possibly salvage at least 18th place to qualify for the feature but because he was making a ton of smoke, his teammate Henri Cornelius tagged him in the rear and tore up both works Holdens beyond repair.

McKane was naturally furious and wanted to have words with Cornelius after the accident but Cornelius (perhaps wisely) stayed on the outside of the track for the remainder of the day. Henri was not about to engage in post race analysis by means of fisticuffs and Team Principal Philip Monroe understood his concerns. It is a wise manager who avoids civil war underneath his own roof by careful management of acridly angry antagonists.

Meanwhile back up front, Darth Vader in his Empire Racing Ford Galaxy was stitching together a brilliant string of fastest laps. Just like Brooklands Motor Speedway in the UK, the right hand kink between Turns 2 and 3 (as opposed to it actually being a designated turn at Brooklands), poses a forced compromise on setup. As a kid, Vader learnt valuable skills in taming ill-handling machinery and here, he had the roll centres adjusted so that they were always just on the verge of being tail happy. Unfortunately that would mean that he would be forced to take on four tyres in two stops as opposed to just stopping once.
He would throw away a race win all by himself when on lap 58 of 120 he spun the Galaxy in Turn 3 and watched as a stream of cars went past him.

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The first car to go past him was Ricardo Sasquini in the Mazda. Sasquini's season was up until this point almost a complete washout, with him only having acquired 11 points. The full 9 points for the minor race win here would steady the ship and perhaps put him in better stead to make a late season charge.

Behind him though, the two Toyotas of Hatsune Miku and Robie Robie were battling it out. Robie had already expressed annoyance at his boss Patrick Mann for not moving over at Dover and he was keen to try and prove that he was genuine in his desire to win the title. The little yellow robot being built as a RObotic BAttlefield Infantry Enhancement is definitely task/goal oriented and it appears that he does not know about or care about nuances. Hatsune Miku on the other hand, as the 2IC of this racing division of Goodsmile Racing, is almost her own boss. Her cars come as customer builds from Team Yellow Toyota but she is the one who makes the decisions about running the team and immediate tactics.
On track, the two Toyota Centurys are close to if not identical and this was made all the more obvious as neither had a power or handling advantage. It might appear from the outside as though they are team mates, though over the radio, the chattering from both of them indicated that war was brewing.

The largest distance that Miku could pull out was 0.7 seconds on lap 103 and the largest distance that Robie could pull out was 0.6 seconds on lap 114.
If power wasn't enough to split the two, and handling wasn't enough to split the two, and relative skill of the two drivers wasn't enough to split them because they are both at the top of their game, then the factor which did was luck. They came up behind Eggatha Robotnik, Samuel Tocquanne, and Minch Yoda who were having their own equally important battle for 17th, 18th, and 19th, and for the last two qualification places for the feature race.

Miku who was leading at the time, got wedged on the bottom line and Robie rolled out of Turn 4, blowing past the lot. Miku was able to make some use of the draft down the main straight but the gap had already blown out to 1.6 seconds and with only five laps to go, that distance was unassailable.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Ricardo Sasquini
6 - Robie Robie
4 - Hatsune Miku
3 - Darth Vader
2 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
1 - Gojira
 
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Rollo75

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The Main Feature Race:

Race weekends are organised so that two sets of qualifying sessions are held on the Saturday, and then a qualifying session and the main feature race is held on Sunday. For fully half of the field, their race weekend ends on a Saturday but for the other half, Sunday is when the serious business happens.

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Nobody was more surprised that Bob Nikoban claimed pole position on Sunday morning than Bob Nikoban himself. The cat in the Dark-Time Pizza Ford basically arrived on Sunday morning with the most laid back attitude and for one freaky lap, he managed to string together five perfect corners.

Unfortunately, having never been in the position of leading the race on the opening lap, he immediately let the lead go, by moving up the racetrack to block the black Ford Galaxy of Darth Vader. This let Tse Sakamoto in the Mazda through on the inside and he was off like an uncorked bottle.
Bob spent rest of the race, falling back through the field and unfortunately for him, he ended up in 14th; which doesn't pay any points.

Sakamoto was out to stamp his authority on the race and promptly reeled out a fifteen second lead over Darth Vader, before coming into the pits for what should have been a routine stop.
One of the tyre changers must have sheared one of the lug studs clean out the housing because the #58 Mazda flew round for almost the one and a half miles of the speedway before the front wheel separated and the car unceremoniously bit the exit wall from Turn 4.

That meant that Vader took over the lead. He very quickly found out that Sakamoto's speed wasn't just because of him or his car but an entire team who was on song.
Behind Vader and rapidly approaching, were the two Mazdas of Greg Rellings and Kerrod Edmundson.

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Further down the field and playing for pride more than points, was the fourth Mazda of Ricardo Sasquini, the Datsun of Rodan, and Jean Paul Cassell in the Pizza Hat Holden.

Although they were squabbling over ninth position, their three way fight was no less bitter or serious. Cassell whose car simply lacked the outright speed on the day, was for a while running as a screen for Ellie McIllan in the other black Holden. Cassell who was a lap down on the leaders, would could cut through traffic for her and as she scooted past, tried to throw a block.
The problem with that is that both Rodan and Sasquini saw this play out over several laps and followed McIllan on the bottom of the racetrack; thus leaving Cassell out by himself.

Whether it was intentional or not, Rodan tagged the rear bumper of Sasquini's car on lap 7. He did not forget and after falling behind, returned the favour on lap 16. This would nominally be where the story should have stopped but revenge is a bottomless pit.

Their beating and banging would resume after the first pit stop and last for roughly a dozen laps from about lap 68 onwards. Their fight which saw both of them take positions at the top and bottom of the racetrack and swap ninth and tenth positions forth and back, only really came to a conclusion when they came across Patrick Mann on lap 80 of 160.
For some reason, Mann couldn't make any of the Team Yellow Toyota Centurys dial into the circuit and the feature race was a pointless affair for the team. The four yellow Toyotas towards the end of the race, were more or less turning laps without purpose.

When Rodan came to the back of Patrick Mann, Mann moved up the track to let him past but Sasquini who saw this from a long way back, made his move to the bottom first and forced Rodan to pull out, lest all three of them end up in the Turn 2 wall. Rodan relented and Sasquini was gone.

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Back up front, Darth Vader who was unhurried for the lead of the race, entered the last set of pit stops on lap 103 and left the pits back out in the lead. Unfortunately for him, he was deemed to have been speeding on pit lane and he was given a drive through penalty.
Haven't been resigned to fifth place, he then found himself behind some Mazdas yet again. He would pick off Edmundson and Rellings one by one but the damage had been done and the Galaxy came in third.

This left Hatsune Miku and A-Heat race winner Kayleigh McAlpine battling for the lead.

The Goodsmile Racing Toyota was a handful to drive all day but Miku was able to fight both it, the racetrack, and the competition. McAlpine on the other hand had a great car which was singing beautifully and she intended to bring it home to victory lane.

McAlpine having come off a victory in the B-Heat Race to get to the feature had a game plan and intended to execute it. Miku on the other hand, having come third in the A-Heat Race, spent the B-Heat Race standing on top of her warwagon in the infield and also knew of McAlpine's game plan. In response, Miku moved down the racetrack to try and steal away McAlpine's line and make the Scot literally drive around her.
McAlpine decided to remain behind and wait and see where and how the Toyota was weak.

On lap 158 of 160, McAlpine flung her car wide coming out of Turn 2. Sensing that McAlpine was going to go up the inside through the kink and force her down the racetrack, Miku moved to the right hand side of the track. This left Miku with a less than ideal line through Turns 3 and 4, where McAlpine drove to the high line to drive out of the backing. Miku who now had to block the bottom, tried a slide job up the circuit but gave the Toyota a great big surprise pin stripe on the outside of the car. Instead of rolling straight on, McAlpine merely moved to the centre of the track and powered ahead; with the Mercedes-Benz pulling away by almost 25mph down the front straight.

All McAlpine had to do from that point onwards, was drive the remaining two laps and keep it out of the wall. Miku, realising that the fight was over, backed off and picked up a sensible second place, some four seconds behind; being careful to remain ahead of Vader who was another three seconds behind again.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Kayleigh McAlpine
17 - Hatsune Miku
15 - Darth Vader
12 - Greg Rellings
10 - Kerrod Edmundson
8 - Ellie McIllan
6 - Kermit Cleveland
5 - Garfield Arbuckle
4 - Eggatha Robotnik
3 - Ricardo Sasquini
2 - Rodan
1 - Jean Paul Cassell

Top 20 After 8 Rounds:
91 Robie Robie
85 Dr Ivo Robotnik
80 Hatsune Miku
76 Darth Vader
71 Kayleigh McAlpine
65 Al Yankovic
65 Ellie McIllan
60 Patrick Mann
57 Gojira
53 Bruno Gourdo
51 Tse Sakamoto
49 Kerrod Edmundson
46 Garfield Arbuckle
37 Greg Rellings
33 Stanley Spidalski
28 Mad Cat
24 Henri Cornelius
24 Miles Prower
22 Kane McKane
21 Ricardo Sasquini

Round 9 will be held at the Derek Moto-Drome on Jun 14.
 
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Rollo75

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No.
Round 9 - The Derek Motodrome Mototrophy

The B-Heat Race:


New for this season, the Derek Motodrome in the state of Jefferson (the 54th state of the union) is a one mile high banked speedway. The speedway is nestled in a combination of a natural amphitheatre and N2 non-nuclear explosion site. It is practically unique in that instead of there being an inside wall, there is a very long turtle kerb. Cars already have shown that they can go as many as six wide around here.

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Pole sitter Dr George Claw and second place driver Minch Yoda started the race as though they were both on a mission. Yoda had been told to drive as quickly as he possibly could, so that it could be used as a rabbit to benchmark the rest of the team against. Although Yoda had placed it on the outside of the front row, by the time that the race started, something in the ECU was giving out spit codes of nonsense. With all of the telemetry being entirely unreliable, the team had to rely on the driver's own reports. If the car was quick, then they could climb around the problem.

On the inside, Yoda's pace was immediately disturbing to Dr Claw and so he ran as hard as the green machine.
This had the effect of snapping the rest of the field into damage control because if the front two were going to run a lightning pace, then they too needed to start quickly, lest they be dropped off.

The leaders very quickly came around to the tail of the field which included Sam Inkling, Miles Prower, and Kurt Langer.
Langer just wasn't happy with the car all weekend and put it down to the track being so steep that it had a tendency to turn cars down the racetrack with ease. The enigma this place was that it looks deceptively simple.

Minch Yoda's run wouldn't even last until the first set of pit stops, for Dr Claw who was having his patience tested, finally snapped on lap 18 and tagged Yoda in the rear left quarter panel. Yoda had a massive slide coming out of Turn 4 and saved it but not before he put massive flat spots on all four tyres. He planned to stay out as long as possible so as not to give up track position but his drop off in performance was so marked that he dropped like a rock and fell all the way back to 20th before the team pitted him to try and recover anything from the race. In the end, they didn't even salvage qualification into the feature race.

This race settled down into a running order of Claw, Mifune, Prower, McAlpine, Cornelius, and Natalie McIllan.

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The shake up of body styles and the rationalisation of manufacturers has left some of the smaller teams reconsidering their position in the sport. Axis Industries which sports the #333 car of Jack Napier and the #665 car of Harleen Quinzel formally announced that they would not be returning. . Napier stated that there wasn't the commercial imperative for his company to build a new car; despite the drivetrain and underlying chassis being identical.

That didn't stop Harleen Quinzel from giving it a red hot go and for a while she was knocking on the door of scoring points. Her blunder came on lap 93 of 200 when just before it was time to pit, she turned in front of Don Patch's orange Honda and the two of them spun down the racetrack. Kayleigh McAlpine took evasive action and drifted up the racetrack and out of harm's way.

Because both Quinzel and Patch slid over the inside kerbing which the Derek Motodrome has instead of an inside wall, they both exceeded the track limits and not only had to suffer the consequences of flat spotting all four tyres but they also suffered the indignity of a drive through penalty. What could have been a points paying position for either of them, evaporated and was then distilled into the sludge of despair, for neither of them qualified for the feature race. McAlpine on the other hand, fell to 16th and drove back up through the field to finish 7th.

The subsequent confusion allowed Go Mifune and Miles Prower to skate on past a bunch of cars as though they were all standing still. Prower who had a shocking qualifying run, starting in 35th and on the last row, now found himself up in the points. Team Yellow Toyota never found any speed in the car and so the strategy was just to dial into the track and hit consistent numbers.

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The one mile oval which is the Derek Motodrome in Derek, JF, is ridiculously banked at 36° and naturally a 200 mile race is over 200 laps. Most teams opted to stop once at about lap 100. Some went with a two stop strategy but Sticks Baja was unique in that she went with a three stop strategy.

Instead of picking the harder A and B compound tyres, the team opted for the softest grade C compound. Sticks thought that in the end of a race that that would be worth as much as three seconds a lap; which over the course of a stint, equates to two and a half minutes.

During that last session, she picked off McAlpine, Mifune, Claw, her teammate Prower, Cornelius, and Natalie McIllan. She had been brought into Team Yellow Toyota because of mechanical prowess and her fighting spirit and here, both were on full display.
Nobody else on track had thought about doing this and her very heated debate with her crew chief before the race, in which things were thrown, paid handsome dividends.

Also of note in this shot is the Ferrari of Judge John Judd. Team Splat wouldn't be using Ferrari machinery in 20X2 because of the regulations to do with car supply and so, they became the first independent team to sign up with one of the preferred manufacturers. They would be running Mifune Motors engineered Mazdas, as a customer to the non-factory team. Quite frankly, anything would be preferable to their current arrangement which has thus far yielded exactly zero points.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Sticks Baja
6 - Henri Cornelius
4 - Natalie McIllan
3 - Dr George Claw
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Miles Prower
 

Rollo75

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No.
The A-Heat Race:

Because there are 72 cars across two heat races, qualifying for The Goof is a complex affair. The Thursday free practice sessions are free-for-alls with all cars eligible for either session. Qualifying on the Friday is only for the 36 starters of that particular heat race; then the heat races happen on Saturday, with qualifying and the main feature race on Sunday.
Unexpected pole sitter for the A-Heat Race was Bob Nikoban; who after putting down the very first timed lap, was for a while, the only driver with a timed lap when the rain came and the session was delayed. As the track had been washed clean, he was the fastest driver by a considerable margin.

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On the opening lap, he tried to roll the bottom of the racetrack and this was a sensible strategy while he still had brand new sticker tyres. As that top layer of stickiness wore off, he had to adjust and come back up the racetrack. Unfortunately on lap 9, his Dark-Time Pizza Ford got loose and Tse Sakamoto in the Mazda clipped him. They were both clobbered by Kerrod Edmundson in another Mazda and Sakamoto ended up on his roof.

Nikoban had to pit early and out of cycle; which threw him off the lead lap for the rest of the day. He would recover and finish 8th. Sakamoto would finish in 17th and avoid the cut-off; even after rolling twice, landing back on his wheels and needing to have some damage repaired.
Edmundson on the other hand, slammed into Sakamoto so hard that he shoved the front panel through the radiator and the car boiled itself and seized before it made it back to pit lane.

R9A2.jpg

After the first round of pit stops from lap 49-52, the running order was Sasquini, Yankovic, and Kronkyet. Kronkyet in particular was very happy to be up in third place as his GaZ Chaika was sporting a new 4998cc V8 which had been lifted from the parts bin at ZIL. GaZ's experiment in The Goof hadn't yielded any championships yet but the company was still very keen to pour development money into the team.

Not far behind him were the Datsun of Gojira and the Chevrolet of Garfield Arbuckle. Gojira had qualified badly and at the first stop, swapped out his B compound tyres for C's. The hope was that this change of strategy would bump him up the order and then they would assess where they were from there.
A very sharp eyed crew member of Arbuckle's team noticed that the Datsun had switched to C compound tyres as it passed by on pit lane and so when it came time for Arbuckle to pit a lap later, they also copied the strategy.

The two of them were easily the fastest cars out on track for a considerable while; with the pair of them swapping fourth and fifth places between them. This temporary alliance served to gift them nearly 30 seconds before Gojira bruised the front right while trying to pass Kenichi Mifune and the damage cut the tyre. Arbuckle was left lonely in fourth place and without his temporary ally, didn't really make that much headway for the rest of the race.

In front of them, Kronkyet passed his teammate of many seasons ago, as the #61 GaZ clearly had long run speed. Yankovic was prepared to let him go by, for at that stage of the race it was of no consequence. The fact that Yankovic never saw the red GaZ in front of him again as it faded off into the distance, kind of made him wish that he'd put up more of a fight.
When Yankovic was passed by both Sasquini and Gourdo as the race wore on, it suggested to him that fourth place in the A-Heat Race was about as good as he could expect.

R9A3.jpg

Things got really spicy at the final round of pit stops. The Golden Fleece Ford team saw the green and red pit crew for Ricardo Sasquini getting ready, further up pit lane. They swung into action and brought out their own pit crew for the #33 Ford of Ricardo Bruno Gourdo who was holding down third place. They also realised that they could bring the #43 of Kurt Langer into the pits and then use him to hold up the Mazda as they were exiting pit lane.

The #43 came into the pits first and they took an extraordinary amount of time to service that car before releasing it into pit lane and then running at 20mph. This gave the #33 crew enough time to change all four tyres and allow Gourdo to come up behind Sasquini while they were crawling through the pits. Gourdo saw this as mildly amusing and goaded Sasquini by flashing his lights at the Mazda in front; while it was the meat in a blue sandwich.
When they blended back into traffic, Langer then proceeded to make his Ford two lanes wide, as while he was two laps down and not running for position, his teammate two cars' back was indeed most certainly.

Sasquini wasn't about to be bullied though and he lost patience with Langer. Sasquini rammed Langer in the rear end on lap 174 and would have pulled around him except that on the outside, Bruno Gourdo had already caught up and swung around the outside of the Italian.
Langer who was down in 15th and who has never looked like scoring a point this season, was still useful enough to provide a block on the #55 Mazda and Gourdo was duly thankful for his teammate's assistance. To add further pain to Sasquini's day, when Gourdo passed Jack Napier in the #333 Smylex Holden, Napier moved back down the racetrack and wasn't aware of Sasquini behind him. Sasquini dropped a further seven seconds on route to Gourdo picking up the heat win and Sasquini was more than annoyed at the events which had just happened.

"If he isn't good enough, then he shouldn't be out there. I know that he's running a screen for his teammate but this is one of the most disgraceful displays of dumbwittery that I've seen in my career."
- Ricardo Sasquini, to Radio JEFF 101.1

"What do you have to say in response to Sasquini?"
"Suck a lollipop."

- Kurt Langer, to Radio JEFF 101.1

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Bruno Gourdo
6 - Ricardo Sasquini
4 - Walter Kronkyet
3 - Al Yankovic
2 - Garfield Arbuckle
1 - Ellie McIllan
 
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The Main Feature Race:

R9M1.jpg

Pole sitter Dr George Claw remarked before the race that if an impending storm came before the start of the race, that it would wash off all of the rubber and that the slick surface would make for a very slippery track. Teams that heeded this advice opted for the softest C compound tyres but that would mean going for two if not three pit stops.
To the outside of him sat Hatsune Miku in the Goodsmile Racing Toyota and she definitely took the advice seriously; choosing to go over the head of her crew chief and demanding that the #00 machine be shod with C's.

Behind them sat Kerrod Edmundson in the #51 Oxo Mazda and he decided to go for the harder A compound tyres. This was a mistake.

It is difficult to know exactly who triggered multi car madness in Turn 4 but on lap 48 of 200, Edmundson was tagged by someone as they were heading six and seven wife into the turn, he got turned around which sent Amy Rose into the path of Judge John Judd, who in turn clipped the front end of Wendy Thomas' Datsun and went rolling door over door down the racetrack. He would eventually come to rest upside down on the inner kerbing and by the time that service crews came to right him again, the leaders has already gone past twice.

In the melee of cars diving in and out of the pits, the lead of the race fell into the lap of Sticks Baja in the #6 Toyota. As she had opted for an intermediate B compound tyre, she was determined to stay out until lap 64 of 200; which was longer than most other competitors but would still give her an undercut against other B compound shod cars.
Unfortunately, the #6 Toyota Century didn't co-operate and it developed a weird misfire. The plan shifted in a hurry, to running slightly slower laps and then pitting later in the cycle. She didn't want to listen to her crew chief and told him that she was going to run as hard as possible and if the car blew up anyway, then it was never meant to be.

R9M2.jpg

Of course there was no way that Sticks could stay out in front with that kind of misfire but she kept her boot nailed to the floor anyway.
She was soon passed by Walter Kronkyet, Ricardo Sasquini, and Antony D'Tigrette but gave them enough difficulties to make it a challenge.

As she fell down the order, she was passed by Darth Vader who was doing his best to stay out of trouble and who would finish the day in a sensible third place, Go Mifune in the Mazda who equally drove an anonymous race to fourth place, and Al Yankovic and Bruno Gourdo.

With the announcement that The Goof would be changing body styles for 20X2, there was a subsequent announcement by Ford that they were looking for a team to run as their defacto works outfit. This kind of put the Heeler brothers, Golden Fleece Racing, and Team UZKA into competition with each other. Darth Vader expressed that he couldn't care an iota about what a motor manufacturer thought, as he would make his own way whatever the decision. Racing For The Empire could buy Ford Motor Company if it wanted to, he said.
At the other end of the economic spectrum, Stripe Heeler made it known that he was prepared to surrender control of his own team if it meant support from the factory.
Meanwhile, Al Yankovic hinted that Team UZKA might be in the market to snap up four Racing Entitlement Contracts if he could wrangle the drivers and the money.
R9M3.jpg

As the race wore on though, it was pretty obvious that Hatsune Miku who pitted on laps 50, 100, and 150, and had pitted for C compound tyres every time, had been running like clockwork all day long. No wheel was out of place, she didn't make any donkey overtaking maneuvers; there was only a slick performance of overwhelming confidence and competence.
In contrast, for most of the last quarter of the race she was followed by Bob Nikoban in the Dark-Time Pizza Ford, and he was running on the ragged edge between glory and utter chaos.

Meanwhile, Robie Robie made his feelings certain as he gave his spotter the kind of spray that would make a sailor blush. As he was passed by Hatsune Miku in what in theory should be pretty close to identical machinery, he used many four letter expletive deleteds.

His Toyota Century like Sticks Baja's, Patrick Mann' and Miles Prower's, suffered a chronic loss of power at various stages of the race; which occasionally manifested itself in a misfire. Initially the problem was thought to have been electrical but upon tech inspection at the end of the race, it turned out to be water seeping into the fuel. Hatsune Miku who is a satellite team and who runs Eneos 99 as opposed to Shell V-Power 101 in her cars, had no problems like this at all.

Bob Nikoban claimed second place in what turned out to be a very difficult drive for him.

"The car was rubbish. It was very loose everywhere and it didn't matter what kind of adjustments we made, it didn't make a difference. The crew couldn't help. No-one else could help.
I came out behind Miku and I just kept my foot down and drove it like a dirt car. I banged someone on the way through and they went spinning out... No idea who that was."

- Bob Nikoban, to Radio JEFF 101.1

If nothing else, this drive by Bob Nikoban did put him on the television and in view of someone who potentially might give him a ride next season.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Hatsune Miku
17 - Bob Nikoban
15 - Darth Vader
12 - Go Mifune
10 - Bruno Gourdo
8 - Al Yankovic
6 - Ellie McIllan
5 - Jack Raymond
4 - Dr George Claw
3 - Greg Rellings
2 - Henri Cornelius
1 - Miles Prower

Top 20 After 9 Rounds:
100 Hatsune Miku
91 Robie Robie
91 Darth Vader
85 Dr Ivo Robotnik
76 Al Yankovic
72 Ellie McIllan
71 Kayleigh McAlpine
72 Bruno Gourdo
60 Patrick Mann
57 Gojira
51 Tse Sakamoto
49 Kerrod Edmundson
46 Garfield Arbuckle
37 Greg Rellings
33 Stanley Spidalski
27 Ricardo Sasquini
28 Mad Cat
25 Miles Prower
24 Henri Cornelius
22 Kane McKane

Round 10 will be held at the Novograd Potatodrome on Jul 6. This will be the last round before the Redemption Round.
 
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No.
Round 10 - The Novograd Potatodrome Shield

The B-Heat Race:

In the nine rounds of The Goof in 20X1, Kylo Ren who was given the #88 Racing For The Empire Ford Galaxy, had secured exactly zero points and as such, would have to fight through the Redemption Round if he was to get a place in the double points paying races, the Le Mans 3 Hour and the Bathurst 500. Darth Vader had lost patience in his protege and handed the drive to complete rookie Governor Jar-Jar Binks.
Governor Binks was a skilled pilot in other classes of vehicle and Vader thought that the skill might be transferrable. With the #88 repainted brown and given a livery from Federation Insurance, Governor Binks was given the same car but entered as #66.

Although he had no racing experience whatsoever, Binks took the Galaxy through all kinds of impossibly small gaps and even though he frequently lost positions, managed to overshoot his pit box at a stop, actually miss pit road entirely when he was called in on one occasion, he still took the car from 36th on the grid to 2nd place and collected 6 points. Thus in just one appearance, Binks managed to do something which Ren had not in nine rounds. In securing 6 points, he also secured the right to go to the endurance races.

XB1.jpg

The Goof had never been to the Novograd Potatodrome before and there were concerns that the very coarse asphaltic surface would tear up tyres. After the Friday free practice session, Goodyear advised that their A compound tyres would last 63 laps and this practically set everyone's tactics in stone. Three stops would be the order of the day.

However, stopping for tyres is predicated on the premise that you actually get that far and on the opening lap of the B-Heat Race, Jerry Tennosuke turned up the racetrack in front of the Subaru of Konata Izumi and triggered a four car accident. Also collected in the incident was Olivia Micina and Harleen Quinzel; with all four of them being condemned to race in Redemption Round if they wanted to go to the two enduros.

Up front, the lead of the race had been assumed by Eggatha Robotnik with her uncle Ivo acting as tail gunner, trying to hold back Gojira and Kerrod Edmundson.

XB2.jpg

The bombshell that dropped before this round was that Robie Robie did not arrive with Team Yellow Toyota for Thursday practice. Teams usually arrive on Thursday, get a Thursday, Friday and Saturday practice, Saturday qualifying, and then race on Sunday. Robie was not with Team Yellow Toyota and they did not know where he was.

The little yellow robot, resident of 14 Threadneedle St, London, had evidently made a deal with person or persons unknown because he arrived at the Novograd Potatodrome on Saturday morning with a crew of six and a '59 Ford Mustang bearing his usual number 20. Somehow, he had also secured sponsorship from Shredded Wheat. The crew of six robots were all squat cylinders like Robie and bore equally as baffling five letter names such as Grant, Aaron, and Steve. Exactly what had transpired between him and Patrick Mann of Team Yellow Toyota was kept under wraps as neither of them gave an answer to the press.
Atop the #20 warwagon stood the three headed supercomputer of Caspar, Belthezaar, and Melchior as the triumvirate crew chief.

The Mustang was gloriously adequate. The car had exactly zero time to be tuned and dialled into the track but Robie was still able to turn out reasonable lap times. He would be lapped twice en route to finishing 12th in the heat race but that has more to do with the dominant performance up front than his race. 12th place and qualifying for the feature race on debut of a new car, is a good result.

Out in front, Dr Ivo Robotnik lost touch with his niece and found himself under challenge from Stanley Spidalski who had found good long run speed in the pink WITZ #26 Ford. Robotnik would fall to fourth at the third pit stop, when while on pit lane he was stuck behind a car positively dawdling and his eleven second gap over Gojira evaporated. Gojira won the race on pit lane.

Way down the order, Tennosuke who had been in the first lap altercation, was putting in some utterly blinding laps. After falling to stone motherless last, he drove the wheels off the Honda S500 as though he had nothing to lose.
For Honda it had been a bitter first season and the factory came to the conclusion that they just couldn't be bothered doing any more development of the car. With a new body style coming out for 20X2 and a formal tender process being required of the manufacturers, Honda also concluded that they wouldn't be back either.
This was a pity for the team based at Suzuka as this would be the first time that all four of their cars escaped the heat race.

XB3.jpg

Around a small venue like this, Binks was seemingly able to throw the Galaxy around at will. If nothing had been done to the car, then this would indicate that the speed was always there and that Kylo Ren was either neither talented enough to exploit it or would have produced this result at this track himself. Whatever the case, Jar-Jar Binks took the #66 home in a very good second place and with six points, thus avoided having to go to Redemption Round.

Out in the lead though, we saw a 200 lap demolition of the opposition. Eggatha Robotnik in the #12 Chevrolet was given the job because in pre-season testing, she showed the potential of having a ton of talent. In this race, she demonstrated that talent.
She had put the car on pole position and within the hundred laps before the pit stop, she pulled out so much of a lead over the then second place car of Gojira, that she pitted without conceding the lead of the race.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Eggatha Robotnik
6 - Jar-Jar Binks
4 - Gojira
3 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
2 - Stanley Spidalski
1 - Samuel Tocquanne
 

Rollo75

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The A-Heat Race:

XA1.jpg

Nobody was as surprised as Kane McKane when he put his Holden on pole. Evidently all had been forgiven within the works Holden team as his setup was also used on the other car and Henri Cornelius made it a Holden lockout of the front row. Neither of them would fare as well during the race though and Cornelius would finish 12th; with McKane just qualifying for the feature race by half a car length.
McKane drew out to an early lead in the opening run but was caught up and passed by both Bruno Gourdo and Bandit Heeler. Al Yankovic also rose from the peloton and assumed third position.

In the race to secure eight slots to become a preferred manufacturer, Ford Motor Company did as they always had done and simply threw money at the problem. To this end, the Heeler brothers were happy to take two slots, Golden Fleece Racing was happy to take two, Team UZKA took two but Racing For The Empire refused and wanted to see what kind of offers that they could get elsewhere.

Team UZKA upon hearing that there wouldn't be any Empire Fords, then swooped in and made a statement of intent to run four cars in 20X2. This would be contingent on securing two Racing Entitlement Contracts; neither of which they had and with no idea of who would be driving for them. Hastily the numbers pencilled in on the forms were #262 and #626.

XA2.jpg

Gourdo was the first to pit, hoping to get an undercut but he resumed behind a massive clump of traffic and was passed by both Heeler and Yankovic for the lead. He was then further passed by Darth Vader and Greg Rellings; both of whom were on exceedingly old tyres but who were both turning in very fast laps on almost empty fuel loads.

Also of note was the two black Holdens of Jean Paul Cassell and Ellie McIllan. They both had had a quiet race and decided to hook up and work as a pair; given that the Novograd Potatodrome is only 0.548 of a mile long and is therefore not capable of deriving any drafting benefits on.
Cassell despite getting on a bit, is still very good at picking his way through traffic; with experience easily making up for raw emotion. McIllan on the other hand, being the daughter of a five time champion and now a champion herself, is quite calculating and more than happy for someone else to do the fussy work of making their presence felt.
At the second round of pit stops on lap 100, her pit stall was further down pit lane than Cassell's and when she was released in front of him thanks to some excellent pit work, it was as if she was uncorked and flew away in a massive hurry.

One of the happier announcements made during the week was that Team Splat would be supported with works Mazdas in a similar arrangement that Goodsmile Racing has with Team Yellow Toyota. The team which had been cobbled together and managed to engineer their own 5L V8 Ferrari engines with not only no help but active scorn from Ferrari, now has a safer future.
The consensus is that Mazda in looking to tie up two cars, would now supply eight and therefore fulfill the requirements for a preferred manufacturer. They are currently also in a similar arrangement with Mifune Motors.

Sam Inkling in the #47 Ferrari was able to show occasional flashes of brilliance but with such a tiny budget and no help from the factory whatsoever, one lap speed doesn't translate into enough for a whole run.

Shown here on lap 106, Marnie Roxy in the #960 Mercedes-Benz and her boss Kayleigh McAlpine in the #3, are giving Sam Inkling a hard time. Quite apart from the fact that Team Splat would have been a useful addition to the Mercedes-Benz cause, McAlpine was in her own push for the front of this race and indeed the championship.

XA3.jpg

Just before the third set of pit stops on laps 185-190, the then race leader Al Yankovic managed to explode a tyre in Turn 4 and because he had to limp around the entire track to get back to the pit entrance, not only did he manage to lose the lead but he also fell off the lead lap and out of the top 18. His plummet to 22nd meant that he wouldn't be back in the feature race.

The lead of the race then fell to Darth Vader who was embroiled in a battle with Hatsune Miku and Greg Rellings, though the Mazda driver was slowly losing touch with the two in front of him. He was on the end of an unfavourable section of backmarkers and had to be content with fourth.

Five laps from home though, Vader and Miku encountered a clump of lapped traffic which also included Jean Paul Cassell. This allowed a very fast and late charging Ellie McIllan to catch up and pass for the lead.
In driving to the front of the clump of lapped traffic, Ellie McIllan put yet another a lap on her boss Cassell and so for a little while, he acted as a blocker before she once again pulled away into the distance.

She would gain an insurmountable 5 second lead with only three laps to go and so took a relatively safe win in the end. Miku would pass Vader for second place but at that late in the race, he appeared to be more concerned about bringing the car home and qualifying for the feature race than scoring the extra two points for finishing second.

Even though he was two laps down, Cassell was still in sixth place; which is quite remarkable. For the top 5 to have lapped the rest of the field twice, made people consider more closely what their strategy would be for the feature race.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Ellie McIllan
6 - Hatsune Miku
4 - Darth Vader
3 - Greg Rellings
2 - Bruno Gourdo
1 - Jean Paul Cassell
 

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The Main Feature Race:

XM1.jpg

There is a problem in some racing series where older tracks become polished and need to have a layer of what is known as PJ1 Traction Compound laid down, to open up another groove on the racetrack. The surface of the Novograd Potatodrome is so abrasive that the exact opposite is true. The track will more than likely take several years to become bedded in; so that it doesn't shred tyres to pieces with such voracity.
This abrasiveness does mean that there is no unpreferred line and drivers can use all available space from the inside to the outside wall.
There was also a lot of concern before the weekend that as the Galactic Empire and M.A.D. were both sponsoring the track, that they may have had some advantage and maybe more time to see the track beforehand. Those fears were quelled when on the Thursday morning before the race weekend, the track owners admitted that the track hadn't even had a single car go around it before The Goof circus showed up.

Some rubber had been laid down from the two heat races but it was still very abrasive and as the feature race started, there was a frenzy to get out in front as early as possible and make clean laps.
Dr Ivo Robotnik led the early stages of the race; followed by Ellie McIllan and Bandit Heeler, who was starting on tyres which had been placed into a meat freezer before the race, in an effort to preserve tyre life. That did not work.

XM2.jpg

Putting tyres into a meat freezer might work if you were worried about track temperatures (if it there was a really warm ambient temperature), however the amount of time needed to make them hard enough was simply not available. Bandit Heeler would rumble around in the top 5 all race long and eventually take the last step on the podium.

The vast majority of the race was a 1-2 tag team operation by Greg Rellings and Tse Sakamoto in the two works Mazdas, who ran nose to tail and would periodically swap places.
Sakamoto was hand picked by Mazda after showing promise in a Japanese domestic series. His first season was uneventful but 20X1 has been far more fruitful.

The two Mazdas rolled around in fairly tight formation for most of the afternoon; while occasionally being helped by Kerrod Edmundson in the #51 example and Ricardo Sasquini in the #55.

Behind the top group of cars, Jack Raymond, Jean Paul Cassell and Ellie McIllan were engaged in their own battle for 6th place which wasn't properly resolved until late in the race. Cassell would eventually drop off the tail of this pack but Raymond and McIllan continued to fight each other; neither of them gaining any advantage, for they are both on very similar machinery.
An important announcement came after the race when Jean Paul Cassell spoke with Jack Raymond about supplying cars in 20X1. As neither Blue Cat nor Cassel Racing had actually made any arrangements with any of the manufacturers, they thought that if they were to form an in principle technical alliance, then making those negotiations would be easier.

Ahead of them, Darth Vader sat in 5th place and was hoping to make a late race attack and just before the round of pit stops on lap 187, Hatsune Miku moved up to 4th.

XM3.jpg

Although not remotely related to the final standings because he would finish in 14th and thus out of the points, Jar-Jar Binks led lap 188.
Granted this was because the 11 cars in front of him at the time had pitted but this was an accolade which he could attain on his opening race weekend; and something which his predecessor had never done.

This action caused much anger in those following as he managed to make his Federation Insurance Galaxy very wide indeed and caused a traffic jam behind him. Again this was intentional as it gave his boss Darth Vader, the equivalent of a yellow flag pit stop and the #77 was able to claw back valuable time. Vader briefly led the race before he kissed the wall coming out of Turn 2 while trying to pass Jack Raymond for what was then third and he cut the front right tyre and had to make another unexpected pit stop.

Sakamoto in the Mazda moved to the lead but he was soon to find out that his lead was in trouble. Hatsune Miku had timed her run for a late race and picked off Greg Rellings on lap 223. That meant that without help, Sakamoto would have to fend her off himself.
Miku sat behind Rellings for just over a dozen laps; quietly assessing where the Mazda was faster and slower than her Toyota. As the difference was practically nil, this would have to be a challenge which was measured.

The breakthrough came on lap 240 when Sakamoto was trying to go around Dr Claw and Kane McKane who were having their own squabble over 11th and 12th. Claw mistook Sakamoto for Ricardo Sasquini who was in 13th and didn't move over. Miku moved to the outside in Turn 1 and held the top line until she had passed both of them and scooted off down the back straight. Sakamoto did manage to pass Dr Claw going into Turn 3 but he never got close enough to the back of the Toyota to mount any kind of response. He had well and truly lost to a masterful set of tactics, by Miku who must surely be thinking about a championship possiblity.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Hatsune Miku
17 - Tse Sakamoto
15 - Bandit Heeler
12 - Greg Rellings
10 - Jack Raymond
8 - Ellie McIllan
6 - Sticks Baja
5 - Jean Paul Cassell
4 - Koffing
3 - Darth Vader
2 - Dr George Claw
1 - Kane McKane

Top 20 After 10 Rounds:
126 Hatsune Miku
98 Darth Vader
91 Robie Robie
89 Ellie McIllan
88 Dr Ivo Robotnik
76 Al Yankovic
74 Bruno Gourdo
71 Kayleigh McAlpine
68 Tse Sakamoto
61 Gojira
60 Patrick Mann
55 Greg Rellings
49 Kerrod Edmundson
48 Garfield Arbuckle
35 Stanley Spidalski
32 Henri Cornelius
32 Miles Prower
30 Bandit Heeler
28 Go Mifune

From here, all drivers with at least 2 points have automatically qualified for the Endurance Rounds. Those drover who have only secured 2, 1 or no points, must face off in the Redemption Round for the transfer places to make the qualifying for the Endurance Rounds. Redemption Round will be held at Kansas Motor Speedway in one week's time; on Jul 12th.
 
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Round RR - Redemption Round - The Bout To Knock The Others Out

The format of The Goof for the past few years has been that there are 10 rounds which consist of two heat races which then allow drivers to qualify for the feature race, and then every driver who has scored at least 1 point is eligible to race in the Le Mans 3 Hour Race and the Bathurst 500.
Those two races instead of awarding points from 1st to 12th, 20 down to 1, award points for 1st to 16th and 40 down to 1.
Before the eligibility is closed for the two big races of the year, drivers who are on 0 points get one last chance to score two points, in Redemption Round.

Redemption Round for 20X1 was held at Kansas Motor Speedway; over a distance of 100 miles. The rules are simple; make it into the top 4 and you have redeemed yourself. Everyone who was already on 2 and 1 points is also in this race and although their place is assured, they want to keep you out. There would be no cautions and no penalties for playing dirty. This is a gloves off, knives out race.

RR1.jpg

The race started out as a hard charging affair; with Asuka Langley getting out to an early lead but Oscar Roscoe got some help from teammate Minch Yoda before the second of the two Jaguars dropped off the pace. Roscoe was doing a fine job of setting the pace but on Lap 33 and doing into Turn 2: the front pack discovered that five into one, doesn't go.

Oscar Roscoe who had taken the pole and who was obviously trying to get his Jaguar into the enduros, had the increasingly difficult task of trying to hold back the tide of anger behind him.
Michelle Oxford in the #2 Mercedes-Benz got a run on him and so he tried to throw a block on her. That turned both of them up the racetrack and into the path of the #02 Mitsubishi Celeste of Asuka Langley. That then set off a chain reaction which involved Hochi Samyang, Sam Inkling, Johnny Dollar, and Dennis Menace.

No caution came out and so it there was a mad scramble to get back into the race but given that almost a dozen cars passed the calamity almost immediately, it was all for naught.

RR2.jpg

Yoda who had fallen back into the following pack, again found that he was up the front of the field. In a race like this where you need to find temporary allies, he found that Ultraman in the #80 Chevrolet was a willing help in trouble. Unfortunately, temporary alliances are simply that and as soon as Ultraman found that he could run behind Hochi Samyang who was now a lap down, the alliance immediately faded.

Honda who had had an abysmal season and who had practically abandoned their own team by this stage, had several of their cars which were forced to complete in Redemption Round for survival and these included Don Patch's orange #85 and Bobo-Bo Bo-Bobobo's yellow #84 example. Honda it seemed had tried to make a silken purse from a sow's ear, for although Bo-Bobobo would finish fourth and thus escape, neither Don Patch, Byuti Nanako, or Jerry Tennosuke would.

After Yoda had fallen back into the clutches of the chasing peloton, he hooked up with teammate Jaguar Mike Wazowski. Yoda didn't have the outright pace to get back to the front but Wazowski fought hard and climbed all the way to the front; taking the Datsun of Rodan with him before he stretched the legs of the big cat and ran away.

RR3.jpg

The level of domination shown by Mike Wazowski was simply immense. He would be the only one who went the full distance; having lapped everyone except Rodan twice.

Both Jaguar and Datsun had three cars who failed to score points in the regular season; hence why they had to fight back in through Redemption Round. Wazowski's domination here is perhaps a little shocking when you consider that Jaguar will not be coming back next season. An explanation was given after the race when the team said in a statement that it was still in possession of four Racing Entitlement Contracts and that it was using it as an advertising run, to gain manufacturer interest for 20X2.
Datsun on the other hand, who are already named as a preferred manufacturer for 20X2, felt no compulsion at all. In fact, as the factory retained two RECs and acquired two more from unnamed sources, as well as being the supplier of four more cars, they are quite happy in their organisational ambivalence.

Perhaps most shockingly of all was that EVA Racing who were in Mitsubishi equipment, got neither of their Celestes into the enduros.
Asuka Langley had gone from possible title contender in 20X0 to rank also ran in 20X1.

Oglivy Maurice in the #99 Subaru Liberty GRX had to have been the most unlucky runner out there. The flat-12 boxer engined car just never produced the power of the rest of the field and to walk away with 5th place at this event, was heartbreaking.
Maurice, also known under the more famous stage name of 'Sonic The Hedgehog' has now bounced between running a Ford, a Chevrolet, a Datsun, and a Subaru in just three seasons. With Subaru not being one of the preferred manufacturers for 20X2, he now finds himself sitting out of the two enduros and with a very dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over his future.

Bernie Bernie in the #97 GaZ, was just behind the second peloton when the mass calamity broke out and when the smoke cleared, he found himself in third place. His GaZ did not have the speed of the Datsun or Jaguar in front of him but as he was able to make a clean break, he ran consistent laps. Sure, his race was a 29 lap festival of boredom but just as many pennies make a pound, so many miles make a race.

The cruel twist of fate in this year's Redemption Round is that nobody would be redeemed. As Bernie Bernie came in for fourth place, was the last of the runners to secure those two points but already had a point going into the round, then no new names would be added to the list.

Points Awarded Redemption Round:
5 - Mike Wazowski
2 - Rodan
2 - Bernie Bernie
2 - Bobo-Bo Bo-Bobobo

As Redemption Round is only open to runners on 2 points and fewer, there are no changes to the Top 20.
 

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Rollo75

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Round 11 - The Le Mans 3 Hours


E01.jpg

At 2pm a full field of 43 starters set out on a three hour journey; with the winner being whomever was out the front at the end of the allotted time.

Al Yankovic who had qualified in fourth place got an early jump on the field and would be the first to round the corner onto the Mulsanne Straight, followed by Ellie McIllan, Bruno Gourdo, Robie Robie and Hatsune Miku. By the end of Mulsanne Straight, it was the Fords who were fastest, with four different models of the marque occupying the top four places, after Jar-Jar Binks in the second of the Racing For The Empire Ford Galaxys found loads of speed.

Before the enduros, Ford Motor Company released a suite of changes to their Coyote V8 program which almost overnight made the old Windsor 302 engines obsolete. This includes changes to the intake and exhaust manifolds as well as changes to the engine programming. Despite the various Ford teams being cosmetically different on the outside, as of this weekend, they were all running similar engine and drivetrain choices; for the first time in a long time.

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One of the oddest announcements at this race was from The Goof management, who had accepted GaZ's application to supply 8 cars in 20X2. The marque which had barely credible results in the past, had managed to get both cars into the endurance races by the slightest of margins and had turned up at some races in the past with only one pit crew who were forced to do double duty. Their application and commitment to both build and run 8 cars where previously they had struggled at building 2, is perhaps questionable; which means that there must be some underlying deals which we are not privy to.

Walter Kronkyet in the #61 Rubin Television machine, limped into the 43 car field but only just barely. The #97 entry of Bernie Bernie, was one of fourteen cars that arrived but wouldn't get to run on Sunday. Bernie was one of the few drivers who went to Redemption Round at Kansas and who made sure that everyone else was locked out. Sadly, it did not help him here.

This early in the race (2:24pm) Kronkyet came up behind Gojira in the #23 Datsun and they had a two lap fight for 26th place. Datsun's 20X1 season was generally looking quite feeble and this performance was worryingly not out of the ordinary. Apart from Gojira, the other three contracted drivers hadn't achieved very much and head office was wondering if it was all worth it. Gojira wouldn't improve from here, falling even further down the order and Kronkyet would end up as the very last of the scored finishers in 34th.

E03.jpg

Trying to run a longer run at Le Mans is generally not advisable because unlike a regular superspeedway where the absolute maximum distance is 2.66 miles, the Sarthe circuit is a shade over 8 miles long. If you have a problem, it is a very long drive back to the pits.
Running almost an hour and a quarter, Bob Nikoban in the Dark-Time Pizza Ford and Jar-Jar Binks in the second of the Racing For The Empire Ford Galaxys, stayed out way longer than anyone else. The strategy in both cases was to run long and then go on a mad dash at the end of the race.

Nikoban who had prepped his own car, surprised practically everyone by finding that much speed on such a tight budget. He was vigorously pursued by Binks though, who was making a very strong case to be rehired for 20X2.
When they pitted at 3:16pm, they surrendered the lead of the race but not before they had sent real fear into the chasing pack.

E04.jpg

The Heeler brothers arrived in France with their entire team even though only the #53 entry of Bandit Heeler would be racing. Nevertheless, as there wasn't any specific rule which prevented Stripe Heeler's #54 car from being in the Thursday and Friday practice sessions, they ran that car as well.

The fact that the Heeler brothers were running two cars in the practice sessions and then using that information to prep only one car annoyed several other teams despite the fact that that is precisely what happens when a team has multiple cars in the same race anyway. When Garfield Arbuckle tried to arrange a formal complaint, he was physically stopped by the pit crews of several Team Yellow Toyota cars. Team Yellow was collecting preparation information from five cars; which included the two Goodsmile Racing Toyotas of Hatsune Miku and Amy Rose and they wanted to protect their advantage.

Bandit briefly climbed to fifth place before he was passed by Ellie McIllan and then fell further back after a short scrap with Dr Ivo Robotnik. Sixth place for the day and 17 points is a solid result for a team which is only in its third season.

E05.jpg

Just after 3pm and while Binks and Nikoban led the race, a little way behind them were Kane McKane in the works Holden and Kayleigh McAlpine in the Irn-Bru Mercedes-Benz. Good results for either of these two would propel their championship hopes skyward and having seen the two in front of them stay out, they thought it was worth a gamble.

Unfortunately for McKane, the one thing that he couldn't make up during the race, was a deficit of talent. McAlpine was clearly a better driver than he, and even after they pitted for fresh tyres and fuel, she was immediately faster going up the hill, through Dunlop and back out onto Mulsanne.
McAlpine was out there to chase a race win but McKane knew that all he could hope for was a result.

McKane would find finish two laps down and score a solitary point for coming in sixteenth but that was still a vast improvement from 12 months prior where his race had ended on the side of the road.

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By the end of the second hour, just three seconds separated the top three. Ellie McIllan led ahead of Robie Robie and Al Yankovic.

As the defending champion and having shown last season that she has a steady temperament, Ellie McIllan once again proved why she is quickly becoming known as an endurance driving specialist. Her team principal Jean Paul Cassell had been campaigning GM products for more than a decade and had even won a few races but never had a proper title tilt. McIllan had won the championship in her first season and in doing so, may have been carrying the car that she was driving.

At the round of pit stops, Team UZKA won the race off of pit road and sent Yankovic out ahead of Robie. Robie didn't seem all that concerned and didn't really attempt to make up the deficit immediately.

E07.jpg

The works Mazdas probably had the most installed horsepower of any team in the event. What they didn't have was the ability to make the whole run from the corner at the end of Mulsanne to the pit complex, work for them. The Circuit de la Sarthe demands a speed/handling compromise and if a car is set up to be straight and true while geared for terminal speed, it tends not to be all that brilliant through the twisty stuff.

Team Principal Nigel Levins, even being one of only two five time champions, had never won either of the two enduros at these circuits and so the experience to win here simply didn't exist.
Sakamoto's #58 Mazda was set up differently to the other works cars, in that he wanted a bullet down Mulsanne and would hope that would work well enough.

If he was in sight of someone at the top end of the long straight, then because he was topping out at just over 200mph he would overtake them by the end; and then lose it all back again on the run back home to the pits.
He passed Kayleigh McAlpine three times in the last hour, only to have her undo his efforts every time. Sakamoto would finish 10th and McAlpine would eventually catch and pass Miku for 8th.

E08.jpg

At 3:59pm the then leader of the race Dr Ivo Robotnik pitted. He had aimed to get an undercut as the three in front of him (McIllan, Yankovic and Robie) had pitted on the previous lap. Unfortunately for him, the central lug nut on the rear right wheel got stuck and refused to come off. In an effort not to strip the threads on the axle post, the crew put down a layer of epoxy resin and hoped that the wheel would hold; especially under braking at the end of Mulsanne.
After more than a minute and a half stationary, the #13 UNIQLO Chevrolet was back in the race.

He slotted back into 11th place behind the #52 Shell Mazda of Greg Rellings and had the box seat to see one of the more heartbreaking moments of the race.

"No. No... It's just farted and shat itself"
"Can you bring it home?"
"No. We've got more red lights than a Spanish disco. She's cooked."
"10-4"


The Mazda 989 probably warped the head gasket and then the engine tore itself to pieces. Rellings sort of went AWOL for a while before it was revealed after the race that he felt responsible for not nursing the car and went to the Chateau Elan d'Rouge for 'un demi', partway down the Mulsanne Straight.

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As the last half hour of the race rolled around, it looked like Ellie McIllan would return to the winner's circle and take another endurance race win. Yankovic having failed here in 20X9 was quite content with coming home second. Neither of them predicted the run by the third placed driver, Robie Robie.

The little yellow robot had made his fuel and tyre stop at the same time as everyone else and nobody much expected a late race surge. At 4:45 pm and approximately three laps to go, he was 18 seconds behind McIllan and would have to make up roughly six seconds per lap and had fifteen minutes to do it in.

He picked off Yankovic and his Mustang simply had the legs to quietly pull away from his fellow Ford runner. He reached McIllan on the next lap coming into the farmland section just before the pit complex and effected the pass going through the series of s-curves before the turn into Mulsanne. At that point, all he had to do was keep the car unbent; which he did and his last lap with clean air was not particularly all that fast.

For Robie, his decision to leave Team Yellow Toyota which has served him for just under a decade, must have been difficult but it has proven in this instance to have been vindicated. This was an altogether joyless victory, for no sooner had the presentation of the race trophies been made, it was then time to swiftly pack up everything and get out of town. By 6pm, there was no evidence that the #20 Shredded Wheat Mustang team had been there at all.

Robie's victory had propelled him to second in the season's standings and if there ever was a reason why he had left Team Yellow Toyota, then this was it. Ellie McIllan in coming second, picked up 35 points which also made her defence of the Championship an achievable possibility.

Points Awarded Main Race:
40 - Robie Robie
35 - Ellie McIllan
30 - Al Yankovic
25 - Garfield Arbuckle
20 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
17 - Bandit Heeler
15 - Go Mifune
12 - Kayleigh McAlpine
10 - Hatsune Miku
8 - Tse Sakamoto
6 - Ricardo Sasquini
5 - Dr George Claw
4 - Bruno Gourdo
3 - Stanley Spidalski
2 - Jack Raymond
1 - Kane McKane

Top 20 After 11 Rounds:

136 Hatsune Miku
131 Robie Robie
124 Ellie McIllan
108 Dr Ivo Robotnik
106 Al Yankovic
98 Darth Vader
83 Kayleigh McAlpine
78 Bruno Gourdo
76 Tse Sakamoto
73 Garfield Arbuckle
61 Gojira
60 Patrick Mann
55 Greg Rellings
49 Kerrod Edmundson
47 Bandit Heeler
43 Go Mifune
38 Stanley Spidalski
33 Ricardo Sasquini
32 Henri Cornelius
32 Miles Prower

The next round will be the Bathurst 500 which will be held on Aug 15.
 
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Rollo75

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Round 12 - The Repco Bathurst 500

The 6.2km ribbon of tarmac at Mount Panorama, Bathurst, is one of those places that demands respect. In the past it has thrown sand, dust, walls, trees, rocks, and even wildlife at drivers who wish to do battle here. In the 1850s it was gold that drew people to this country but these days, it is a very different kind of rush that draws those who wish to try their luck.

As the Le Mans 3 Hour Race is a timed event, this is sometimes the longest race on The Goof calendar. As one of only two 40 points paying races, it is one of the most important.

Z01.jpg

In Saturday qualifying, it became very obvious very quickly that the Fords would be the fastest on the mountain. The top three of Darth Vader, Al Yankovic and Bruno Gourdo were the only ones to crack the elusive 2m20s barrier; with Vader blowing everyone away with a 2:19.396

They were of course the top three as the field streamed onto Mountain Straight for the first time but Gourdo had the legs to stride past Yankovic going into Griffin's Bend. Yankovic was content to let him by as 500 miles is more of an endurance test than a sprint race.

Whether it was opening lap impetuousness or cold tyres, Vader kissed the outside wall going through Sulman Park and decided to go to the pits so that the crew could do a visual inspection of the damage.
This gave Gourdo the lead, with Yankovic sitting in behind him.

Z02.jpg

On lap 15, Jar-Jar Binks got it all wrong coming through the Chase and barrelled up the inside of a stack of cars, before taking out the Mercedes-Benz of Koffing.

Binks tore out the connecting pins between steering arm and the front right wheel and so his race was done for the day but Koffing who reported a massive vibration in the back of the car, soldiered on for three laps before he had to concede that he was a moving traffic hazard.

It is not uncommon to see drivers on the ragged edge, slide the car through MacPhillimy but Koffing had a moment coming out of there and on the short straight to Skyline.
Koffing pulled over to the left hand side of the track to get out of everyone's way but he was then almost punted off the track by the leader Bruno Gourdo, who unsighted, struck the rear of the Mercedes going into The Dipper.

Gourdo cut a tyre in the process and pulled into the pits; which bumped him well down the order and practically ended his chances of winning. He would finish 11th and two laps down.
The new leaders of the race were Tse Sakamoto in close company with Greg Rellings, who were rolling around in a red Mazda formation.

Z03.jpg

The endurance rounds are a little bit like a season in miniature. For the front runners they can either make or break a championship run but for the great number of drivers for whom the championship is already out of reach, the endurance races provide a chance to show off their talents and perhaps secure a better ride for the next season.

Team Principal of Telecom Racing, Tom Nook, wanted to hire Bob Nikoban who had been running two Fords as a privateer. Nikoban rejected the offer and this would have other ramifications.

Jack Raymond was prepared to stay in the number π entry but the driver of 5A Chloe Ankha, didn't like the way that way that her drive was being negotiated out from under her and so she bit first and announced that she would leave the team at the end of the season.

After just a one year experiment, Mercedes-Benz decided to close their doors on their Goof program. For Natalie McIllan, this is the second team in as many years to shut its doors and leave her having to look for a new ride. For Andy Harrington it is also devastating, as his career looks to have stalled just as it started.

Z04.jpg

It was a piece of eagle eyed observation that solved the answer of where the '59 Ford Mustang of Robie Robie had come from. Not long after Round 10, photos of the interior of the #20 machine, published in Autosport, showed that the car had been previously black. That meant that this was an ex-McIllan Racing car.
When pressed, Bob McIllan who was the former team principal of the Texaco Ford team confirmed that when the team was being liquidated, the two cars at the end of the season were sold to the Heeler brothers. This meant that the #72 car of Natalie McIllan which had been involved in the accident with Amy Rose at Calder Park, was in fact the car that Robie was now campaigning. Natalie McIllan spent the latter part of that season in a back up chassis; which was turned out for regular service.
The engine however, was not a McIllan Engineering product and came from somewhere else. As all Ford runners were now using Coyote V8 engines, tracking down that piece of the puzzle would be harder to do.

Z05.jpg

A slightly extended grid at both Le Mans and Bathurst means that the promotors will sometimes bring in wildcards as private picks. For this season, whomever had prepared the #20 Shredded Wheat '59 Mustang for Robie Robie, also prepared the #51x Castrol Mustang for Billy Highbank.
He wouldn't score any points but he would bring the car home; which at Bathurst in a 500 mile race is itself an achievement.

By lap 60, the second round of pit stops filtered through the order. Most of the top ten was still on the lead lap; which meant that Kermit Cleveland was credited with leading lap 67. He would immediately fall back to 13th and get passed by a ton of cars while he made his stop.
He fell in behind the two Mazdas of Rellings and Sakamoto who were in turn fending off repeated challenges from Gojira's Datsun.

Z06.jpg

The tail end of the 20X1 season has been tale of complete apathy from the bosses at Chevrolet. Not even the factory team run by Garfield Arbuckle could claim to have had the support that a firm like General Motors should be able to provide.
This was further demonstrated when at this round, the only Chevrolet to score any points was Samuel Tocquanne; who in 13th place, wouldn't have scored any points had it been a regular round.

For Team MAD with both Doctors Claw and Robotnik in the same shop, the frustration at having to go cap in hand as a customer to Chevrolet had reached a head. Dr George Claw wanted out. Dr Ivo Robotnik wanted out. Being the sensible business leaders they are, they surmised that being in control of their own destiny would be a better idea and before this round, Team MAD put out a press release stating that they would not be running Chevrolet equipment in 20X2.

Team Yellow Toyota started the series with a previous series champion and arguably the best technical team in the business, with both Patrick Mann and Miles Prower; and here, they brought home two cars in the points. Prower finished 8th and Sticks Baja finished 14th but Patrick Mann just looked kind of aimless. His former team mate Robie Robie had left under strained circumstances and now the hole in the team was gaping.

Z07.jpg

Battles raged on throughout the day and deep down the order. One of the most intriguing battles that had the least significance was the dogfight for the last points paying position of 16th. Way down here, drivers were three laps down but as this was the last prize, however trivial it might be, they still fought as if they were playing for sheep stations.

Antony D'Tigrette in the #19 Tide Chevrolet with his wild tail-wagging style would blitz Go Mifune's Mazda and Hatsune Miku's Toyota going across the top of the mountain but he couldn't make up for the advantage that they both had by sitting in the draft coming down Conrod Straight, or the power advantage that the Mazda had going back up the mountain.

For a period of about ten laps late in the race, these three would concertina back and forth until finally on lap 129 of 131, Miku had enough and threw an unlikely pass going up the inside going through Murray's Corner. She banged the front left quarter of the Mazda before setting herself up for the power drive heading up Mountain Straight.
Miku would claim 16th place and that last point; so the weekend was worth just a little bit more than nothing.

Z08.jpg

Rellings and Sakamoto had spent most of the day in close company; with both of them alternatively leading for short periods. The two of them pitted slightly ahead of sequence on lap 66; which put them back into clear space. The gap which opened up as a result of the two Mazdas simultaneously pitting, gave Gojira clean air to work with and he put together seven laps of perfection as his fuel load lightened. Gojira had made up so much time that he was able to pit from third place and retain it, on lap 74.
The real question for the Datsun driver was whether or not he could hold back the red tide behind him.

Rellings passed Gojira on lap 78, going into Hell Corner. Sakamoto passed Gojira on lap 80. On lap 83, Sakamoto passed Rellings going up Mountain Straight; with Gojira being close enough to get a tow and also slide through going into Griffin's Bend. On lap 87 Rellings repassed Sakamoto and that's the way that they remained until after the pitstop on lap 100 when all three pitted simultaneously.
Sakamoto's team won the race to change four tyres and refuel the car, followed by Gojira and Rellings, and from that point, there was no changes in third to fifth place until the end of the race. Not even getting caught behind Bruno Gourdo on lap 102 was enough to shake up the order.

Gourdo who was still running and hanging on for points, kept his nose clean all day and this gaggle of cars easily breezed past him as he moved to the left side of the road on Conrod Straight.
Sakamoto was able to pull out a lead over Gojira and Rellings and while Rellings had a faster car in theory to Gojira, Gojira was able to draw away from him going over the top of the mountain; which proves that although power is important, it isn't quite everything.

Z09.jpg

When the leaders pitted for the final time on lap 101, the running order was Yankovic, McIllan, Gojira, Rellings, and Sakamoto. Yankovic had a comfortable lead of 44 seconds over McIllan but the Ford was beginning to smoke and he knew that he had to nurse the car home.

The margins after the end of laps 109-117 were: 48, 47, 42, 36, 29, 20, 9, and 2 seconds; with the biggest jumps occuring when Yankovic was caught behind traffic going up the mountain and had to hang behind until he could get clean air coming back down Conrod Straight.
Ellie McIllan on the other hand, was able fling her Holden into corners across the top with almost reckless abandon.

On lap 118 McIllan arrived at the rear bumper of Yankovic and stayed there for several laps, in a sort of fuel saving run. Eventually though, the waiting was too tedious and she easily got a better slingshot out of Forrest's Elbow and down Conrod.

She spent the last 8 laps of the race, a good distance ahead of Yankovic but didn't pull the lead out beyond thirty seconds and finally crossed the line for the race win with a lap time of just over 3 minutes. Whether or not she had a problem is unknown but for the second season running, she took the race win at Bathurst.
Yankovic was sufficiently far ahead enough of Sakamoto that he also didn't have to push hard in the final laps; with Sakamoto, Gojira, and Rellings, rounding out the cars on the lead lap.

The win propelled Ellie McIllan to the top of the season's standings; with the defence of her crown now looking like a real possibility.

Points Awarded Round 12:
40 - Ellie McIllan
35 - Al Yankovic
30 - Tse Sakamoto
25 - Gojira
20 - Greg Rellings
17 - Robie Robie
15 - Henri Cornelius
12 - Miles Prower
10 - Kermit Cleveland
8 - Stanley Spidalski
6 - Bruno Gourdo
5 - Bandit Heeler
4 - Samuel Tocquanne
3 - Sticks Baja
2 - Marnie Roxy
1 - Hatsune Miku

Top 20 After 12 Rounds

164 Ellie McIllan
148 Robie Robie
141 Al Yankovic
137 Hatsune Miku
108 Dr Ivo Robotnik
106 Tse Sakamoto
98 Darth Vader
86 Gojira
84 Bruno Gourdo
83 Kayleigh McAlpine
75 Greg Rellings
73 Garfield Arbuckle
60 Patrick Mann
52 Bandit Heeler
49 Kerrod Edmundson
47 Henri Cornelius
46 Stanley Spidalski
44 Miles Prower
43 Go Mifune
33 Ricardo Sasquini

We return to the ???? Raceway in the Interdimensional Rift in three weeks' time on Sep 6.
 

Rollo75

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Round 13 - The ???? Trophy

The B-Heat Race:

You would not believe the logistical nightmare in shipping 72 cars and their crew into an interdimensional space between two worlds. Parallel Earths were created circa 1987 during an experiment by the East German Government which went awry. The ???? Raceway which lives between the two worlds, is very heavily subject to passport control.

13B1.jpg

After Oglivy Maurice got a brilliant start from the outside of the second row and breezed past Rick Sanchez and Minch Yoda going into Turn 1 on the opening lap, it was more or less a scramble to see who could be best of the rest and challenge for fourth.

???? Raceway which is built inside the Interdimensional Rift between two parallel universes (otherwise known as Prime and Alpha) has an almost constant ambient temperature of -40°. Celsius or Fahrenheit? Yes. This means that traction is purely subject to the frictional forces between tyre and road and that neither the tyres or the road heat up at all. Tyre degradation over the course of a race is practically non existent here.

Nevertheless, things went awry for Samuel Tocquanne on lap 22 when he tried to dive under Donkey Kong.
Taking a shallower line into the corner means a pointier line through the double apex than someone who takes a broader and squarer line. Kong was making adequate lap times but Tocquanne's impatience led him to throw a wildly optimistic move which was instantly rewarded with failure.

Both cars speared off into the outside wall and were passed by lots of the chasing peloton. Kong would have to retire his car due to a bent steering arm but Tocquanne would have enough speed to recover and finish third.

13B2.jpg

When Oscar Roscoe spun on lap 98, a caution was brought out, even though there was no damage to any car and no debris left on the racetrack. Since the halfway point was lap 100 and most teams had already intended to pit, pit lane was turned into a traffic jam.
The drivers that chose to stay out, did so because track position is king.

The first three cars to jump out of the blocks were Tennosuke in the Honda, Mario in the Mercedes Benz and Harleen Quinzel in the Chevrolet.
In the breakup of the Honda team at the end of the season, the four drivers would retain their Racing Entitlement Contracts as part of the agreed settlement. Tennosuke is reported as wanting to leave the team but where or if he will end up somewhere else is unknown.
As Jack Napier intends to shut down the Axis Chemicals Chevrolet and Harleen Quinzel has made no announcement to register any intention to drive next season, it seems as though those two Chevrolets will end up back in the collective pool.

As for Mario Mario, he made a statement before this race that with the dissolution of the works Mercedes Benz team, that he would be looking to take on the residual REC's; subject to deals that he could make with McAlpine Motorsports who would become the top Mercedes team and in theory the preferred chassis builder.

After the shake up on lap 99, the car which had been running in 17th place assumed the lead and that was none other than the works Chevrolet of Samuel Tocquanne. His car despite sporting damage, was still turning in decent lap times because the 3/4ths of a mile over, is not even remotely aero dependent.

Not long after the restart though, the 8008 Motorsports cars of Shin Hayata and Hochi Samyang, got tangled up and both ended up facing the wrong way. They fell out of the top ten but would still recover to 17th and 18th places; thus making the cutoff for the main feature race.
This put Andy Harrington in the works Mercedes Benz #722 into third place and he challenged Judge John Judd for second. They would both finish in the points in the final washup of the race.

13B3.jpg

As if to show that there could have been potential in the Subaru, Oglivy Maurice in the #99 car, led a majority of laps and brought the car home across the line first.

Maurice who is something of a journeyman driver, having raced in a Ford, Mercury, Chevrolet, Datsun and now Subaru, within the space of three years, will leave the team and retain his Racing Entitlement Contract; which should make him at least semi valuable to whomever might want his services in 20X2. Likewise, Konata Izumi in the #39 Subaru, also retains her REC.
This was the first race win for the Flat-12 boxer in The Goof and it demonstrated just how far the project came in a year. It also hints at what could have been and the potential being wasted.

Not too far behind was Rick Sanchez in his green Ford and Samuel Tocquanne who had kissed the wall earlier in the race, drove furiously but because he'd mostly been alone on the track for most of the day, it didn't look as impressive as it was.
Also, apart from the two Chevrolets of Samuel Tocquanne and Felix Katt, eleven manufacturers were represented in the top twelve; several of which will not be returning.

Judge John Judd in the #42 Ferrari had a surprisingly good run and came from the latter half of the latter half of the grid, to not only escape the heat race but to claim sixth place and 1 point.
Osko Racing which sort of had to make its own way with no help at all from Ferrari, will find things easier next year when it will enter into a technical alliance with Mifune Motors, to run a pair of Mazdas.
Nigel Levins of the works team was looking for a two car team to bring up the number of Mazda from 8 to 6 and thus complete their obligations as a preferred manufacturer.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Oglivy Maurice
6 - Rick Sanchez
4 - Samuel Tocquanne
3 - Minch Yoda
2 - Andy Harrington
1 - Judge John Judd
 

Rollo75

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The A-Heat Race:

13A1.jpg

The A-Heat Race, just like the B-Heat race, saw two drivers jump out of the blocks quicker than everyone else and remain there. In this case it was Dr George Claw and Patrick Mann. They shot to the front and by the end of the first lap, they'd already taken out a mortgage on the result because for the next 200 laps, nobody else would even lead a lap.

That left third place as the highest place left to play for and that mantle was taken up by Hatsune Miku, Stanley Spidalski, and Mazda duo of Greg Rellings and Tse Sakamoto.
In theory Sakamoto was the lead driver for the Mazda factory effort but Team Principal Nigel Levins was not going to enforce any team orders on his two charges.

Also in theory, as a customer of Team Yellow Toyota, Hatsune Miku's Goodsmile Racing team should have had slightly worse equipment than the full factory effort but there was absolutely zero indication that that was the case.
Miku found that by adjusting the break balance slightly forward, she could get the car to be a bit tail waggy and drive it like a speedway midget; which seemed entirely appropriate given that ???? Raceway is only three-quarters of a mile long.

Spidalski on the other hand, wanted to round out the two ends of the racetrack; so he would tend to drive very wide and then turn down the racetrack before exiting very wide again.

The contrast in the various styles of the four drivers couldn't have been more stark as the race ebbed on. All four pitted on lap 66; which was as a result of luck and circumstance, and that changed the race into a two stopper for almost the entire field. Any advantage that would have been gained in strategy was instantly wiped out.

The end of this argument would eventually be settled by the two Mazdas operating as a pair and tandem pushing down the straights; which meant that they could run open throttle for longer and thus pick up as much as four tenths of a second per lap.

13A2.jpg

One of the race's hottest controversies came on lap 65 when Bob Nikoban, Jack Raymond and Dr Ivo Robotnik were involved in a three car tangle on the front straight.

Raymond fluffed a geat change coming out of Turn 4 and Nikoban went to go around outside of him. Before he made the move though, he came down the racetrack and Robotnik who also intended to go under Raymond, clipped his rear left quarter panel. This speared the yellow Ford to the outside of the racetrack and back into the path of the Holden; which then ricocheted back into the path of Robotnik's Chevrolet.

All three drivers would immediately recover and dive into the pits for fresh tyres but their climbs upwards through the field were all simultaneously halted. Raymond would recover slightly to follow finish 7th and thus outside of the points, Robotnik would finish in 16th and Nikoban who tried valiantly to escape the heat race, failed to and would end up in 20th.

Out front though, Dr Claw was putting in ever increasingly quick lap times and just before both he and Patrick Mann came into the pits for more fuel on lap 100, his lead had been built up to an impressive 18 seconds.

13A3.jpg

The third portion of the race between laps 100 and 150 was mostly a story of drivers holding station. Natalie McIllan spun her works Mercedes on lap 133 and what could have been a points paying finish for her evaporated as she changed all four tyres and would come home in 13th.
In one of the more hopeful drives of the race, Walter Kronkyet in the #61 GaZ who had started dead last after failing tech inspection for ride height settings; which says that GaZ knew what needed to be done to improve their performance. As a preferred manufacturer for 20X2, GaZ is looking to attract one of more successful teams into its fold.

The A-Heat Race's biggest moment came just three laps from home when Patrick Mann who had been on a late race charge came to the rear end of Dr Claw. Claw who had been hoping to draw out a sufficiently large enough lead that he wouldn't be caught, found himself being pulled back as tyres eventually did become a factor towards the end of 200 laps.
On lap 195 Mann had Claw within his sights and on lap 196, he shadowed the Chevrolet hoping to find any opening at all; which he didn't. Sensing that there was no real way to go underneath him, Mann bumped into Claw going through turn 3; which meant that his exit from turn 4 was then higher up the racetrack. Mann then ran down the front straight and stole the bottom of the racetrack going through turn 1 and by the end of turn 2, the pass was effected.

Claw was of course mad at the driver of the yellow Toyota but he only had two laps left to retailiate and by leaving it that late in the race, Mann had effectively eaten up the remaining time in which that could happen. Dr Claw knew it and rather than press on, he settled for second and the six points which came with it.

Post-race and speaking to trackside radio, Dr Claw said:
"He's entitled to do what he did and I wouldn't expect him to do anything less. We're here to win races; not be make friends."

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Patrick Mann
6 - Dr George Claw
4 - Tse Sakamoto
3 - Greg Rellings
2 - Stanley Spidalski
1 - Hatsune Miku
 

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The Main Feature Race:

Pole sitter Kayleigh McAlpine completely fluffed the start and was almost instantly passed by half a dozen cars; including third place starter Darth Vader who went very low on the racetrack and swung past in his Ford Galaxy.
McAlpine was then bumped in the rear end by Andy Harrington in the #722 Mercedes-Benz and this opened the track right up for the Honda of Byuti Nanako and the Ford of Olivia Micina; thus sending cars three wide into the first turn.

13M1.jpg

Byuti Nanako, being one of four drivers for the Honda team, would be one of several drivers as yet without a seat for 20X2. Honda's experiment was more or less dead at this point in the season and it showed with the firm's complete apathy. Honda supplied what that thought would be enough spare parts for the rest of the season but there would be no new developments and the lack of finesse was beginning to show. Nanako sank like a stone after the first couple of corners and although she may have put the sponsors front and centre on the television, it counted for naught as she fell down to 34th.

This state of affairs was very quickly resolved as Dr George Claw assumed second spot quite quickly and he would be followed by the familiar but not too familiar sight of Robie Robie in a Ford.
The opening period of the race then settled down into a long run with Vader, Claw and Robie out front and it would be a matter of who could out think them over the course of 250 laps and 187 miles.

Among those who did work out how to chase down the top three, was the works Holden driver of Henri Cornelius, who spent most of the opening period before lap 66 when he pitted, by trying to roll the top of the race track and use the momentum coming out of turns 2 and 4 to stretch out the fuel mileage. By running with less throttle, he was able to eke out 3 whole laps on practically everyone else.

Trying the undercut on the other hand, were the two Mazdas of Rellings and Sakamoto who pitted before everyone else on lap 61 but found themselves behind a peloton which increased their ability to draw out the second run from laps 61 to 126.

13M2.jpg

Even though tyre wear was practically non existent in the -40° chill, when Al Yankovic came in on lap 126 of 250 he still had two outside tyres put on the car anyway. The experiment gave him slightly better bite upon the not quite tundric surface and for nine laps, his Ford ate into the lead of Henri Cornelius.

Yankovic made reasonably short work of Tse Sakamoto's Mazda while the fuel load was quite low and so his rise to second place was predictable. Sakamoto and Rellings in the two Mazdas had come up with a long strategy to run as a pair but Rellings' #52 edition lost charge in the battery and then eventually when he came into the pits, the car had to be push started. He would come home in 14th and out of the points.

During this whole race though, the two Team Yellow Toyotas of Patrick Mann and Miles Prower also adopted a similar strategy to the two Mazdas; except that Mann had superior skill and then gave the order for Prower to drop off and act as a screen while Yankovic lurked dangerously close behind.
Yankovic would continue to rise up through the order until the only two drivers in front of him were Mann and Cornelius.

13M3.jpg

Seemingly as if having something to prove this late in the season, Patrick Mann again executed a bump and rub on Henri Cornelius and thus deny the Frenchman what would have been his maiden victory.

Cornelius wasn't particularly annoyed by the move, stating that he would have never been able to keep the double champion behind him on fading tyres (which only really became a factor after about 170 miles) and that there would be hope in 20X2 as the factory Holden team would remain unchanged. As 20X2 would be only his third season, then the future was still very bright and still unwritten.

As for Patrick Mann, he was still the boss of his own team and he still had factory support for next year as well. He had lost a driver when Robie jumped ship but he had lost none of the nous that made him a double champion.

In the post race press conference Mann announced that he had a replacement driver for Robie in 20X2 but that he wasn't willing to say who it was, and also that he had been in talks with Bob Nikoban, to bring that team into the Team Yellow Toyota fold. If the manufacturers were to supply 8 cars in 20X2, then this announcement effectively locked up Toyota, with Team Yellow operating cars for Mann and Robie's replacement, Prower and Baja, Nikoban and Micina, and the two Goodsmile Racing entries for Miku and Rose.

Yankovic and Sakamoto would finish in third and fourth and would be the only other two cars on the lead lap.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Patrick Mann
17 - Henri Cornelius
15 - Al Yankovic
12 - Tse Sakamoto
10 - Miles Prower
8 - Robie Robie
6 - Dr George Claw
5 - Darth Vader
4 - Andy Harrington
3 - Kayleigh McAlpine
2 - Walter Kronkyet
1 - Dr Ivo Robotnik

Top 20 After 13 Rounds:
164 Ellie McIllan
156 Al Yankovic
156 Robie Robie
138 Hatsune Miku
122 Tse Sakamoto
109 Dr Ivo Robotnik
103 Darth Vader
86 Kayleigh McAlpine
86 Gojira
84 Bruno Gourdo
80 Patrick Mann
78 Greg Rellings
73 Garfield Arbuckle
64 Henri Cornelius
54 Miles Prower
52 Bandit Heeler
49 Kerrod Edmundson
48 Stanley Spidalski
43 Go Mifune
40 Dr George Claw
33 Ricardo Sasquini

The pin ultimate round of the season (Round 14) will be held in three weeks' time at Les Circuit des Trois-Rivières on Sep 27.
 

Rollo75

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Round 14 - The Exploding Pizza Plate
The B-Heat Race:

Round 14 of this year's Goof Championship was supposed to be held at Calder Park Thunderdome but owing to the ongoing Plague-19, this could not happen. Instead, The Goof made arrangements with the Circuit d'Trois Rivieres in Canada.

This circuit was expected to be a level playing field as nobody had been here before. Some teams tried to apply what they had learned at the Birmingham Superprix circuit but Trois Riveres demanded harder braking and that translated into setting the brake bias towards the rear of the cars to prevent tail wagging under braking.

14B1.jpg

With Subaru not appearing in 20X2, this left both Oglivy Maurice and Konata Izumi up in the air about where they would end up.
Izumi having been in talks with Team Yellow Toyota, and GaZ (who are trying to court anybody and everybody), finally settled at Datsun and accepted a works drive.

Datsun running four cars this season has been a disappointment and so the switch to eight cars in 20X2, gives them an abundance of places but not necessarily drivers to fill them.
Neither Wendy Thomas or Dennis Menace will be returning in 20X2 but Rodan and Gojira will. If Izumi arrives in the team, then that leaves one place in the works team as well as four entire empty spaces which are just ripe for someone wanting to mount a large scale venture, to capitalise upon.

At any rate, this was an abysmal run and yet again, neither Subaru escaped the heat races and qualified for the main feature race.

14B2.jpg

Two drivers chose to run long and hope to build up a lead before they had to pit for tyres and fuel. Bandit Heeler and Jar Jar Binks both in Fords, still had an adequate amount of speed on old tyres and minimal fuel loads.
Both of them had used this strategy before in previous heat races before and so this was not an unknown tactic.

When it comes to the subject of where these drivers will end up next season, these two are on very different trajectories.
Heeler is already assured a return drive in 20X2 by virtue of being joint owners of the team with his brother but Binks who had only been brought in as a replacement late in the season is not so assured. If Racing For The Empire was to continue running Ford Equipment in 20X2, then Binks would likely retain his seat but seeing as six of the eight Ford places were already accounted for, then that did not fill him with confidence.
Bandit Heeler's brother, Stripe, who is very much the brains of the operation, finished a nice 12th.

The tactics of Heeler and Binks may have worked, except that Jean Paul Cassell in the Pizza Hat Holden had a very fine drive to quietly put his car on the podium, and Jar Jar Binks fell off towards the end of the race and back into the sights of Mazda driver Ricardo Sasquini. Binks was able to hold him off though; by making his Ford Galaxy very wide indeed.

14B3.jpg

Heeler and Binks wound out a lead which was immediately curtailed when they came into the pits. Binks was passed by Cassell but Heeler remained out front. This race world have one last twist though.

Bruno Gourdo after spending the first half of the race following Ellie McIllan's Texaco Holden, then found himself in clean air and free space in traffic. Almost without trying he posted the fastest lap and being 55 laps from home and only 35 seconds behind Bandit Heeler, he quickly did the maths to work out that a second per lap would secure the victory.

He passed Marnie Roxy without much of a fight. He got past Eggatha Robotnik after she tried to punt him into the wall. His pass on Sasquini happened as a drag race in terms of power on the front straight; as was his pass on Binks.
He was helped by slow traffic who baulked Cassell; which left him only with Bandit Heeler to pass.

Both the Heeler Brothers and Golden Fleece Racing receive backing from Ford and so the two cars should in theory be quite close together in performance. In practice though, Gourdo was able to use slower traffic as a pick and when Heeler got stuck behind the Mitsubishi Celeste of Mari Makinami, Gourdo ran to the outside and swung by both of them. Heeler who could only fight back in similar equipment, never stood a chance.

"Everyone in a Ford is Coyote powered now. It's a good platform to try and build next year's season on. This year got away from us really quickly."
- Bruno Gourdo, to CBC Radio

With the demise of the works Mercedes-Benz team for 20X2, DK Racing was not prepared to commit to running M-B gear and was also not prepared to trust McAlpine Racing who were nominated as a the lead fabricators for the marque.
DK Racing which runs the #95 Mercedes (pictured), will be looking for a new manufacturer. As it stands, 6 are open as well as an as yet unnamed 7th.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Bruno Gourdo
6 - Bandit Heeler
4 - Jean Paul Cassell
3 - Jar Jar Binks
2 - Ricardo Sasquini
1 - Eggatha Robotnik
 

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The A-Heat Race:

The opening volley in the A-Heat Race came from Robie Robie in the '59 Mustang, who got an excellent start and passed the Ford Galaxy of Darth Vader and the Ford Custom of Al Yankovic. Robie who is still in contention for the championship, wanted to stamp some kind of authority on this race and carry the momentum into the Main Race.

14A1.jpg

Yankovic was having none of it. He wouldn't let the little yellow robot out of his sights because after his results at Le Mans and Bathurst, suddenly he was also brought back into the championship picture.

This little battle lasted for about five laps before Yankovic ran to the outside coming through the gates at Porte Duplessis and cut a tyre. He lost not quite 50 seconds limping back home to the pits and at the end of the race, he finished a dismal 22nd and out of the qualifying places for the main race.

Robie was free to try and chase down Kayleigh McAlpine's Mercedes-Benz but she remained too quick he never even so much as came close, much less was able to look for an opening.

Yankovic's teammate Stanley Spidalski in the pink Team UZKA Ford, had his own struggle with Hatsune Miku and Henri Cornelius as three of them fought over the minor points paying positions. Spidalski would eventually win that fight and Cornelius played gunner for his fellow Holden works driver Kane McKane who had escaped his own squabble with Samuel Tocquanne and Walter Kronkyet.

14A2.jpg

Two drivers whose futures were uncertain were Darth Vader and Felix Katt.

Vader's Racing For The Empire team is in negotiations with each of the three other Ford teams. The general consensus is that moving towards four car teams provides the best amount of benefit for the relative outlay. Already the experience of Mazda and Toyota prove this proposition.
Vader who is the 2IC for the team, has always managed to produce good cars but that has not equated into very many race wins and no championships.

Katt on the other hand, who drives for the works Chevrolet team, has been told that he will not be in the #8 car next season. That possibly leaves the #8 Chevrolet drive as the most coveted free space over the off season.

Whereas Vader was able to put in solid times for most of the afternoon, Katt was not. Over the course of the 200 mile journey, Vader climbed all the way to second place after a brilliant late race charge which saw him pass Spidalski, Robie, and McAlpine.
Katt on the other hand, although was able to make use of fresh tyres at the half way point, soon fell back down the order and ended up just above the cut line in 17th.

McAlpine who was at this stage in second place, tried to hold Vader within some kind of reasonable window that she could chase down later. There wouldn't be any cautions thrown around Trois Rivieres; so she would have been make up time in the second half as fuel loads lightened towards the end.

14A3.jpg


Vader's rise through the order would have been spectacular if it wasn't for someone else who went one better. Kane McKane in the #92 Holden, spent the first third of the race mired in irrelevance and then pitted at lap 60; which gave him a 73 lap run on the second set of tyres.

By pitting way early, he passed most cars while they were stationary in the pits and the only real trouble that he had out on track, was inconvenience caused by McAlpine who had recently held back Robie and didn't want to concede another place.

McKane who seems to do well on street courses, lapped everyone up to 6th place and called upon the services of his team mate Henri Cornelius for the second time; though this time around it was not for position.

It was all that Vader could do but watch as the gap between him and McKane stretched out further and further, and so he resigned himself to his fate and finished a very credible second. McAlpine would come home third and Robie in fourth.

This race would throw up one last unexpected drama as Patrick Mann who was a lap down on the leaders, let through Kayleigh McAlpine but made himself a nuisance when his ex-teammate Robie came through. Robie lost any sliver of hope that he may have had to try and challenge McAlpine and it wasn't until Mann was shown a black flag for bad sportsmanship, that Robie got past. Mann would finish 18th and just scrape into the main race but as that race had its own qualifying session for grid positions late on Saturday afternoon, 18th in this race mattered not an iota.

In front of these two Holdens is Dr Ivo Robotnik in his Chevrolet. Eggman Industries and MAD Racing which run out of a common fabrication shop but do not share technical data, have been courting other manufacturers. In 20X2 there will be nine manufacturers all fielding 8 cars each and potentially, these two teams switching from Chevrolet to someone else, could close out another manufacturer's allocated obligations.
None of the four drivers appear to be leaving; which means that Nos. 10, 11, 12, and 13 will look broadly similar next season. Exactly who that manufacturer is, whether it is an existing competitor or a new manufacturer, is unknown.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:

9 - Kane McKane
6 - Darth Vader
4 - Kayleigh McAlpine
3 - Robie Robie
2 - Stanley Spidalski
1 - Henri Cornelius
 

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The Main Feature Race:

Greg Rellings took the pole in his Mazda and alongside him sat Kermit Cleveland in the Jaguar.
Behind them on the second row was Robie Robie in his '59 Mustang and Patrick Mann in the Toyota Century.

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It is fair to say that bad blood still exists between these ex-teammates and Mann demonstrated this by lightly rubbing the side of Robie's Ford before the green flag dropped.
Suffice to say, radio chatter went mad as everyone's spotters from row three backwards expected that someone would get dumped on the start/finish straight.
That simply never happened and the race got off to a clean start.

Rellings ran out to an early lead but was bumped by Kermit Cleveland going through the left hander onto the Rue De Colonne; which bruised the front right of his car and deformed the rear left quarter of Rellings' car.
Both came into the pits for damage repairs but Rellings would only manage to finish 14th and Cleveland would pit three times during the race due to excessive tyre rubbing; before the team decided to put the Jaguar behind the wall.

This put Patrick Mann into the lead and he put up a valiant fight before both Gojira and Kayleigh McAlpine passed him before the round of tyre stops.
As for Robie Robie, his '59 Mustang first developed smoke and then a whole cloud; which was enough for his Shredded Wheat crew to also put the yellow car behind the wall.

14M2.jpg


With Gojira holding hard out front and Patrick Mann in second, the struggle for third place intensified.

McAlpine was passed by Sasquini on lap 42 of 166 and this compressed the peloton of Spidalski, Gourdo and the two Holdens of Cornelius and McKane behind them.
Spidalski would eventually drop off this fight; leaving the other three to epee with each other.

Although Bruno Gourdo had won the B-Heat Race, yet again he found that the blistering pace in the main feature race was just that b little bit faster although he put up a decent fight, that left McAlpine to try and take up the fight to Gojira by herself.

For a while she was able to eat chunks of time away from Gojira's Datsun but the halfway point rapidly approached and soon, her tyres began to suffer a drop off in performance. Thus when both Gojira and Kayleigh McAlpine pitted on lap 83 of 166, whatever advantage that McAlpine might have been able to derive, was lost as Gojira also took on fresh tyres.

14M3.jpg

The next charger to rise through the order was Tse Sakamoto, who thought that this relatively flat street circuit was similar in character to the hot climate of Sepang. His rise from 9th happened in the last quarter of the race; after he had been saving tyres and fuel for the end of the race.

From about lap 130-146 he was able to pick off the cars in front of him one by one, including Kayleigh McAlpine; which meant that the last car was Gojira and overtaking him would mean the lead of the race.

Sakamoto hung behind Gojira's Datsun for extended periods late in the race and made no attempt to go around him. The Japanese driver in only his second season, saw a very real potential shot at the championship and didn't want to jeopardize that. In contrast, Gojira saw his mirrors being full of red Mazda, as a sign that man from Osaka wanted to badger him.

Sakamoto finally did find an opening on the pin ultimate lap, when Gojira tried to cover the inside line going through the Villeneuve chicane heading onto the front straight; which left an entire lane open.

Gojira had no choice but to settle for second place; with McAlpine trying in vain to mount another attack, but it was left too late. Patrick Mann came home in fourth; with Sasquini, Gourdo and the two works Holdens behind him.

After the race, the media entourage after visiting the podium suddenly crowded around the hauler of DK Racing who had finally announced that they would be working with GaZ in 20X2.
This announcement was then thrown into confusion as Darth Vader, Dr George Claw and Dr Ivo Robotnik all emerged from the hauler. Including the two cars of Kronkyet and Bernie, that would mean that GaZ might had filled up its available slots for 20X2, except that neither Doctors Claw or Robotnik were looking very happy at all.

20 points for Tse Sakamoto and 1 lonely point for Hatsune Miku vastly changed the complexion of the championship.
At the end of Round 14 and going into the final round on the sands of Daytona Beach, there are five competitors who can mathematically take the championship title. They are: Ellie McIllan, Hatsune Miku, Robie Robie, Tse Sakamoto, and Al Yankovic. Four different manufacturers are represented and two have already been champions.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Tse Sakamoto
17 - Gojira
15 - Kayleigh McAlpine
12 - Patrick Mann
10 - Ricardo Sasquini
8 - Bruno Gourdo
6 - Kane McKane
5 - Henri Cornelius
4 - Stanley Spidalski
3 - Darth Vader
2 - Kerrod Edmundson
1 - Hatsune Miku

Top 20 After Round 14:
164 - Ellie McIllan
159 - Robie Robie
156 - Al Yankovic
142 - Tse Sakamoto
139 - Hatsune Miku
112 - Darth Vader
117 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
110 - Bruno Gourdo
101 - Gojira
92 - Patrick Mann
90 - Kayleigh McAlpine
78 - Greg Rellings
73 - Garfield Arbuckle
70 - Henri Cornelius
58 - Bandit Heeler
54 - Miles Prower
54 - Stanley Spidalski
53 - Go Mifune
51 - Kerrod Edmundson
41 - Ricardo Sasquini

The last round of the championship will be held in three weeks' time; at Daytona Beach on October 18.
 

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No.
Round 15 - The Florida Bucket
The B-Heat Race

15B1.jpg

The last round of the year is often tinged with a hint of sadness as things come to an end. This round marked the end of Honda, Jaguar, Ferrari and Subaru as manufacturers appearing in this series, as well as the closure of the Mercedes Benz works team. It also marks the end of the Axis Chemicals Chevrolet team, as well as 8008 Motorsports and Rick Sanchez' team.
Just over a third of the field would either be defunct or have significant changes to their driver and manufacturer status.

Just after the end of the B-Heat Race, the Competition Director of GaZ Motorsports, a Mr Josep Loganov, had an official signing ceremony with Darth Vader; and announced that the black #77 would appear in 20X2, as a works GaZ entry. Logically this made sense as Ford, Mazda and Toyota had already filled their allocation of eight cars; Chevrolet weren't willing to sign Vader, and Vader wasn't willing to sign up to whatever Doctors Claw and Robotnik were up to. Unfortunately for Jar Jar Binks, this deal did not extend to his #66 Federation Insurance entry and he would be left out in the cold to fend for himself.

Also of note is the yellow #84 Honda of Bobo-Bo Bo-Bobobo. On lap 4 while trying to pass around the outside, coming out of the southern turn, he bogged the Honda in the sand and simply had to leave it there.
This is a reminder that the sands of Daytona Beach are in fact sands and that at no point are they the most sensible of surfaces to race upon.

15B2.jpg

As for the race itself? It produced a result which was incredibly anticlimactic.
Bob Nikoban and Dr Ivo Robotnik sped off into the distance at the start and that was that.

There then came a struggle between Al Yankovic and Dr George Claw for third place, where the former still had championship hopes and the latter was just looking to make use of the chassis before stripping it in preparation for next season.
This was former champion versus former champion and both of them were wise enough to give the other plenty of racing room and keep both cars unbent.

Claw had sufficiently enough on board power to permanently keep Yankovic behind him and he was wiley enough to shake and drop off the red, white and green Ford which plagued his rear view mirror.

Yankovic on the other hand, realised that he was never going to find a way through and rather than fall back into the clutches of Go Mifune's Mazda, he dropped off the Chevrolet in front of him and then every so often would claim the fastest lap of the race in preparation for the main feature race.

Meanwhile at the very back of the runners who might qualify for the main feature race, Olivia Micina in the #28 PepsiCo Ford, was having real difficulties passing the works Mercedes-Benz of Natalie McIllan. Eventually after they both pitted on the same lap and also after it didn't really improve the situation, Micina threw out an almighty Hail Mary pass going into the southern turn; which sent McIllan's Mercedes flying over the sand bar and bogged it. She left the car unscathed but her season ended in as ignominious circumstances as the previous season had.
Her teammate Andy Harrington in the #722 car would finish 8th and qualify for the main feature race but Mercedes-Benz' factory effort in The Goof appears to have ended with a whimper rather than a bang.

15B3.jpg

Perhaps not unexpected, Bob Nikoban who really had nothing to lose and didn't even care about blowing up his car, stomped on the loud pedal and ran his Ford basically nailed to the floor all race. His plan of putting ultra hard compound tyres on the car and then filling the fuel tank to the brim, worked well. The team didn't even bother to change the tyres at the half way point.
Just over a third of the field would either be defunct or have significant changes to their driver and manufacturer status.

"I had a pretty cruisey afternoon, pthhpth. I put the radio on, listened to Chuck Berry, ate a pizza, wondered how you would get a jelly out of a teapot... then they waved that chequered tablecloth thing and it was over."
- Bob Nikoban, on WROD 1350

It will be very interesting to see how a driver as undisciplined and chaotically lazy as Nikoban will do under the umbrella of Team Yellow Toyota next year.

It emerged after the race that both Doctors Robotnik and Claw who finished second and third, had already done a deal with a new manufacturer for 20X2 and had in fact run their new engines in the B-Heat Race; despite the outside still being kitted out as Chevrolets.

Dr George Claw who didn't like having to source parts and equipment from General Motors as a secondary customer from Garfield Arbuckle's works team, managed to wrangle a deal with Korean car manufacturer Kia. This means that in 20X2, the last missing piece of the puzzle has been filled in and that nine manufacturers have been secured. The eight Kias will be running the 5 Litre Tau V8 in conjunction with the common KERS system.

This deal was done after both MAD Racing and Eggman Industries who are already in an uneasy alliance, joined with what was the Jaguar team who also run four cars; this makes eight. The ex-Jaguar team will now be known as Green Sevens Racing.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Bob Nikoban
6 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
4 - Dr George Claw
3 - Al Yankovic
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Rodan
 
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