The Goof 20X3

[Rollo75]

Round 1 - Daytona International Speedway

Following the inability of GaZ to field and build enough cars last season, Datsun's decision with withdraw, which then caused Mercedes-Benz and Kia to reconsider their positions, the 20X3 season was looking as if only five manufacturers would have to field 72 cars. When Toyota, Mazda and Chevrolet point blank refused to, then The Goof Management took the opinion that there would be a nominal entry field of 43 cars; with some entries still applying to run a limited schedule.

The 20X3 season will be 20 rounds long; with points being awarded 15-10-8-6-4-3-2-1. The longer schedule was decided as a compromise as previously, there were 15 Rounds, 13 of which had an A and B Heat. Teams nominally had to prepare for 28 race assuming that their car qualified for every feature; with teams having to prepare for as many as 41 races if they fielded cars in both races in every weekend. Ironically a longer schedule means less work for the teams.

Also of note for the 20X3 season, was that this would be the first time in 20 years that there would be six previous champions on the grid (being Sakamoto, McIllan.E, Yankovic, Claw, Mann, and Pikachu). The previous record was also six (Pikachu, Levins, Rellings, Weirdo, McIllan.R, Monroe), back in 20V2.

Round 1 - The Daytona 300

Round 1 at Daytona, the Daytona 300, would be 120 laps for the feature race and two qualifying races of 40 laps a piece. If both races were clean, then 22 starters would come out of each of them and an extra place given to last years' series' champion Tse Sakamoto. If however a car failed to finish, then it would not be eligible for the round proper. The two qualifying races would also award points to the top four, being 5-3-2-1.

Heat 1.



Right from the green flag it became obvious that there were two distinct strategies for escaping the qualifying races. Either get to the front and stay ahead of whatever mayhem might unfold or hand around at the back and hope that if something crazy did break away up front, that you would be sufficiently far enough behind it that it could be avoided. Unusually for only a 20 lap race, there were two packs which formed and strategy played out in both of them.

Pole sitter Bandit Heeler deliberately held the bottom line back so that he could hook up with his brother Stripe in a tandem setup. In doing so. he opened up the top line and Asuka Langley used Teutonic determination to swing around the outside of Go Mifune to take the #02 Chevrolet to the front. NERV had been courting another manufacturer over the off-season but that deal fell through. This meant that instead of running two cars as intended, the team was forced to cut back to one and decided to cut costs by buying equipment from Garfield Arbuckle and the GM Factory.

As this was only a 40 lap race, Langley decided that she would scoot to the front and then hope that there wouldn't be any cautions. A quick race would be a good race. Tactically it was not a bad idea as the smaller field of 25 cars should have bred fewer cautions.



Langley actually did manage to hold the lead for 46 of 50 laps but she lost the lead owing to the fact that she still needed to conserve the tyres to make it until the end. She was passed by Konata Izumi and Patrick Mann who used the #43 as a temporary drafting partner.

Izumi was driving a Datsun 500 Z which was originally slated to be part of a multi car-team. Assuming that all had gone to plan, Datsun would have fielded cars for Gojira and Rodan as #23 and #24 and then maybe Izumi and someone else but circumstances shifted and the firm no longer could make the business case. Late last season Datsun announced that they were going to withdraw their entries in 20X3 but Izumi still had backing and a budget for the 20X3 season. With no factory support, the #43 team has been left as an orphan, albeit one with enough spares for four cars.

Now owing to the fact that the chassis across the series is a Brilliant Resources 15 and the hybrid drivetrain is also common, this meant that really all Izumi had to provide was the VK50 V8 and a panelbeater's shop and pit crew. As an owner/driver/operator Izumi had only intended to run a limited schedule but scoring a win and point out of the box, still may yet change those plans. She was followed across the line by Patrick Mann and Asuka Langkey, with Stripe Heeler scoring the single point for fourth.



However it was way down the order where this heat race threw its barbs. As there are only 43 entry spots for the 300, then finishing near the end would spell disaster for a season from the very first round. On lap 39 of 40 and in the last desperate throws of the dice, Martin Gecko made a move which threw the back third of the field into disarray and brought out the caution to close the race.

Gecko was lying in 22nd place and just outside of the cut off for the 300. In a desperate lunge, he tried to go underneath Henri Cornelius' Mobil 1 Holden and this sent the Holden careening across the track and into the path of the pack. It did not end well for Cornelius, Brown, Yankovic, Sakamoto, Kohler, Pikachu, McKane or De Rouge. As this happened so very close to the stripe it meant that all of them were lucky enough to make it to the line before Pacman, and especially McAlpine, Kohler and Kong; the latter three who failed to qualify for the main event.

Gecko's car is an X2 spec Toyota and after having just taken out Team Yellow Toyota's Team Principal, Patrick Mann, he was called back to the Toyota haulers after the race to explain himself.

The danger for six of the seven cars except Sakamoto is that had they been officially scored as being retired, then they would have all been knocked out. Only Sakamoto by virtue of being defending series champion was afforded the luxury of having a free pass to the 300.

For Jimmy Kohler in the #83 Holden Kingswood GTS, this was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. He had signed up for only a few races and even after playing it safe, to have everything destroyed in the lottery of fate was awful Donkey Kong retired almost immediately with his Holden having started in 14th and then expriring in a cloud of smoke before it even made it to Turn 1; Kayleigh McAlpine's Chevrolet was nudged into the outside wall on lap 8 by Greg Rellings and the act of changing the outside tyres was enough for the whole field to whizz by and when she did catch up it was only because of the second last lap chaos and she was not allowed to pass under the caution flags.

Points Awarded Heat 1:

5 - Konata Izumi
3 - Patrick Mann
2 - Asuka Langley
1 - Stripe Heeler

 

[Rollo75]

Heat 2



From the get go it looked as though this race was going to be a Mazda benefit. Pole sitter Kerrod Edmundson who this season was sporting the number 23, was followed out of turn one by Morgan Inkling who came down from the outside, and Ricardo Sasquini and three of them decided to run in close proximity to each other; thus making better use of the draft. Mazda's policy in 20X3 is to give the various drivers a greater degree of autonomy but to ensure that they all have current spec equipment. In return for the latest spec parts as they are released, the various teams agreed to give Levins Racing a data dump from their cars at the end of the race.

However things were all they were cracked up to be. Goodyear stated that the compoound of tyres that they were supplying for the qualifying heats, were good for 42 laps; which meant that going too hard opn them would wear them out before the end of their expected life. The idea was that this would be as much of a challenge in knowing when to use uo the performance of the tyre as anything else.

Behind them, Marnie Roxy and Sticks Baja were holding station in 4th and 5th; with Eggatha Robotnik after having spent a few seasons learning the ropes, trying to mount her own challenge and make a name for herself.



As the lead group of Mazda's tyres began to drop off, the fell back into the clutches of the chasing peloton. The head of the chasing back was Billy Highbank in a Mercury Comet. Highbank would be running a limited schedule in 20X3 after having had a successful cameo at Riverside in 20X2. The Mercury Comet was in principle identical under the skin to the Team UZKA Ford Falcon XJs which were running around. Ford was now well into its program of running its 304 Coyote after it had replaced the 302 Windsors in previous seasons and almost pulled off a championship last year; which only faltered in the last race of the season. Highbank was well seasoned in the sort of nonsense and rough and tumble that The Goof would provide and so getting to the front might have been a useful strategy.

Highbank was pushed to the front by a very impatient Dr George Claw who after being boxed in at the start was quick on speed but equally quick tempered. They made short work of Sasquini, and in due time Inkling and Edmundson; while at the same time Mario Mario in the Holden, was boxed in by the Mazdas as they fell back towards the pack.
Claw would hold the lead himself for no more than a couple of laps as at these speeds the amount of wind resistance on the nose of the car is enough to wipe out any advantage that track position holds.

One of the more curious cars in the field is the blue Volvo S90 of Kuki Muenster. It is unknown where Volvo of Sweden got the chassis from but it is almost certain that they did not build it themselves. It is unknown where Volvo got the engine from either, for the serial number of the enging is simple V001. This would either indicate that they have prodcured an engine from somewhere else and debranded it or that they have developed their own engine and that is equally a mystery. Muenster finished a quiet but reasonable 17th place; which was enough to qualify from the big dance but not quick enough to arouse any suspicion.



Invariably though, the heat race would be won with a combination of experience and a lot of luck. The order going into lap 35 was Hedgehog, Baja, Roxy, Robie. Hedgehig at the front of the train of cars on the back stretch was a sitting duck and the time would come when eventually everyone would break rank and he would be left asunder.

The push eventually came on lap 40 of 40 when Robie Robie dove to the inside and stole the air off of the cars in front. He was joined by Marnie Roxy and in tandem they were able to pick their way through a traffic jam that looked more like a Miami main street than a Daytona Superspeedway. As they swung through Turn 4, Roxy thought that there might be a shot at the race win; so she dropped to the lower lane, hoping to take the shorter line to the flag. What she didn't count on, was Sticks Baja moving her Toyota to the outside and drawing closer to the back of Robie's Falcon; thus as they came out of Turn 4 and into the tri-oval, the former Toyota team mates were fast enough to take the top two places on the podium. Hedgehog for all his efforts, was only able to watch from behind and came home in fourth.

For Robie, this was more about making a statement than anything else. After his somewhat acrid split with Team Yellow Toyota, the little yellow robot who has now spent a year at Team UZKA, is hoping to do what he failed to to there and win a championship. With Team Principal Yankovic having won the 20X1 season and putting in a very strong showing last year, the equipment is certainly up to the task.

"Me wan win dis race for da team. Me no win championship last year, so dis is big fail. If you no wan win races and championships, den what you doing here? Nobody care who come second. It only matter who name is etched on trophy. Even dis race no really count. It just qualify race for big 300 on Sunday. We wan win dat."
- Robie Robie, to U62-TV.


Points Awarded Heat 2:

5 - Robie Robie
3 - Sticks Baja
2 - Marnie Roxy
1 - Oglivy Hedgehog

 

[Rollo75]

Round 1 - The Daytona 300

Sunny skies greeted the field of 43 cars at Daytona for the first round proper of The Goof 20X3. Curiously with 20 Rounds as opposed to 15 last season, this is still 8 races less than for a car which raced in every race it was eligible to, last season.



Pole sitter Stripe Heeler tried to control the start of the race by holding back the field but Morgan Inkling in the #41 Osko Mazda got a brilliant start on the outside lane, to take an early lead of the race. After winning the championship last season with Tse Sakamoto, Levins Racing decided that there was a lot to be gained from giving all Mazda drivers current spec equipment in return for data dumps at the end of the race and the heat race this weekend proved that they were keen to make decent use of it. As proven in the qualifying race, the Mazdas were indeed quick but also as proven, a few quick laps do not necessarily translate into a race win.

The Heeler Brothers who now have a decent amount of backing have turned what used to be a fairly amateur operation into a pretty well sorted race team. Stripe's #54 machine in addition to carrying sponsorship from Hammberbarn has got extra backing from a sugar refining company and the Blue Sky Mining Company. As Stripe Heeler found out very quickly, being at the front of the field may not be the best strategy. His brother Bandit in the #17, who was sitting well down the field and in a long train, was getting far better fuel mileage than Stripe up front; who was punching the hole in the air for everyone else to drive through.

For a while it looked like there was going to be a spot of temporary manufacturer alliances, with Heeler leading the two Team UZKA Fords of Robie and Spidalski and Kurt Langer in the BASF #73 who this year has joined a reborn McIllan Motorsport. A very rare sight was the #31 Toyota of Martin Gecko being hustled to the front of the outside lane by Bob Nikoban in the Team Yellow Toyota. Bob's radio chatter is generously called "chaotic" and this year with his new crew chief, it is hoped that this chaotic energy is translated into results. Bob claims that he can see the air coming off the back of the other cars but whether or not this is true, remains to be seen

By lap 30 the race had kind of settled down into some kind of two lane running order and as they came over the stripe, the order was Nikoban, Gecko, Langer, Robie, Spidalski, both Heeler brothers, Inkling, Muenster and McIllan rounding out the top ten. It seemed that the ride that you wanted to be in, was either a Toyota or a fast Ford.



When you have 43 cars all within inches of each other and with air doing a 200mph dance over them, it is impossible to predict the micro forces which get multiplied into massive ones. "The Big One" came on lap 36 when the field was still on older tyres and everyone was waiting for everyone else to blink.

The actual collision which started off the chain of events was when Henri Cornelius in the Mobil 1 Commodore, tried to push Claude de Rouge's #11 Elf Chevrolet through the tri-oval. This ill-advised move then pushed the #11 in to the back of Go Mifune's Toyota and thus chaos was unleashed and thirteen cars suffered severe damage.

The lucky inheritors of the lead were two-time champion Patrick Mann in the Toyota and Jeb Brown who apart from centre punching Dr George Claw's Mazda in the rear, took the sole Dodge in the race through the mirey chaos and out the other side. This car which has affectionately been called a Dodge "Phoenix GT" was part of an aborted program but as Jeb's Speed Shop had already signed up for a limited schedule and didn't actually have an REC, there was no reason to retract the entry. The car wouldn't feature in the points but still put up a sold run for 11th at the end of the day.

The race then appeared to settele down into a groove with Patrick Mann surrendering the lead to Oglivy Hedgehog after the race off of pit road on lap 80, with Robie Robie holding station behind him and last year's champion Tse Sakamoto hovering around in fourth.



Hedgehog was out to try and break the spirits of the rest of the field and he proceded to drag out a three second lead over Patrick Mann. Mann faded but was able to help out his team-mate Jean-Luc Pikachu, who had timed his run well to make use of his tyres later in the run. Pikachu in turn was followed by Jack Raymond in the Holden; who himself was reporting an oil temperature issue which was only rectified by pulling out of the draft and getting clean air on the nose. In order to reduce the drag, his crew trimmed out the car and took away his downforce, which made the car very tight.

On lap 118 of 120, Hedgehog surrendered the lead when going into Turn 3, he encountered Jean-Luc Pikachu who was trying to stay out of everyone's way and occupy the bottom of the racetrack. Jack Raymond who was in third, sat at the end of the small train and broke free going into the turn, to go four wide and swung around the top. Hedgehog who had been baulked, tried to roll the bottom but Bandit Heeler followed him and then forced his own car through a hole which had no right to be there.

Heeler's Falcon had been quick but not quite quick enough in the Heat Race and that speed carried over into the Feature. Being this late in the race, he was obviously prepared to bump and grind and wreck people if necessary in order to take victory but in this Holden vs Ford battle, Raymond's Holden had the advantage of space and time and circumstance.

Oglivy Hedghog has now made two excellent starts to a season; both coming on superspeedways. The #8 Milky Way Chevrolet was quick at Daytona and Ontario last season and this season appears to be similar. Although he wasn't able to hang onto the lead, coming third is nothing to be sneezed at when there are only 8 points paying positions.

Two results which surprise everyone including the drivers themselves, were Kuki Muenster who managed to bring the Volvo home in fourth and was also able to hold off a very late lunge from Martin Gecko. The fact that neither of then had RECs but still managed to steal points away is either a testament to how close the regulations have made the cars in 20X3 or a function of the fact that literally nobody can predict what kind of cards fate is going to deal out at a superspeedway.

"The car was tight all day long. It never wanted to turn in. It was only right at the very end that I felt we had a car which could take a top five. We got lucky. I'll take it. We need to work harder. Crisp."
- Jack Raymond, to U62-TV


Points Awarded Round 1:

15 Jack Raymond
10 Bandit Heeler
8 Oglivy Hedgehog
<6> Kuki Muenster
<4> Martin Gecko
3 Tse Sakamoto
2 Ricardo Sasquini
1 Asuka Langley

Standings After Round 1:

15 Jack Raymond
10 Bandit Heeler
9 Oglivy Hedgehog
5 Konata Izumi
5 Robie Robie
3 Patrick Mann
3 Asuka Langley
3 Sticks Baja
3 Tse Sakamoto
2 Marnie Roxy
2 Ricardo Sasquini
1 Stripe Heeler

 

[Rollo75]

Round 2 - Darlington Raceway

Round 2 of The Goof was held at the one and a third mile "Lady In Black" that is "Too Tough To Tame" at Darlington. At 188 laps and 250 miles, it was hope that most drivers would attempt two or three pitstops but given the abrasive nature of the track and the fact that this place unforgivingly cuts tyres because of bolts in Armco fences, Goodyear brought ten sets of tyres per car for the weekend just in case.

This year's 250 mile, 188 lap race was just on the verge of being too long for a single stop strategy; so the front three rows which were all taken by Mazdas, had made some plans to pit as a group and hopefully save fuel together where possible. Pole sitter Morgan Inkling led the field to the end of lap 7 before she moved to the end of the chain of six and Tse Sakamoto assumed the lead for a while.

The rest of the field was happy sit behind the sextet of Mazdas and the first car behind the group was Jessie Musahi in the #2 Rocket Industries Chevrolet, followed by her team principal Kayleigh McAlpine, and the two Heeler Brothers who had made their blue Falcons just wide enough to block the rest of the field.

Things held mostly stationary, save for some jostling in the top six as Darlington is at most a one-and-a-half groove racetrack with very little opportunity for passing on either the top or the bottom. One lap 60, some of the Mazdas peeled off to make green flag pit stops and hopefully get an undercut.



On lap 62 and almost exactly on the stroke of one-third race distance, Queensland's self-appointed favourite son, Bandit Heeler, said that he was experiencing a deflating tyre and tried to pull to the inside of the track. This made rookie Claude de Rouge in the #11 Elf Chevrolet check up behind him and this in turn caused Hochi Samyamg in the #4 Chevrolet check up behind him.

Previous series' champion Ellie McIllan in the Texaco Falcon, speared straight into the back of Hochi and a gaggle of cars including Prower's Toyota, Robie's Falcon, and Inkling's Mazda (after she had rejoined the train after pitting) all became part of a front straight junkyard which was sliding at 55mph. Naturally with cars strewn everywhere, this brought out the caution and with it, any kind of tactical doubts were immediately quelled. The Lady In Black had already claimed her first victims and she was sure to leave no mercy for anyone.

Immediately after the chaos, Al Yankovic who had somehow avoided calamity, assumed the lead and with it, the head of the line and the best chance to avoid more chaos in future.



With the Mazdas of Dr Ivo Robotnik, Greg Rellings and Tse Sakamoto occupying the front for a while, they were dictating the pace of the race. Unfortuneately due to the amount of wreckage cause earlier in the race, there were a number of cars who were as much as five seconds a lap slower. The amount of walking wounded around the track, simply hoping for some kind of redemption was astonishing.

Owing to an incident of miscommunication due to a faulty radio, Kerrod Edmundson in the #23 Dr Pepper Mazda, had intended to pull to the top of the racetrack to let the leaders through. In the eyes of Miles Prower whose #7 Burger Rings Toyota was also damaged, he saw this as an opportunity to make an easy place but he turned downwards into the path of Robotnik; Rellings ploughed headlong into the back.

On lap 80, another caution was thrown and with most of the field now sporting battle damage, this race was fast becoming a race of attrition and survival. Talent and skill always rise to the top though and by lap 100, AL Yankovic was again leading the race.

A strange thing had happened behind him though. With a lot of the faster cars having been damaged, one marque was collectively rising through the order; after having chosen to hang back at the beginning of the race. The Holdens generally had qualified really poorly; so just like the Mazdas up front, they had elected to work togther.

After having already won the opening round of the season, Holden Motor Corp which was now fully divorced from General Motors, made the annoucement that they would be continuing on for at least 20X4 and 20X5. They also announced that having been freed from the General's grip, there would be mid-year updates to their positively ancient 305 cid V8. The engine having been laid dormant for many years, was now being press ganged back into service; with a new set of four-cam heads from Bosch and the MGUK system from Breville. Also of note, would be the fact that this season would be the last outing of their VJ Commodore.

The Holden charge was being led by Walter Kronkyet and Bernie Bernie who had bought the chassis as customers, and Jack Raymond and Kane McKane who were running nose to tail.



A lot of the field had been hoping for another caution to make their final stop but the race ran to the green flag. Save for the odd scare where someone kissed the wall coming out of Turn 2, there would not be any more victims of the Lady in Black.

Most of the field came in between laps 124 and 127 and Kane McKane briefly held the lead but this was only because he had chosen to pit later and when he did finally come in for four tyres and to have the read right fender banged back into some kind of useable service, his lead had disapppeared entirely. The result of this race was entirely unexpected; with a car which hadn't even posted a lap in the top 100 of fastest laps for the day, coming home to greet the chequered flag and take home line honours.

Mario Mario in the sole VH Commodore and running 20X3's equipment in a 20X2 chassis, remained the only car in the field not to have encountered either any trouble by running into someone or tagging the outside wall. His car was the only car out of 43 starters not to have gained the famous 'Darlington Stripe' and as such, his run home from lap 164 onwards, was always unimpeded.

What remained behind him was a squabble for crumbs and Kane McKane passed Al Yankovic on lap 173 to take second place, before he himself became the last car in the field to have a lap put on him by Mario. Thus this became the first race in The Goof series in more than a decade, where every car bar the winner carried the infamous "-1L" or worse in the final standings sheet.

An honorable mention has to be made of Chloe Ankha who came home in sixth place. After being out of contract and looking for a drive after "the great cull", she bagged a drive at Team Yellow Toyota because of her calm attitude and her ability to eek out finishes with undercooked equipment. This sixth place was secured by keeping out of trouble and keeping her head, while everyone else about was losing theirs.

Points Awarded Round 2:
15 - Mario Mario
10 - Kane McKane
8 - Al Yankovic
6 - Bernie Bernie
4 - Hatsune Miku
3 - Chloe Ankha
2 - Walter Kronkyet
1 - Claude de Rouge

Standings After 2 Rounds:
15 Jack Raymond
15 Mario Mario
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Kane McKane
9 Oglivy Hedgehog
8 Al Yankovic
6 Bernie Bernie
5 Konata Izumi
5 Robie Robie
4 Hatsune Miku
3 Patrick Mann
3 Asuka Langley
3 Sticks Baja
3 Tse Sakamoto
3 Chloe Ankha
2 Marnie Roxy
2 Ricardo Sasquini
2 Walter Kronkyet
1 Stripe Heeler
1 Claude de Rouge

Round 3 will be held at Silverstone in two weeks' time.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 3 - Great British TT at Silverstone

Friday practice at Silverstone saw Fords top the time sheets and it was generally assumed that the colder temperatures which gave rise to frost on the ground overnight, meant that this was a horsepower advantage. Of the top ten, seven were Fords; which also meant that this was common across multiple engine builders.

Saturday qualifying on the other hand, was more of a lottery as actual ice had appeared over night and track temperatures were more akin to what one would see up in Scotland, rather than down here in merry Towcester. Kayleigh McAlpine should have taken the pole but going through Abbey she grabbed too much of the apex and went for a bit of off-road driving on her first flying lap and that also ruined her second.

The Pole position went to Hatsune Miku, who was just as shocked as anyone after having not really done very well in Friday practice and then not really making any adjustments to the car. As for the other Toyotas, none of them did particularly well either. Bob Nikoban did so poorly that after finishing his qualifying laps, he jumped on a scooter and drove off and didn't even bother taking the Dark-Time Pizza Toyota to Happy Hour.



The start of the race as expected, saw Miku make her Toyota quite wide going into the first corner; with Mario Mario having to slot in behind; Vader and the two Robotnik Industries machines behind him. What was different was that the #12 got a good start and led the #13 machine.

In a move which made no sense to anyone but him, Ricardo Sasquini decided to dump Miles Power's Toyota on the opening lap were way back down in the late 30s in the running order and so both way way out of any chances in scoring any points but for some reason, Sasquini still chose violence.

Prower was understandably and justifiably livid at being turned around for the second time in as many rounds but radio chatter didn't reveal what had precipitated the event. For his part, Sasquini just kept on saying "He totally deserved it" over and over again and The Goof Management decided that without any kind of evidence which suggested why this was provoked, pulled the #55 in for a fifteen second time penalty.

As the #7 Burger Rings Toyota had been turned around in traffic, this warranted an instant caution and when the field was reracked and restacked, Hatsune Miku managed to botch the start and let through Mario Mario's Holden. Coming off the back of a race victory and now receiving more technical help from BlueCat Racing, the Italian Plumber was brimming with confidence. This turned out to be misplaced, for as the race wore on both he and Miku dribbled out of the points. Miku's eleventh and Mario's fifteenth were nothing to be heralded.



After Antony D'Tigrette speared his Chevrolet into the barriers at Copse on lap 23, it was nominally too early for a regular pit stop but seeing as the field went under caution and the safety car came out, the amount of laps spent at slower speed would give everyone a chance to save fuel. This prompted a mass exodus and rejoin and at the restart the order was Mario, Miku, Pikachu, Vader, McIllan and Eggatha Robotnik. Eggatha moved out of the way almost immediately to let through her uncle Ivo.

Mario on fresh tyres was easily the fastest out there but as the run wore on, he couldn't make use of track position and was soon passed by everyone back as far as Oglivy Hedgehog in eighth. Darth Vader very quickly took over the lead and he was followed in pretty close proximity by Ellie McIllan.

The underlying chassis of Vader's Falcon was the same as the Wartburg that he piloted last year. With a change of panels and an engine deal with Team UKZA to supply Coyote V8s, this year's car was subtly different and yet very similar. Perhaps the biggest difference has to do with the torque curve of the engine, which is quite a bit wider.
WIth Ellie McIllan behind him and Robie Robie fighting his was upwards through the field, it became clear that the Falcon was a pretty good package to have here at Silverstone; with the combination of fast corners and longish sweepers really suiting deft throttle control. Ellie McIllan having learned her trade in junior formulae, which included racing here at Silverstone gave here some background knowledge to be able to chase down the cars in front of her but even then, there were still better combinations on the day.

On lap 51, Jean-Luc Pikachu in the #25 ETU Toyota sliced his way past McIllan going through Maggots and Becketts and two laps later, he blew past Vader going down the Hangar Straight. Seeing a Team Yellow car lead a race is hardly a new experience, and seeing Jean-Luc Pikachu up front is also not new, but seeing the 20W0 champion in the second sunset of his career do something like this, is like winding back the clock to a past that never was.

Also coming up the pipe like a rat running away from a fire, was the #8 Milky Way Chevrolet of Oglivy Hedgehog. He managed his fuel consumption well and while most cars made their final pitstops on laps 55 and 56, he was able to hold out until lap 60; which meant that he would have marginally fresher tyres for the final run. There was no way in Hades that he was going to catch Jean-Luc Pikachu who by this stage had pitted from the lead and then returned in the lead but having sixteen cars pull into the pits in front of him, Hedgehog didn't have to fight his way to second place. His only question at this point was if he could make that lead of the yellow car in front dissolve like snow.



By this stage of the race, there was no hope that anyone would chase down Pikachu. The champion from 13 seasons ago brought the same kind of measured speed to this track as he had done in previous years. He wound out the margin to 15 seconds; which meant that he could see the opposition from the other end of most of the straights but then wound it out no further. When someone did find enough speed to start to reel him in, he matched and bettered the pace that they'd just set.

The most critical lap at the end of the race was lap 79, when Jack Raymond in the #88 Telecom Holden, snuck up the inside of Oglivy Hedgehog's #8 Milky Way Chevrolet. Behind him, Robie Robie exacted Falcon on Falcon frustration as he pulled a near identical move on Darth Vader at the same corner.
By the end of the lap and having passed through Abbey and into Woodcote, Robie made it double by copying the move again on Hedgehog. This late in the race, there was some question of whether or not Robie would catch up to Raymond but that never eventuated. Raymond's Holden just as it had been at Daytona (while also being chased by a Ford Falcon), was good enough and fast enough to be untroubled. Behind them, Hedgehog and Vader made no inroads on the leaders and came home in fourth and fifth.

A familiar orange Number 9 Chevrolet came home for a respectable sixth place but it was not the same Garfield Arbuckle who was behind the wheel. Garfield, having seven sons all called Garfield, sat on top of the pit box as crew chief for his son "Ugly". His older brothers "Plappy" and "Peanut" remained in the engine shop; with his younger brothers "Idid", "Didi", "Santa", and "Grub", all originally testing but not being fast enough. Perhaps "Ugly" Arbuckle can do what his dad could not in more than 20 years of trying.

Of the other points finishers, Ellie McIllan in seventh was disappointed to fall down the order from a fourth place start but every point matters, and Dr Ivo Robotnik was clearly just happy to bring home his battle damaged car after receiving a shunt somewhere in traffic.

Points Awarded Round 3:

15 - Jean-Luc Pikachu
10 - Jack Raymond
8 - Robie Robie
6 - Oglivy Hedgehog
4 - Darth Vader
3 - Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
2 - Ellie McIllan
1 - Dr Ivo Robotnik

Top 20 After 3 Rounds:

25 Jack Raymond
15 Mario Mario
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Jean-Luc Pikachu
13 Robie Robie
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Kane McKane
8 Al Yankovic
6 Bernie Bernie
5 Konata Izumi
4 Hatsune Miku
4 Darth Vader
3 Patrick Mann
3 Asuka Langley
3 Sticks Baja
3 Tse Sakamoto
3 Chloe Ankha
3 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
2 Marnie Roxy
2 Ricardo Sasquini
2 Walter Kronkyet
2 Ellie McIllan

Round 4 will be held at Brooklands Motor Speedway on the 13th of Feb.

 

[Jebrown]

Looking forward to seeing what happens at Brooklands. I've been a Bandit Heeler fan since the very beginning and feel certain he'll do well there.

 

[Rollo75]

Queensland's favourite son...

 

[Rollo75]

Round 4 - Brooklands Silver Shield

The short trip from Silverstone to Brooklands is the shortest on the whole tour of The Goof for 20X3. At just a short burn up the Motorway and a few A-Roads, it is easily the least difficult journey to make. Nevertheless, some teams still took the two weeks to send their cars back to their respective countries and then back to Britain again. A number of teams merely drove their haulers from track to track and then spent the remainder of the two weeks in hotels nearby.

One of the weirdest sights ever seen in the 29 seasons of The Goof thus far, was that of the hauler of the #77 car of Darth Vader had arrived but no team and no crew accompanied it. The two cars, supplied by Team UZKA were in the hauler but it was otherwise abandoned; with the a note attached to the windshield which said 'thank you', and returned the car to the ownership of Team UZKA.

The Goof management decided that as the car and the entry had been transferred with the consideration of the physical assets, that if Team UZKA could find a driver then they would be entitled to the points already accumulated (4). Team UZKA made a deal with Strong Bad; who wasn't particularly doing anything at the time. The new hastily numbered 78 entry, when it turned out on Friday practice, was the existing backup car which was inexpertly spray painted over and stickered. The livery would in this form will not reappear in this form again.



Pole sitter an championship leader Jack Raymond led the field to the stripe for the opening lap and then proceded to leave everyone behind in his wake. Behind him, Bernie Bernie and Al Yankovic tried to sit in behind and get a tow in the draft but that was not meant to be.

Some interesting stories played out behind the leading pack. As cars topped out at about 230mph, many of the drivers reported insane amounts of buffeting. At least half a dozen drivers looped their cars coming out of Turn 2 and before the right-hander at Turn 3. Claude de Rouge in the Casssell Motorsport #11 Elf Chevrolet, managed to clip the rumble strip on the inside of Turn 3 and spear off into the gravel trap on the other side of the road, on no less than four occasions.

Meanwhile, as Team Yellow Toyota tried to link up their cars to form a drafting train, Ugly Arbuckle in his rookie season, upon realising that his car was not fast enough to score any points today, made a persistent pest of himself by trying to break tese trains by trying on slide jobs and forcing others to back out. Sticks Baja in the #6 DeWalt Toyota, complained that this was incredibly rude but was informed by her crew chief that rudeness is not necessarily a code violation.



The tail end of this race, saw Kayleigh McAlpine who had pitted slightly earlier than most of the field, actually get the undercut and elevate her position from sixth to second. That meant that her tyres were three laps older than most of the field and the advantage that she'd bought for herself was always in danger of being whittled away.

And whittled away it was. Yankovic who had spent most of laps 60-80 behind the Holden of Donkey Kong and in seventh spot, finally decided to make his final tilt on lap 88. Kong was an easy victim to take on lap 89. Dr George Claw who had worked his way up to third, relinquished the spot without any struggle and the battle between these two protagonists with five championships between them, never materialised. This left only McAlpine, who being back in a Chevrolet, was putting the equipment to good use.

Marnie Roxy who had wanted extra autonomy in running her entry, came to a formal agreement with Kayleigh McAlpine to spin out the two Chevrolets of Roxy and Koffing into a new masthead called Purple Rampage, although they were still operating in the same building. Really this new venture was little more than a name change; though it did mean that McAlpine didn't have to worry about so many details. It is hard to say whether or not it made any difference.

The #3 Chevrolet was the fastest through the speed trap going into Turn 1 and was the only car in the field to touch 241mph. The fastest speed at the beginning of the run simply could not last though, as time and tyres wore on. McAlpine's Chevrolet was in the end a sitting duck when it came to trying to defend against Yankovic who took more than half a second per lap out of the gap over the course of the last six laps.

Yankovic simply got a better run out of Turn 5 and came down the hill like a slingshot. That and the fact that Jean-Luc Pikachu's Toyota which standing in 33rd place and could have acted as a baulk, meant that it ended up being a matter of self preservation on lap 97 of 97, which is why McAlpine didn't turn down the track to defend second place. That and the fact that moving at 219mph at that point, would have forseeable unforseen circumstances.



To suggest that this race was a dominant performance is to sell it short. In the absence of any cautions, it meant that the lead which Jack Raymond accumulated at the start, was never brought to heel. The #88 Telecom Holden joins a very rare club of winning pole, leading every single lap, winning the fastest lap, and winning the race.

The closest that anyone ever got to Raymond's Holden, was the distance of inches that Bernie Bernie maintained at the start of the race. After the start of the race, The only thing that anyone saw was the blue tail and orange deck wing, fading off into the distance. The margin of victory at the end of the race was 29 seconds; which meant that he was comfortably passing backmarkers.

The Holden of Bernie Bernie, donning Holden badges this season didn't actively play the role of tail gunner at the beginning of the race, though he was under constant attack from twice champion Al Yankovic. Bernie would only surrender second place in the only round of pitstops at the half way mark.

The biggest mover in the field was Marnie Roxy, who having qualified a lowly 23rd only made her way forwards all day. The amount of radio chatter from the #960 Chevrolet was minimal as she would take two or three laps to size up a potential over taking move and then execute it.

Points Awarded Round 3:

15 - Jack Raymond
10 - Al Yankovic
8 - Kayleigh McAlpine
6 - Bernie Bernie
4 - Donkey Kong
3 - Marnie Roxy
2 - Dr George Claw
1 - Dr Ivo Robotnik

Top 20 After 4 Rounds:

40 Jack Raymond
18 Al Yankovic
15 Mario Mario
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Jean-Luc Pikachu
13 Robie Robie
12 Bernie Bernie
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Kane McKane
8 Kayleigh McAlpine
5 Konata Izumi
5 Marnie Roxy
4 Hatsune Miku
4 Strong Bad
4 Donkey Kong
3 Patrick Mann
3 Asuka Langley
3 Sticks Baja
3 Tse Sakamoto
3 Chloe Ankha


Round 5 will be at Three Sevens Speedway in Japan, on the 27th of Feb.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 5 - Three Sevens Speedway

Nestled into a natural amphitheatre in the hills near Tamagoyama, Three Sevens Speedway is a monument to what happens when people have too much money. The speedway which was built in the 19U0s was designed to attract stock car racing to Japan but very much failed to do so. The company which built it abandoned it and most of the advert hoardings were gradually stolen and removed. It now hosts cafe series on the world stage and The Goof which can bring 40-odd cars to a venue, is a good fit.



Works Chevrolets locked out the first row, with Hedgehog taking the pole and Arbuckle Jr on the outside. This round at Three Sevens Speedway marks this highest place the Ugly has qualified in his sort career and the only place forward from here, is the very front. Marnie Roxy sat behind Hedgehog in third and she got the best start of everyone, slinging the #960 deep into Turn 1 and made the slide job work going into Turn 2.

Running the #78 as a Team UZKA fourth entry, Strong Bad was able to procure sponsorship from the Islandic Wårm Onës brewery. Their patented warm brewing process to deliberately make warm beer, is curiously appropriate for a nation which spends most of its time frozen in extended winters.

Strong Bad qualified the #78 Falcon in fourth and being on the outside, couldn't find a way to break into the lower lane, but eventually used the ample power of the Coyote V8 to hang onto the back bumper of his team principal Al Yankovic for a while. That early period at the front would be the highest that he ever found himself in the field; when towards the end of the race his inexperience in tyre management left him a sitting duck and he could only manage a tenth place and out of the points.

What could have been a pot boiler very quickly went cold as Roxy upon taking the lead, found that two-time champion Al Yankovic went with her and the opening group very quickly formed into a single file. Roxy's early lead was actually the best that she could do and as the race wore on, her hopes here slowly worn away. She would only manage fifth by the end of the day.

Yankovic for his efforts fared not much better. He did actually pass Marnie Roxy for the lead on lap 12 but she refused to let him get too far ahead; with the crafty Galarian hanging behind in the draft and making Yankovic's Falcon FH do the work. She would retake the lead on lap 26 and although Yankovic hung around for a bit, he could do no better than eighth and claim that last solitary point.




Yankovic led the race up until the appropriately numbered lap 62, when the first round of green flag pitstops came around. He was beaten off of pit lane by Morgan Inkling, Walter Kronkyet, and Miles Prower; who all took just the outside tyres, while he took four.

Inkling would sit out the front for extended periods of time and her Mazda 989 looked solid. Kronkyet was able to keep in sight of her but being too far behind her to make use of any kind of draft, the number passing opportunities that he had would be nil.

And so it was through the second round of pit stops as well. By lap 125, the field had more or less spaced itself evenly around the 1 mile venue. Hochi Samyang spun her Chevrolet on lap 97 but as nobody else was involved and she scooted into the pits, no caution was put out. Dr Ivo Robotnik's car shat itself in a cloud of blue smoke; which either indicated some kind of gasket problem or other hose issue. Jessie Musashi was given a rough up by Greg Rellings; which bent the front toe link on the Chevrolet and the #2 machine found an early end and had to be parked behind the wall.

The outcome of the race was spun on its head on lap 153 when Go Mifune after a bout of abject impatience, decided to bump Chloe Ankha in the rear right quarter panel. This had the effect of turning her at right angles up the racetrack and into the path of the following pack.

"I'm upside-down. I'm upside-down. He turned me. That scummy little peasant turned me. His face is going to get an appointment with my claws after this."
- Chloe Ankha

Her stricken Toyota was firstly tagged by Claude De Rouge's #11 Elf Chevrolet and then absolutely thumped by Mario Mario's Holden. This brought out the caution and finally with the field bunched up again, the race that the fans were hoping to see would be on.

On the restart with Inkling holding the pole, a train formed up on the bottom lane and she took the elevator to the basement in a hurry. Kronkyet had managed to find drafting help from Prower, Gourdo and Arbuckle Jr. who was enjoying a mid-race recovery. By lap 200, the field had again spread out and the running order was Kronkyet, Prower, Gourdo, Cornelius who had found long run speed in his Holden, Yankovic and Sasquini.



A late caution came out on lap 223 of 250, when Eggatha Robotnik who was being pinned to the bottom of the racetrack through Turn 1 by Kerrod Edumundson, ran out of road to turn the car in at Turn 2 and both of them looped into front of a relatively empty track. Only Dr George Claw, Miles Prower and Robie Robie were immediately affected; with the latter of the three collecting a stripe from scraping the wall coming out of Turn 2.

This caused a reracking of the field and practically everyone cut a mad dash to pit line to grab four tyres. Three Sevens Speedway unlike a lot of venues chews up both front tyres, as the insides of the corners are paved with rumble strips.

The biggest winner of the confusion was Morgan Inkling who gained 9 spots in the pits and pipped Walter Kronkyet to the line at the exit of pit lane. Behind them were Marnie Roxy, Miles Prower and Bruno Gourdo.

Following the restart, Prower latched onto the back of Inkling and pushed her forward, while Kronkyet was left to out to dry on the outside as Gourdo and Roxy formed a second lane in what would be the sucker hole. By the time they got to Turn 3, Gourdo was on the outside of Inkling and Roxy was right behind.

Gourdo had set his car up to roll higher through Turn 3 and this made all the difference over the next few laps as Inlking tried in vain to protect the bottom. Although she could protect track position, she could not roll out of Turn 3 as quickly as Gourdo and on lap 239, he gained sufficiently enough speed across the line and through Turn 1, that Inkling had no reply. By lap 241, she again had her hands full trying to keep out Walter Kronkyet but his car was not as tuned to the conditions as Gourdo's.

Miles Prower just edged out Marnie Roxy at the line for fourth place and the level of satisfaction between the two couldn't have been more stark. Roxy though that a race win may be have been possible but Prower who bobbled around from 2nd to 22nd, was just happy to be in the points.

There was no change at the top of the season standings as the top four all drew a blank. Jack Raymond's lead is safe for now.

Points Awarded Round 5:

15 - Bruno Gourdo
10 - Morgan Inkling
8 - Walter Kronkyet
6 - Miles Prower
4 - Marnie Roxy
3 - Ugly Arbuckle Jr.
2 - Asuka Langley
1 - Henri Cornelius


Top 20 After 5 Rounds:

40 Jack Raymond
18 Al Yankovic
15 Mario Mario
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Jean-Luc Pikachu
15 Bruno Gourdo
13 Robie Robie
12 Bernie Bernie
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Kane McKane
10 Walter Kronkyet
10 Morgan Inkling
9 Marnie Roxy
8 Kayleigh McAlpine
6 Miles Prower
6 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
5 Asuka Langley
5 Konata Izumi
4 Hatsune Miku
4 Strong Bad

Round 6 will be held at the Monster Mile in Dover on the 20th of March.

 

[Jebrown]

Well, not the results I was hoping for, but at least my man Bandit is still in the top ten. Also, I'm thinking about doing my own Goof Series loosely based on the V8 Supercar Series...you know, just to keep the globe balanced. Wouldn't want it spinning off of its axis any more than it already is now would we.

 

[Rollo75]

Also, I'm thinking about doing my own Goof Series loosely based on the V8 Supercar Series...

Make sure you build that lore deep.

Also:
"If you had fun, you won."
- ZiggyM

YEAH!

 

[Rollo75]

Round 6 - The Monster Mile At Dover​

Unlike The Lady In Black who is too tough to tame, the Monster Mile at Dover can be tamed but it's just that the Monster can and does fight back without warning or reason. 250 Miles faced the teams this weekend and it became instantly obvious that the fastest cars to have where the Ford Falcons. Six of them occupied the top ten in qualifying, with three of the remaining four being Mazdas. Only Koffing who had somehow found enough speed in a lap which even surprised him, could sneak into the top ten in another brand.



20X0 champion Ellie McIllan took the pole and from the start of the start when Al Yankovic moved into the bottom land to provide some kind of screen, this looked like it was going to be another one of those benefits for the #74, just at it had been for the famed #75 all those seasons ago.

Yankovic moved into second, followed by both Heeler boys, with Robie Robie, Stanley Spidaski and then Kurt Langer to make it a top six Ford sweep by the end of lap 3. The first riser through the field was Ugly Arbuckle who had started the run with an overly tight car but as the laps wore on, both the car and the track came back to him. He brought with him Ricardo Sasquini up the order and Oglivy Hedgehog who was ordered to love forward to help.

McIllan couldn't really extend her lead though. On lap 30, Kerrod Edmundson scraped the wall coming out of Turn 2 and his car started chucking rubbish in the track. On lap 48 Hochi Samyang turned Eggatha Robotnik as they were fighting for Froot Loops in a cereal bowl. On lap 68, Sticks Baja exploded a tyre and this being about when most the field were looking to change tyres anyway, caused a mass exodus off the track and into the pits.

With the field reracked and stacked for the third time, tempers began to run hot even as tyres ran cold. On lap 73 of 250 and under the third lap back under green flag racing, this happened:



The utter madness and intensity of the consequences can not be stated by one simple photograph.

Eillie McIllan had been holding the top of the racetrack coming out of Turn 2 pretty reliably. Robie Robie who had been running a car and a half back had been threatening to dive under her through 1 and 2 and then make a play going into 3. Ugly Arbuckle who to this point has never actually led a lap in his first season, tried to split them going through Turn 2.

Robie washed up out of Turn 2, hadn't realised that Arbuckle was actually far closer to McIllan than he thought and the two of them janked the rear left quarter of McIllan's Falcon. This turned McIllan across the nose of Arbuckle, sent the #9 and #20 up the track and all three of them became pinball bumpers for the following peloton of 29 cars.

Whether or not a given car survived the chaos, was entirely dependent on where they were on the racetrack and who was spinnning out in front of them at that particular moment in time. The biggest winner of the multiball lottery was Konata Izumi, who in the lone Datsun took the elevator to glory from 33rd to the race lead in a matter of two laps. She would have to pit later on in the race and surrender the lead again but to finish third for the day was a more than welcome result.

With Bandit Heeler's car basically junked in the mayhem, this left Stripe in second place to try and claim back the lead from Izumi. He dutifully did that on lap 80 and thus began a series of lead changes.

Heller sitting in the lead, found that his tyres were going off and rather than face the challenge of Izumi, he peeled off on lap 154. Izumi who was now back in the lead, tried to go long on her second set of tyres and so she stayed out until lap 168; by which stage everyone else had pitted and her advantage was being eaten into again.

Koffing was in the lead when Patrick Mann tagged the rear corner of Antony D'Tigrette and this brough out yet another caution. Heeler then reacquired the lead as everyone scrambled to make what could have been their last set of adjustments.



Stripe Heeler should have had a fait accompli for the run home expect that starting on the outside, he was unable to run to the bottom and defend the line against Kayleigh McAlpine. McAlpine who has now won several race through making track position stick at crucial moments, was not going to let this one go. She followed Yankovic deep into the corner at Turn 1 and although he may have tried to block her, she pushed him up the track and into the path of heeler.

With the lead now sorted, attention turned to Mario Mario who was rapidly coming upwards through the order. He had already proven back in Round 2 that he wasn't here to just make up the numbers and as the race wore on, coming from tenth and not quite a full lap behind, he had already over taken Robie, Mann, Baja, Pikachu and was quickly arriving at Izumi and Heeler.

Izumi put up some resistance as she tried to hold out Mario but she would end up being baulked by Spidalski, coming out of Turn 2. By the time that Mario had Heeler in his sights, Heeler was already reporting a vibration and not running to set lap times. Heeler gave away second spot on lap 222.

By now Mario only had McAlpine ahead of him but with the field thinning out and only cars looping and hitting a wall as the only chance of bringing out a caution, it looked dire. Not even when Koffing spun twice coming out of Turn 4 did this bring out the caution as he had done it all by himself and was pointing back in the direction of travel.

McAlpine won by nearly the the length of the front straight over Mario and Izumi and she was effervescent after the race:

"Ye cannae scoff a' summat when it gifts ye the race win, now cannay? We had a good run fer most o' t' afternoon an' when tha' green arsed Falcon held up the blue one, we were home free. Total props to me crew chief Victor, who held us out to pit when we did; 'cause otherwise we were toast."
- Kayleigh McAlpine to U62-TV.

On the other hand, Stripe Heeler was less that ebullient when asked what he thought of the afternoon:

"Biscuits!"
- Stripe Heeler to U62-Tv.

Jack Raymond is still comfortably ahead after six rounds; with Mario and McAlpine starting to make a dent in that lead.

Points Awarded Round 6:

15 - Kayleigh McAlpine
10 - Mario Mario
8 - Konata Izumi
6 - Koffing
4 - Patrick Mann
3 - Jean-Luc Pikachu
2 - Stripe Heeler
1 - Robie Robie

Top 20 After 6 Rounds:

40 Jack Raymond
25 Mario Mario
23 Kayleigh McAlpine
18 Al Yankovic
18 Jean-Luc Pikachu
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
14 Robie Robie
13 Konata Izumi
12 Bernie Bernie
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Kane McKane
10 Walter Kronkyet
10 Morgan Inkling
9 Marnie Roxy
7 Patrick Mann
6 Miles Prower
6 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
6 Koffing
5 Asuka Langley

Round 7 will in fact be held at Cardboardland as previously indicated in the calendar. Round 7 will be held on 2 April.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 7 - Cardboardland Speedway Cardboard Box Prize

As the name suggests, Cardboardland Speedway is made entirely out of cardboard and was built on the ashen plains of Kansas. Having said that, buiding a racetrack out of cardboard was never a sensible idea.

It rained in the week before The Goof arrived at Cardboardland and the surface started to buckled and warp. Fortunately as Cardboardland Speedway is made entirely out of cardboard, a new track surface was laid over the top, sticky taped and glued down and then a new layer of sticky back plastic was laid over the top of that.
The big worry was that as the track dried out, that the ends of the various pieces of cardboard which formed the roadbase would begin to curl and rip up. Another layer of cardboard and sticky back sticky back plastic was laid over the top just to be sure; after Friday practice and the track looked stable.



Fresh off the back of her race win at Dover, Kayleigh McAlpine took the pole, with championship leader Jack Raymond sitting menacingly on the outside. Behind them, were Patrick Mann and Miles Prower, Chloe Anka and Hatsune Miku made up the next two rows for a Toyota lockout.
The Toyotas hadn't been the fastest through the traps all weekend but they'd all been consistently close. One lap of raw speed however, is not the same as 188 laps though.

Chloe Ankha blitzed the start with a amazing push between the two leaders and both McAlpine and Raymond were surprised to see her there. Nevertheless, McAlpine persisted as she held onto the back of the Toyota in front. Raymond was quite content to let the two ladies fight it out ahead of him, while he sat in third and in the draft. Every lap that they were up front and punching a hole in the air for him, was one more lap on which he could save fuel. Behind them, the two Holdens of Mario Mario and Kane McKane also held rank and Hochi Samyang found her way onto the back of a four car Holden train.

The two different models of Holden behave quite differently. The VJ of the factory has a pointier and flatter nose which means that it is more aerodynamic but the VH of Mario Mario creates more front end downforce. Cardboardland Speedway as a track which is both very big and which is mostly made of gentle turning, is an awful compromise between speed and handling.

Cars tended to get strung out as a run went along and it would only really be cautions which brought the field back together again. When Dr Ivo Robotnik shaved the wall on lap 43, although there was practically nothing left on track, the marshalls threw a caution anyway if for no other reason than to give the crowd something different to look at. Robotnik's car apart from a crushed quarter-panel suffered minimal damage and his pride was equally left untouched.

After a flurry of pitstops, Kayleigh McAlpine won the race off of pit row; with Ankha having fractionally overshot her pit box. She was immediately followed by the train of Holdens and then Ankha at the end of that. Once the green flag dropped to send the field off into the wide brown yonder, McAlpine just kind of disappeared out front and began reeling off laps.

The excitement of this race, if there was any to be had, lay all the back in 20th position as Patrick Mann and former team mate Robie Robie eyed each other off. Mann personally had a fairly fruitless day at the office but he was quite happy to see that three members of Team Yellow Toyota were within striking distance of the front. Robie however, was royally annoyed that quite literally no Ford team had managed to work out how to make the XJ Falcon sing as sweetly as it should. Neither Team UZKA, nor the Heeler Brothers, not McIllan Racing were even close to the front all day. This 188 lap race did not have a lot of lead changes at all.



Three laps from home on lap 185, the result was baked in.

While chasing ninth, Tse Sakamoto turned across the bow of Patrick Mann; turning the yellow Toyota across the nose of Al Yankovic. Yankovic with nowhere to go was crunched straight into the back straight wall and Bandit Heeler ran right into his tail. Meanwhile, Mann was spent spinning and Ricardo Sasquini who pulled out of the queue suddently found his front windscreen full of yellow.

The first car not to pile into this spinning mass of insanity was Dr George Claw, who took evasive measures and spun harmlessly across the shiny green cardboard and into relative safety. He would finish a paltry tenth and outside the points.

"What the hell is this? We have last year's champion driving like an entitled prig and he acts like a weasley rookie. It's enough to make me think about giving the game away."
- Patrick Mann, to U62-TV

"How do you feel about comments from Patrick that he thinks you're driving like 'driving like an entitled prig'?"
"He's probably just mad. Nobody wants a crashed car. I moved; he didn't lift; we turned. It happened."
- Patrick Mann, to U62-TV

As Kayleigh McAlpine was by this stage a full three seconds ahead of Bob Nikoban, then her lead was secure. After crossing the line and forming up behind the pacecar, there would be no more laps run in anger and McAlpine was free to take the victory in peace. The Toyotas of Nikoban and Ankha hadn't really fallen lower than about sixth all day long and so their place in the train was thoroughly expected.

Laps 186, 187 and 188 would be completed behind the pacecar; which meant that the margin of victory of 0.2 seconds was actually the closest that anyone had got to the back bumper of McAlpine's car in 190 miles. When U62 Speedweek's host James Burwood put this to SquawkBox to ask the general public if they thought this was a good race, it returned a result of just 7%.



It was the period before the final caution which was the most interesting part of the race. The last 30 laps of the race, saw McAlpine tear off into the distance but with an interesting dynamic play out behind her. The two Blue Cat Holdens of Raymond and McKane were holding fast in second and third but both of them had been set up tight for the long run. As such, in order to preserve the outside tyres, they needed to run a slightly higher line than they otherwise would have done.

On the other hand, the Team Yellow Toyotas which had practically thrown away the beginning of the race, all made chassis adjustments and decided to loosen up their cars.

Miles Prower in the #7 Burger Rings entry ran as hare and made it all the way to fourth place, before his loose condition caused him to almost lose the car going through Turn 4 but this was saved by bruising the entire right hand side of the car into the fence.

This left Bob Nikoban and Chloe Ankha to try and chase down the leaders and Nikoban with the attutude of blowing all care to the four winds, started putting in fastest lap after fastest lap. Nikoban put his 1250kg motor car on the verge of almost always breaking traction, as though he were driving a sprint car on dirt. This was made all the more comical by him calling out his own spotting notes over the radio and singing show tunes.
In contrast, Ankha who stayed very close, drove a precision run; with very little steering input at all. The #53 hugged the bottom line as though it were glued to the marked line.

As Raymond steadily faded back to seventh, McKane who had been a little bit more circumspect at the beginning of the run was able to maintain speed for longer. He wasn't able to hold off the challenge from Nikoban and by the time that Ankha was on his rear bumper, the caution came out and he no longer needed to.

Thus, the story of second and third was far more interesting, than the second dominant performance in a row from Kayleigh McAlpine who in two races has brought Raymond's advantage down to just a nose.

"If I had another three laps, I would have got her. Sometimes the path to history is different to... whatever the hell the path to not history is. I was trying to be inspirational. I didn't work. I want a muffin."
- Bob Nikoban, to WITZ Radio 620am

Points awarded Round 7:

15 - Kayleigh McAlpine
10 - Bob Nikoban
8 - Chloe Ankha
6 - Kane McKane
4 - Hochi Samyang
3 - Strong Bad
2 - Jack Raymond
1 - Claude de Rouge

Top 20 After 7 Rounds

42 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
25 Mario Mario
18 Al Yankovic
18 Jean-Luc Pikachu
16 Kane McKane
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
14 Robie Robie
13 Konata Izumi
12 Bernie Bernie
11 Chloe Ankha
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Walter Kronkyet
10 Morgan Inkling
10 Bob Nikoban
9 Marnie Roxy
7 Patrick Mann
7 Strong Bad
6 Miles Prower


Round 8 will be held in two weeks' time at the Illinois State Fairgrounds on 16 Apr.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 8 - The Illinois State UnFairgrounds

Round 8 was held at the Illinois State Fairgrounds, just outside of Springfield, IL. The Goof was slated to arrive at Knoxville but owing a week of rain, the Illinois State Fairgrounds played as backup. This one mile dirt speedway was also rated heavy due to the amount of rain which had recently fallen and in some respects, the track had only opened up one groove at most, due to compacting of the clay way.



Mario Mario took the pole in what was expected to be another Holden benefit but he got bumped out of the way before the field even arrived at the first corner by Robie Robie, who was joined in quick time by Bandit Heeler who was also in a Ford.

The surprise packet of the opening few laps was the Team OSKO Mazda of Judge John Judd. Although this was his third season, the fact that he had survived The Great Cull meant that he was now in the rarefied atmosphere of racers who all wanted to go out and win races and championships, rather than merely the joy of going racing. Team OSKO have a contract with Levins Racing which essentially means that although they get current equipment, they still demand blank slates when it comes to ECU and engine mapping et cetera. Judd's team mate Morgan Inkling was hovering about the late teens but Judd found himself possibly for the first time within sight of the race leader.

For reasons of naivety, Judd was first bumped out of the way by Konata Izumi in the lone Datsun 500Z, squeezed up the track by Hochi Samyang, and then positively doored by Bandit Heeler who was impatient. Judd's run for the day would all come to naught as on lap 48, he tail-wagged into the wall coming out of turn 4 and lost all meaningful drive. The theory was that previous bumps had torn holes in the seals of the transaxle and some kind of junk had worked its way into the mechanism and began to sheer away at the gearing.

Hoping to pit out of sequence and get some king of undercut Mario Mario pitted on lap 74, but he was released back into really angry traffic. The next two takers were Hochi Samyang who tried to perform the same trick however, the #4 pit crew managed to completely botch the stop and she too lost out. This meant that Bandit Heeler inherited the lead and having seen the others fall back rapidly, he elected to pit like most of the field, on lap 83. Even then he lost the race off of pit row, were 20W9 Champion Ellie McIllan whose crew eyed off Heeler's, and Robie Robie who reclaimed the spot he had had on lap 1.



As the middle of the race settled down into a kind of swirling procession. McIllan fell back into the field, as did Robie Robie, and rising up were Kane McKane, Stripe Heeler and Jessie Musashi. Stripe Heeler in the #54 Blue Sky Mining Ford, absolutely did a number on his brother Bandit, when going into Turn 1, he turned him by bopping his rear quarter panel. Bandit harmlessly looped and ended up pointing in the right direction but no caution came out and he was relegated to 19th in the process.

On lap 105 Jessie Musashi in the #2 Rocket Industries Chevrolet made a flying move around the outside of Turns 3 and 4 and left Robie Robie both amused and bemused she she assumed the lead. Musashi had been brought on as a replacement for Michelle Oxford at the beginning of the season and really hadn't expected very much from the season at all. Now with a car that was capable of winning races and with track position, she was over the moon. She very credibly defended the lead against challenges from Robie, Heeler and then McKane but ultimately only lost the lead in the pits during the made scramble on lap 168. After which time, she spent a lot of time staring at the back of the #37 Target Holden before watching it slowly fade away into the distance.

Musashi like so many drivers late in the race, was helpless as Tse Sakamoto in the #58 Efini Mazda, benefitted from having made adjustments during the two pitstops and was now running the bottom with a car verging on loose but never quite getting there. McKane who had won the race off of pit row, was also one of many who had seen the green and orange Mazda skulk around the bottom like a shark on a mission. McKane realised that he had no hope of catching Sakamoto and assumed that the only way that he would best the man from Hiroshima would be if a caution came out.

It did.

One lap 222, Bandit Heeler had had enough. He had slipped down to eleventh place and was becoming increasingly frustrated with Miles Prower's Toyota in front of him. If he was going to advance into the points, he would have to take action. Having learned the trick from his own brother, Heeler bopped the rear quarter panel of Prower's Toyota but hadn't expected to hit him quite so hard.

The #7 Burger Rings Toyota walloped the fence and left pieces all over the racetrack. There was no way that this wasn't a caution and track crews collected more than a few handfuls of twisted metal as the field paraded around the bottom of the track. Prower was unhurt as the incident had happened at the rear of the car but Team Yellow Toyota Principal Patrick Mann, who saw the whole incident in front of him, decided apply his own swift justice and not for the first time, was Bandit Heeler turned and completed a loop. Fortuneately this didn't really send him that far back down the order as practically everyone came in for four fresh tyres and went back out again.



And so it came down to a 25 lap shootout between Tse Sakamoto and Kane McKane; with Stripe Heeler not far behind. Tyre wear was practically non-existent and with fuel loads dropping all the time, speeds proceded to inch marginally faster lap by lap.

Sakamoto had a better turning car which was on the verge of being loose and thus was able to hold the bottom of the racetrack. McKane had a tighter car but it could carry higher speeds; which meant that his best option was to rip the top of the track. Going around the top of the track though, is longer and therefore slower and if Sakamoto could clear traffic by going underit, then that traffic would be displaced to move higher and into McKane's path. This also had the effect of drawing him back into the clutches of Stripe Heeler, whose brother was still mired in ninth.

When Sakamoto bumped and pushed Arbuckle Jr in the #9 Chevrolet up the track, McKane had very little space to play with and biffed the orange Chevrolet's back bumper. He had to check up, which brought him back to bumper of Heeler; who in turn now had to fend of Jessie Musashi who had rapidly come up the order and was now in fourth. Behind them, Greg Rellings in the #52 Mazda and the sister car to Sakamoto's, was busy trying to find a way around Ellie McIllan. She had had a quietly brilliant afternoon; having qualified 20th and been extremely lucky with track position on the pitstops. Rellings though, had a car which was similarly setup to Sakamoto's and the situation up front, was playing out again. Rellings howver, was also under attack from Dr George Claw and Al Yankovic; which put the experience of six championship winning seasons in the back half of the points.

The race would come down to lap 250 and the final few corners, as Sakamoto was able to get the message to Kerrod Edmunson in the #23 Dr Pepper Mazda, to throw a block on McKane and the final gap as they crossed the line ended up being about fifteen car lengths. Stripe Heeler tried to run around the bottom to steal away second spot but managed to bog down and it all faded away. Rellings never did find a way around McIllan and Yankovic who may have had a chance, found that he had to defend the top against Claw who had never run it all race and suddenly tried to find one last burst of speed.

Sakamoto then, recorded his first win of the season and with the leaders in the championship drawing blanks again, the potential for who can still win the season, remains wide open.

Points Awarded Round 8:

15 - Tse Sakamoto
10 - Kane McKane
8 - Stripe Heeler
6 - Jessie Musashi
4 - Ellie McIllan
3 - Greg Rellings
2 - Al Yankovic
1 - Dr George Claw

Top 20 After 8 Rounds:

42 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
26 Kane McKane
25 Mario Mario
20 Al Yankovic
18 Jean-Luc Pikachu
18 Tse Sakamoto
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
14 Robie Robie
13 Konata Izumi
12 Bernie Bernie
11 Chloe Ankha
11 Stripe Heeler
10 Bandit Heeler
10 Walter Kronkyet
10 Morgan Inkling
10 Bob Nikoban
9 Marnie Roxy
7 Patrick Mann

Round 9 will be held at Steel Canyon in the State of Jefferson, in two weeks time.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 9 - Steel Canyon - Steel Skull 250

The State of Jefferson was added to the union on 4th July 1976. You may have missed it among the pomp and circumstance of the bicentennial but rest assured, it is a state. Jefferson however, remains in an undisclosed location somewhere near Nevada, has an undisclosed population, has never sent any Representative to the House, nor has sent any Senator to the Senate. It can not be telephoned. Mail is never sent there. It does not have the internet, nor radio or television stations of its own, and the entrances to it are heavily guarded on pain of death from Uncle Sam's finest. In short, it is difficult to find and even harder to get into. When a race is held in The State of Jefferson, the entire field arrives at a transfer station in Nevada, and the trains into the state are completely blacked out. Even when inside, there is no way to know where it is.

Nevertheless, it has a mile and a half speedway built entirely out of steel plate; with a spectating crowd of zero. The track is both famous and infamous for the sheer volume of equipment it tears up. Cars need to be fast enough to go around the track but the grip offered by steel plate is minimal. Walls do not align properly. Rivets in the roadway tear up tyres. Cars seemingly explode for no apparent reason, except you then realise that under car sparks turn them into moving grenades.

It is not impossble for even a 50 mile race, to be declared with zero finishers. In fact the only driver which looked forward to the Steel Skull 250, was Robie Robie because as a robot even if he died, he could be rebuilt and have all of his personality and memories ported to a new machine. One can not fear death if one was never truly alive to begin with.



"The Big One" is a thing that drivers fear at every race because it tears up equipment, reracks the field and that gives cause for this to happen again. Steel Canyon Raceway has a habit of causing multiple Big Ones until the field is so small that they do not happen. Rather than list out every driver whose car was torn up and spat out, it may be quicker to just tell the story of who was left.

Pole sitter Oglivy Hedgehog would soon fall victim to the track but the reason why the first caution came out happened way down the order. Bob Nikoban's Toyota had a rear tyre cut to shreads by the track itself coming out of Turn 2 and turned upwards and into the path of Robie Robie. The little yellow robot had nowhere to go and turned Nikoban back into the following traffic. He was then hit broadside by Asuka Soryu Langley and the two cars also turned into Roxy Marnie.

With the field reracked and stacked they got through exactly half a turn when Hedgehog's Chevrolet which had caught the elevator to the back to of the field, turned into the path of Morgan Inling's Mazda and this sent another dozen cars spiraling into the barriers.

Attempt three saw Al Yankovic fail to grab proper traction on the restart and he was ploughed into by yet more cars as an angry clump barreled through Turn 1 and out of the race. Attempt four lasted all of four laps until Eggatha Robotnik scraped up the wall at Turn 4, came to a screeching halt and the caution had to be thrown to clear he car from the track. At this stage Greg Rellings was veyr much unceremoniously rear-ended while trying to naviggate onto pit lane but rather than actually bother to bring the car to his pit stall, he decided to keep the engine running and stop just shy of the bay. By not actually stopping, the car would never be repaired and therefore never start the repair clock.

By this stage, the Heeler Brothers had worked out that if they just hung around at the back of the field, then they could likely get at least one car home; provided they didn't try too hard. This possibly may have worked except that Stripe Heeler in an effort to avoid yet another chaotic moving pile of twisted metal and tyre smoke, ran headlong into the Chevrolet of Antony D'Tigrette who had suffered some kind of mechanical issue.



The next major major Big One which helped to bake in the result, was the one on Lap 78 which helped to eliminate most of the field. From this pile of nonsense in which Dr Ivo Robotnik turned Dr George Claw for the simple crime of being in the way, the field was reduced to just eight moving cars, if you include Rellings who stretched the definition of that word to breaking point.

This left Claw who had been rear-ended, Spidalski who was now suffering from all kinds of vibration, Jean-Luc Pikachu who had been turned across the nose of Jack Raymond but somehow survived, Ellie McIllan whose black Falcon was now topping out at 6500 revs before the red line meter went psycho, Koffing who was reporting electrical gremlins and a pile of error codes, Bandit Heeler who now had a giant gash down both sides of his car, and Konata Izumi who had somehow managed to still have a completely clean car.

Izumi then brought out her own caution by herself by looping the Datsun on lap 103 and banging the tail of the car into the inside guardrail coming out of Turn 2. Thus, from lap 105 until 168, we had one of the most intruguing end games fro a race. Izumi would reel out a little bit of a lead but then lose it again as being out in clean air with a busted up car, acted more like a giant parachute. Heeler and Claw sat in behind each other and Spidalski found that his Falcon decided to go into limp-home mode. Telemetry gave no indication what was wrong and he struggled in vain to restart the computer to find out what happened.

Ellie McIllan was somehow able to think around he rev-limit problem and tried to coax the car around in fourth gear by lifting and coasting. She lost half a second a lap but the Texaco team worked out that her tyre wear was nothing like it should have been and that her fuel consumption was way under. She could afford to lose as much as a second a lap and watch as everyone else pitted while she didn't have to. The hope for McIllan Racing would be green flag conditions to the end of the race because any restart would bunch up the field again and her relative time advantage would be eaten away.

It was.



After lap 145, there were only seven cars still classified as running. Of those six, Spidalski was losing laps at a rapid rate; owing to the need to return to fill the oil tank with more oil. Rellings who was many tens of laps down, sat patienly just shy of his pit stall; aware that if he actually came to a halt in the pit, that the repair clock would be started and he would be likely out of the race. That left five cars with any possibe chance of winning, of which three were previous Goof Champions but McIllan could only post a top speed of aboiut 130mph and as soon as any restart happened, she dove to the inside and was passed by all the rest before she got to Turn 1.

Yet another caution came out on lap 150 when Heeler who was trying to go around the outside of Izumi, turned the Datsun across his nose and because she was facing backwards, the yellows came out. Dr George Claw who was one lap down, passed underneath them and so by the time the Pace Car came out and picked up Jean-Luc Pikachu as the new leader, Dr Claw had already picked his dropped lap back up and was sitting in fifth.

On the restart though, Heeler who sat in first place was baulked by Spidalski who had an ill-handling car and rather than cause another wreck he checked up; which allowed Dr Claw to scoot to the bottom and pass both Heeler and Jean-Luc Pikachu whose patience was now beginning to pay dividends. Claw quietly drove off into the distance and with only seven moving cars on the track, the potential for another big one to take out even more of the field was exhausted.

Claw brough home the field with an engine that itself was beginning to show signs of trouble, by spewing forth its own cloud of foulness behind it. Pikachu rapidly closed on the last lap but was unable to bridge the 4 second lead.

"We knew beforehand that this was not a race of speed but resiliance. It should have been evident from the beginning that charging to the front is not how to best this place. This place is worse that the Lady in Black, for she only wants to defeat you, this place wants to humiliate you."
- Dr. George Claw, to U62-TV.

"This was the easiest two points I ever picked up."
- Greg Rellings, to U62-TV.

"This place is awful.
I hated every second.
Take it off the tour!"
- Jean-Luc Pikachu, to Pallet Town Haiku Radio DAB+

Thus, Dr. George Claw will walk away from this place having given his 20X3 campaign the electro-cardio start that it needed; where it previously had been a dead corpse of a season.

Points Awarded Round 10:

15 - Dr George Claw
10 - Jean-Luc Pikachu
8 - Bandit Heeler
6 - Konata Izumi
4 - Ellie McIllan
3 - Stanley Spidalski (-8 laps)
2 - Greg Rellings (-81 laps)
1 - Koffing (DNF -22 laps)

Top 20 After 9 Rounds:

42 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
26 Kane McKane
25 Mario Mario
20 Al Yankovic
19 Konata Izumi
18 Tse Sakamoto
18 Bandit Heeler
17 Dr George Claw
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
14 Robie Robie
12 Bernie Bernie
11 Chloe Ankha
11 Stripe Heeler
10 Walter Kronkyet
10 Morgan Inkling
10 Bob Nikoban
10 Ellie McIllan

Round 10 will be held at Kelley Lake, Alaska in two weeks' time (May 14); marking the end of this quarter of races on five entirely different surfaces - Concrete, Clay, Cardboard, Steel and Ice.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 10 - The Pacific Arctica Cup

Sometimes there is an idea so crazy that only the crazy will think it a good idea. Kelley Lake Speedway which is a two-and-a-half-mile superspeedway made of ice, is one such crazy idea. Of course, The Goof would have to return. The last time that the teams were here was three years ago and the current Brilliant 15 chassis shares little with the General Norton 55 cars which were here back them.

Friday practice was mainly about making sure that the drivers could get a handle on the place and much to their excitement, this track has no obvious groove; which means that they could in theory go six and seven wide through the turns. Tt was pretty obvious that the Toyotas were able to bring the most power and traction to the track; with all six of them topping the time charts on Friday. By the time that Sunday rolled around, the intrigue would be who could take the fight to Team Yellow Toyota whom it must be said has been something of a sleeping giant this season.



Miles Prower scored the pole on Saturday and he was sent out as the hare for the rest of the field to chase down. The #7 Burger Rings Toyota looked comically fast but it very soon came to light that being by yourself out front left you vulnerable to attack. With no help from drafting partners, although Prower led the field at the end of lap 1, he no longer did by the end of lap 2.

The opening part of the race very quickly degenerated into a game of who could find friends the quickest and it also soon followed that friends were found whereever you could find them. The rest of Team Yellow Toyota would gradually coalesce into a moving train before Bob Nikoban's #27 Dark-Time Pizza entry suffered a fuel pickup problem and he pulled off into the pits on lap 6. Hatsune Miku in the #00 Goodsmile Toyota tried in vain to catch up to the Toyota train and had to be content with fighting in the unruly melee out the back.
The Chevrolets of Hedgehog, Arbuckle, and d'Tigrette latched onto each other and their surge through the field was halted by the Mazdas of Sakamoto, Edmundson and Rellings, who were trying to form their own chain; and inadvertantly released the Team OSKO Mazdas to mount their own challenge.

Of particular note this early in the race was Asuka Soryu, who having no real help from anyone, acted like a rogue warrior and placed her #02 Carlsberg Chevrolet in really annoying places. She would lead laps 11, 12, 13, and 14 before too realising that being out front and punching your own hole in the air was the least efficient way around the track. She would gradually fall back though, as longer strategy was the order of the day; to be best placed to win.



At the halfway mark, this was beginning to look like a Toyota benefit race. Team Yellow Toyota after sending out Miles Prower as the hare, was now in the ascendency with three of its hounds having successfully chased it down and leading the pack 1-2-3. As tyre wear was both non-existent and tyre temperature literally impossible, this meant that the biggest driver of performance was how effectively a car could get into the draft and stay behind someone else. Team Yellow Toyota controlled this excellently as they sent one car to the front and then rotated the lead between themselves for 20 laps.

Temperatures hovered in thw mid minus teens; which meant that cars were producing way more than their usual 600 horsepower and as Goodyear was forced to bring studded tyres to Alaska, this translated into top speeds of more than 250mph down the two straights. The fastest way around the track was not to lead but to be either the second or third car in a train. Immediately behind Team Yellow Toyota though, Team OSKO had organised their two Mazda 989s and had charged up through the field to find themselves in the top six. Their charge was only halted by either Garfield Arbuckle Jr. whose father was acting as spotter for him, and Team Yellow Toyota itself.

Immediately behind the front group of cars and out of the points, Al Yankovic, Dr George Claw and Ellie McIllan were having a three corner battle for nuthing more than bragging rights. For any of them to fight to the front, they would have to fight through Marnie Roxy, Claude de Rouge and Konata Izumi. Yankovic preferred to hold a higher line and roll out of the two sets of turns but this was longer. Claw's car could hold the bottom but he kept on being pinned by McIllian who used her black Texaco Ford like a barge. Eventually Claw would break free but the time he'd spent squabbling with Yankovic and McIllan, just added to the time up the road that he would have to make up.

Apart from a few cars looping it in either Turn 1 or 3, there was nothing really major to speak of in terms of cautions. The only cautions of the race came on lap 35 when Mario Mario's car started blowing black smoke and limped home to the pits (where it was placed behind the wall), and on lap 79 when Hochi Samyang looped her Holden and got stuck on the lip at the top of the track in Turn 1. That caution effectively gave everyone a free pitstop at about the time that they were to come in anyway.



Lapped traffic would ultimately determine who won this race. Team Yellow Toyota while controlling the front, could not controll the train of cars which had lined up behind them. This included Team OSKO, a few loose Chevrolets, and Jack Raymond who had been following Kane McKane who was now a lap down. The leaders were unfortuneate in that they came across Bandit Heeler and Walter Kronkyet who were both a lap down.

They tried to move out of the way but when you have no real groove and a track that allows for seven wide racing, there was nowhere to run to. Heeler's inadertant baulk on Chloe Ankha who happened to be leading the Team Yellow Toyota train at the time, caused everyone behind to scatter. Arbuckle Jr. and Anhka scarpered to the bottom, Patrick Mann went to the high side but came to rear bumper of Kronkyet, and Sticks Baja ended up being blocked twice.

Judge John Judd in the #14 green and grey Team OSKO Mazda, shoved Morgan Inkling through a hole coming out of Turn 4 and that extra push gave her as much as a 10mph advantage. He would still be unable to pass through the hole himself but Inkling found herself in the clear and with only the line in front of her. This was it. This was vindication. This was the culmination of four years of effort, all finally paying dividends.

And then...
The fuel light came on...
The #41 Mazda on the verge of winning a maiden victory suddenly faced the whole thing being taken away at the last minute.

"What do I do?"
"Chuck it in neutral. Angel gear it home."

The margin of victory ended up being 0.19 seconds; which was still 58 feet but still enough to give Morgan Inkling a scare.

"We've done it. We've done it. Is it real? Have we really done it? I can't believe we've done it!"
- Morgan Inkling, crossing the line.

This maiden victory for Morgan Inkling catapults her to sixth in the standings and with chance of challenging for a championship.

"You try and try and try and fail and fail and fail and you feel like bashing your head against the wall. Well today we can finally say that 'we've done it!' and put all of those doubts to sleep. I have to thank Nigel Levins at Mazda Motorsport for helping us with so much for so long and at long last, we can finally prove that we were worth the effort. I have to thank the little inklings and everyone at Team OSKO who've spent many sleepless night staring at this thing... this one's for you."
- Morgan Inlking, to U62-TV

Points Awarded Round 10:

15 - Morgan Inkling
10 - Chloe Ankha
8 - Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
6 - Sticks Baja
4 - Patrick Mann
3 - Judge John Judd
2 - Marnie ROxy
1 - Claude de Rouge

Top 20 After 10 Rounds:

42 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
26 Kane McKane
25 Mario Mario
25 Morgan Inkling
21 Chloe Ankha
20 Al Yankovic
19 Konata Izumi
18 Tse Sakamoto
18 Bandit Heeler
17 Dr George Claw
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
14 Robie Robie
14 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
12 Bernie Bernie
11 Stripe Heeler
11 Marnie Roxy
11 Patrick Mann

Round 11 will be held on 5th June at Spa-Francorchamps.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 11 - Spa-Francorchamps - Belgian TT

With the half-way point of the season now behind us and with Jack Raymond's early lead now under fierce danger of being challenged and eroded, a tone of almost seriousness haunted the paddock in the glorious Belgian sunshine. Ford had decided that their Coyote program needed a mid-season update, Toyota decided to debut an all new 5UZ engine, and Mazda also made tweaks to their Skyactiv-8 engine.



Yankovic's charge to the front was a short one. It really only involved pulling to the outside of the track at Stavelot and then driving around the outside of pole sitter Hatsune Miku and Go Mifune who were both cautious and didn't want to bin their cars at the first corner. Yankovic who had already pre-gamed the first corner in his mind, simply took a wider and faster line and that was the end of it. By the time he entered Eau Rouge on lap 1, any chance that anyone had of stopping him was pretty well much gone.

This left a battle which raged behind and which was not at all civilised. By about lap 2, it became pretty obvious that some drivers were on two-stop strategies. Among these were Kayleigh McAlpine, "Ugly" Arbuckle Jr. and Greg Rellings. They very quickly fought their way through the first few half dozen cars and formed their own little battle pack.

Arbuckle Jr. in his first season has been rather sensible. He has not as yet done anything really rash and has thus far kept the #9 Halfords machine out of trouble. He found that as his car was similar to peformance as McAlpine's, he could shadow he and maintain similar laptimes. What he would ultimately lack was the racecraft to know what to do if his line was being stolen and so by about lap 5, he was back on the end of this train.
Greg Rellings was sent out on a different strategy to Tse Sakamoto as Team Principal Nigel Levins didn't want to be caught out if two cars were on a rubbish strategy. He needn't have worried - they both were. Neither Rellings who was on a two-top or Sakamoto who only stopped once, got anything meaningful from this race at all.

McAlpine would scoot her way to third position early but found to her detriment, that stopping for tyres and being thrown back into traffic at Spa, was a bad thing. One the other hand, Bandit Heeler who had intended to stop twice, decided to back out of this fight and fall back to a one stop strategy. This would warrant him trying to conserve the softer C-compound tyres and make then last longer, as opposed to the A-compound tyres which the rest of the one stoppers were on.



On lap 5, while holding down sixth and seventh spot, Bandit Heeler tried to play a kind of switchback on Bob Nikoban who had taken a sharper line going into La Source while trying to defend the spot. As Nikoban turned back, Heeler clipped his rear quarter panel at all of about 15mph and the two came to a screeching halt. If Nikoban had been angry, he didn't display it over the radio and Heeler sounded genuinely shocked that the two cars would tangle like this. The Toyotas had shown a ton of speed at Kelley Lake the Round before; so Nikoban wasn't exactly worried about having to make up time at a fast track like Spa; likewise with Yankovic fading well away at the lead of the race, Heeler knew that his blue Ford was also up to the task.

A worrying turn of events hit the Holden camp from about lap 16 onwards. Jack Raymond's #88 Telecom Holden detonated in a cloud of blue smoke going down the Kemmel Straight and he retired the car by driving it straight on and paking it behind the wall. On the same lap, Mario Mario and his #64 Holden suffered a similar fate but without the dramatic smoke cloud, on the approach to the bus stop. When Henri Cornelius pitted on lap 20 and did not restart, the engineers from the factory became worried. They seized the Mobil 1 car and diagnosed the problem almost immediately as a faulty header problem; which was the likely cause of three retirements in the space of only 20 miles.
This sent them into panic mode and they asked Kane McKane to come into the pits a lap early; so that they could flash a warning light before the car bounced off the rev limiter. He complied even though his car which was nicely trimmed out for the long run, was now making great inroads on the leader Yankovic. Probably McKane's hopes of a race win evaporated at this point.

Behind these shenanigans, Donkey Kong and Stripe Heeler were both rapidly climbing up the standings. When news filtered through to Kong about Holdens randomly expiring, he gave up the fight and left Stripe Heeler alone. Bringing a car home safely and scoring points was more important than giving it the full welly and coming home with none. Even further back, Patrick Mann was having a quiet day of it, with Ellie McIllan shadowing him at a distance but she never came close enough to pose any serious threat. What was interesting though, was that Fords scored four of the points paying positions; with Toyota and Holden taking the rest.



The leading light of the day was Al Yankovic though. Although he came under the possibility of attack from Kane McKane by about half way, McKane could only condense the gap to 2 seconds before he pulled into the pits on lap 21 and hoping to get an undercut. As a two-time champion, Yankovic controlled the race excellently and his laps 22 and 23 were the second and third fastest of the day and only bettered by Bandit Heeler's lap 22. When Yankovic pitted, he had more than a minute's grace over the then second place Bandit Heeler who was himself trying to get an overcut on several competitors. Yankovic filtered back into the lead, whereas Heeler merged into an angry battle for 19th which involved Eggatha Robotnik, Sticks Baja, Judge John Judd, and Claude de Rouge.

The unexpected surprise package late in the race was Bob Nikoban who pitted on his lonesome, saw a swarm of angriness pass him him he was stationary, and then re-entered the fray also on his lonesome. Nikoban was aware that McKane was behind him but the gap between them never got any closer than the entire length of the Kemmel Straight. McKane had obviously worked out that he had a faster car from the Bus Stop to the bottom of Eau Rouge but the Holden driver was aware that what had happened to Jack Raymond might happen to him; so he was unprepared to bounce off the rev limiter at full tilt. Nikoban on the other hand had arrived with slightly taller gearing and so while he didn't have the punch out of corners, his Team Yellow Toyota was easily posting the fastest speeds through the traps.

Kane McKane sort of trundled around towards the end of the race and kept his nose clean for a credible third place but ten second down the road behind him, Bandit Heeler who had tasted the wind of the lead now had to begin his brother to heel behind him. Stripe duly complied though he was not happy, and the two Heeler Bros. Falcons cam across the line for a form finish for 4th and 5th.

Points Awarded Round 11:

15 - Al Yankovic
10 - Bob Nikoban
8 - Kane McKane
6 - Bandit Heeler
4 - Stripe Heeler
3 - Donkey Kong
2 - Patrick Mann
1 - Ellie McIllan

Top 20 After 11 Rounds:

42 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
35 Al Yankovic
34 Kane McKane
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
25 Mario Mario
25 Morgan Inkling
24 Bandit Heeler
21 Chloe Ankha
20 Bob Nikoban
19 Konata Izumi
18 Tse Sakamoto
17 Dr George Claw
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
15 Stripe Heeler
14 Robie Robie
14 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
13 Patrick Mann
12 Bernie Bernie

Round 12 will be held at Talladega on June 18.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 12 - Talledega 300

The twelfth round of The Goof saw the combatants travel to Alabama for the Talledega 300. This place with its high banks and high speeds, was intended to be bigger and meaner than Daytona International Speedway and at two and two-thirds of a mile, it is. It does not respect reputations. It does not respect talent. It does not respect effort.

In the Friday practice session when temperatures soared into the high 90s, engines unexpectedly packed it in an expired. Four Toyotas, three Holdens, a Mazda, and a Ford, all came to grief and sent tortured smoke clouds into the sky at some point. There was real concern about just how many would meet the chequered flag after 113 laps on Sunday.




The beginning of this race had all of the hallmarks of a classic. Two former champions filled the first two rows, in Al Yankovic on pole and Dr George Claw on the outside, and the second row was filled by Stanley Spidalski in the second of the Team UZKA Falcons and Stripe Heeler who was also in a Falcon. When the green flag dropped, Spidalski pushed Yankovic to the front and Claw who was on the outside, slotted in behind them; which meant that before the end of lap 1, all organisation on the top lane just ceased.

Yankovic and Spidalski held station up front for the end of lap 2 and the next challenge came from Ugly Arbuckle Jr. who had found a push from Morgan Inkling's Mazda. Behind them sat the Holdens of Bernie Bernie and Hochi Samyang, the Chevrolet of Marnie Roxy, and a train of Toyotas. The lead swapped twice early on as the outside line ebbed and flowed back and forth but Yankovic and Spidalski worked well together to hold the bottom line, and they reeled off lap after lap.

This situation wouldn't last for terribly long though, as on lap 22, the Coyote V8 in Al Yankovic's Falcon just let go; in similar circumstances to the nine which had expired on Friday. He pulled to the bottom of the racetrack and thankfully escaped out of harm's way but it was hardly any kind of consolation, as he had been challenging for the lead and his hopes now blew away like the trail of smoke he left behind.

Behind him, Spidalski and Claw scattered, Arbuckle shot to the front around the outside; follwed by Roxy and Samyang who had taken evasive action to the bottom of the track. Claw who was kind of stuck in the sucker hole in the middle lane, took the elevator back to 22nd position and Spidalski who was sat immediately behind him at that stage, managed to find an opening in what was now a very long train of cars and slotted in behind Cornelius for 15th position.

The race sort of settled down, as Claw and Robotnik assumed control of the front and worked together to control the bottom line. If anyone was going to get around them, they would have to take to the top lanes and run faster and further.



On lap 56, the first group of cars came down pit road for an unexpected round of green flag pit stops. Tyres would not be an issue as everyone's had held up nicely over the first 149 miles and they would equally hold up over the rest and make the distance. Friends were where ever you could find them as there didn't appeat to be any kind of manufacturer alliance or strategy to speak of. Not even Team Yellow Toyota could organise their cars together into a single pack to pit together; so they all came in when the cars around them did.

Broadly speaking there was 8 cars who formed a group who could have mounted a decent challenge at the lead; being McIllan, Spidalski, Sakamoto, McAlpine, Arbuckle Jr. Hedgehog, Kong and Langer. They pitted on lap 57 and attempted to arrive and leave together.
They were all passed by a second group of 8 cars made up of: Dr. Robotnik, Samyang, Soryu, Kronkyet, Robotnik, Mifune, McKane and Raymond. Of this second group, Eggman Industries ran the #13 and #12 together in tandem. Blue Cat ran their #37 and #88 together, with Kronkyet's #61 Holden and Samyang's #4 Holden forming a temporary alliance; with Mifune's Toyota and the Chevrolet of Soryu who just happened to be running somewhere in the train.

Owing to the fact that this second group of 8 cars came together down pit road on lap 58 and thus always had tyres one lap fresher, and the fact that they were better organised at getting both on and off of pit lane, they pitted from the lead and resumed back on track back into the lead. This group of 8 cars would go on to draw out a gap of more than five seocnds; which around Talladega may as well be the kiss of death.




The top 8 cars held together as either a peloton or an angry train, as every single one of them was credited with leading at least one lap. Fighting to the front does mean that engines do get a chance to cool down but at speeds on the crazy side of 200mph, that does mean that there is a lot of resistance from the air in front and it is more efficient to let someone else punch a hole in that air.

Laps 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 were led by Robotnik, Soryu, Mifune, McKane and Walter Kronkyet respectively, as drivers came to the front and then fell back. As fuel loads lightened, speeds became faster and faster and with laps running out, tension also grew ever more. Being this late in the race, the possibility of "the Big One" loomed ever larger and larger. To everyone's surprise though, the Big One never happened.

There was no Big One and lap 110 was again lead by Dr Ivo Robotnik as he saw his opportunity to get to the front and hopefully ride out those last 8 miles. His plan fell to pieces on lap 111 when six of the eight became organised on the outside and with only two cars on the bottom, they were left with a massive speed deficit. The curious thing about a drafting train, is that it achieves maximum efficiency at about eleven cars. Two is not enough.

The last push of this race happened on lap 112 of 113, when Hochi Samyang shoved Asuka Langley Soryu to the front on the inside; going down the back straight. In contrast, Dr Ivo Robotnik tried to push his niece Eggatha to the front, from the outside lane. Soryu lept to the front and remained there and as such a massive hole had been punched through the air, by the time that the cars scattered to pick whatever line they hoped would work through the tri-oval, the good Doctor's race was run, Kronkyet, Mifune and Samyang had passed around the outside, and only Jack Raymond who had no momentum going through Turns 3 & 4, posed no challenge for the #13.

Samyang and Kronkyet rolled the outside, Eggatha held the bottom, Mifune and McKane found nowhere to go through, Dr Robotnik's race had already been spent, and Raymond who was never in any kind of good position since lap 58, spent the entire secomnd half of the race in eighth.

One would expect Asuka Soryu to be exicited after finally winning a race after four years of trying but with Teutonic stoicism, she calmly announced that Team EVA would be closing its doors at the end of 20X3 and the chassis would be sold back to the factory General Motors team. The #02 Racing Entitlement Contract had been picked up by an Ohio whiskey company who intended to test the waters in 20X4.

She was happy though. This team which had been around for four years and flirted with several manufacturers, would leave after having scored a race win. Sometimes for a smaller team, a single victory is enough.

Points Awarded Round 12:

15 - Asuka Soryu Langley
10 - Hochi Samyang
8 - Walter Kronkyet
6 - Eggatha Robotnik
4 - Go Mifune
3 - Kane McKane
2 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
1 - Jack Raymond

Top 20 After 12 Rounds:

43 Jack Raymond
38 Kayleigh McAlpine
37 Kane McKane
35 Al Yankovic
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
25 Mario Mario
25 Morgan Inkling
24 Bandit Heeler
21 Chloe Ankha
20 Bob Nikoban
20 Asuka Langley
19 Konata Izumi
18 Tse Sakamoto
18 Walter Kronkyet
17 Dr George Claw
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Bruno Gourdo
15 Stripe Heeler
14 Robie Robie
14 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.

Round 13 will be held at Ontario II Speedway in a fortnight's time.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 13 - Ontario II - Le Coup De Canada

Ontario II, or to give it its proper name Ontario Avenue d'Vitesse, was built as a copy of the original Ontario Motor Speedway (now demolished) which was itself built as a copy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Thus the Indy Of The Great White North is a two and a half mile rectangle which allows for three wide running in the corners and long drafting down the straights.

On Saturday scrutineering before the cars went into parc ferme overnight, the Chevrolet of Ugly Arbuckle Jr. was found to have had an illegal 'device' attached. The 'device' in question was a picture hook obtained from a stationery store; which was then glued to the front right hand side of the bonnet. The excuse given was that this was a visual aid and although no obvious performance advantage was foreseen to be obtained, it was still banned on the basis that it was an unapproved part.



The truth was that the Chevrolets had all been quick this weekend. Marnie Roxy had taken the pole with a lap speed of 211.303mph, sparking concerns that speeds had again reached the point of danger. Only Sticks Baja in the #6 Toyota posted a qualifying lap of less than 200mph and even then it was 199.998mph. The other quick cars in qualifying were the Mazdas; which managed to occupy five of the top ten spots. They were seen as the most logical threat to Chevrolet's dominance at Ontario II.

The start of the race wasn't the kind of romp that Chevrolet expected though. The three Mazdas of Edmundson, Claw, and Rellings, formed up on the outside line and by the end of lap 2, were also joined by Sakamoto and Eggatha Robotnik in a five-car train of Hiroshima's finest. This copy of the copy of the original, is both far wider than the original and has far more opportunity for going around the outside and forming useful attacks.

The curious thing about Roxy's run from pole is that leading lap 0 would be the only time that she was at the front. The car showed a ton of short run speed but as runs wore on, it would be whomever could control their tyre wear the best.

An so it was. The field ran to not only the first round of pitstops under green but also the second round of pitstops. The five Mazdas gradually pulled out a lead of almost fifteen seconds over Sticks Baja and Bob Nikoban who had formed their own little Toyota tandem; which meant that Sticks Baja led lap 40 and Bob Nikoban lead lap 81. As the Mazdas came together on cycle and left together on cycle, they were unharried both in and out of the pits on both occasions. However, short run speed would prove to be the most important weapon to win this race and not even a single Mazda scored a point.



The most controversial point of the race came on lap 104 when Bruno Gourdo who was lying in eighth place at the time, put the bumper to the rear end of Jean-Luc Pikachu and this in turn sent the Chevrolet of Jessie Musashi flying our of control in Turn 3.
Naturally this brought out the caution as two wrecked cars rested against the wall and all advantage that the train of Mazdas had built up was instantly dissolved like a snowball in a furnace. They would mostly win the race off of pit row but with only 13 laps to go when the green flag fell, weren't up to task.

No kind of penalty was issued for Gourdo or even looked into by race control, even though having knocked out both sixth and seventh place in front of him, Gourdo had gained a very obvious advantage. This was further compounded when the caution was thrown out and he effectively got a free pit stop as well.

After the round of pit stops the order was Claw, Rellings, Edmundson, Sakamoto and Robotnik; followed by Mario Mario, Bob Nikoban, Stanley Spidalski and Bruno Gourdo; the last of those four who hadn't improved beyond his initial infraction which brought out the caution.

When the green flag fell, the Mazdas again tried to form a chain on the outside but were prevented by five and six wide traffic going through Turns 1 and 2. Organisation simply can not deal with the arrival of chaos, when chaos smashes in the front door and burns all the furniture.



By lap 112, it became apparent that the Mazdas were exactly suited to this track. The gamble to trim out their cars for the long run, was now in tatters as they were passed left, right and centre by cars on a short run strategy. By lap 114, this race came down a tri-cornered battle between Bruno Gourdo, Stanley Spidalski and Bob Nikoban.

Nikoban had been close to the best of the rest all day and was the fastest of the Toyotas. Gourdo ended up with the fastest car at the end of the day but his short-run speed was mainly dependent on setting the car up on brand new tyres. Spidalski who had been literally nowhere of note, had only featured in the top ten after the 100 lap mark. Gourdo shot to the front of a very unorganised pack and was hoping to develop a quick lead before the tyres fell away.

Having slipped under Spidalski, Nikoban and Mario at the start of the final run towards the flag, Gourdo may as well have painted targets all over his back bumper. An instruction came from Team Yellow Toyota that Bob was free to retaliate; even if it did jeopardise his own race. Team Principal Patrick Mann from inside the #22 Toyota, made his intentions known that having punted off Jean-Luc Pikachu earlier in the race, Gourdo was now an acceptable target for putting into the wall.

The final run towards the flag saw Spidalski tuck in behind Gourdo for extended periods of time; especially down the two long straights at Ontario. Nikoban gradually lost touch with the front two and so made sure that his third place would be secure.

The white flag came out and whatever happened, the result would be final when they crossed the line. Spidalski simply refused to overtake Gourdo and merely repeatedly bumped him in the rear end. Coming out of Turn 4 and with Antoine D'Tigrette a lap down, Gourdo pulled to the inside and Spidalski ran as close to the wall as he possibly could. There was no block that Gourdo could effect on Spidalski without taking them both out and the Ford flew across the line by running around the outside of the #76 Chevrolet and carrying the speed down the straight.

There was more than a hint of disappointment and maybe even hesitancy from Spidalski in the post-race interview; even though this marks the first time in almost seven years that he last won a race.

"We had a good car today. It wasn't as good as the other car we had earlier in the year but it was a good car. It didn't feel wobbly or nothin' and... ...and there was a lot of junk on the road in 3 and 4 from when that guy over there (Gourdo) rammed the yellow car. He's not a good sport."
- Stanley Spidalski, to U62-TV

Gourdo though, was gloriously unrepentant.

"Sometimes, you do what you have to do. I took my chances; they didn't take theirs."
- Bruno Gourdo, to U62-TV

This result does not markedly change the order in the standings but the fight at the top is getting tighter and tighter.

Points Awarded Round 13:

15 - Stanley Spidalski
10 - Bruno Gourdo
8 - Bob Nikoban
6 - Mario Mario
4 - Sticks Baja
3 - Kayleigh McAlpine
2 - Donkey Kong
1 - Marnie Roxy

Top 20 After 13 Rounds:

43 Jack Raymond
41 Kayleigh McAlpine
37 Kane McKane
35 Al Yankovic
31 Mario Mario
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
28 Bob Nikoban
25 Morgan Inkling
25 Bruno Gourdo
24 Bandit Heeler
21 Chloe Ankha
20 Asuka Langley
19 Konata Izumi
18 Tse Sakamoto
18 Walter Kronkyet
18 Stanley Spidalski
17 Dr George Claw
15 Oglivy Hedgehog
15 Stripe Heeler
14 Robie Robie

Round 14 will be held at the kidney-bean 5 turn track at Trenton, on Jul 16.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 14 - The Trenton Titan Trophy

Trenton Motor Speedway in New Jersey is a gently banked 5 turn kidney-bean track. Turn 3 which is where the back straight would be, is a right hand sweeper which is even more gently banked because if it were not, cars that are set up for an oval would spear off into the infield. The facilities at this base can be best described as Spartan and at worst described as awful. There were some complaints d=over the weekend about the state of the paddock; which owing to rain during the week, had become more of a bog than anything else. Friday practice had to be be stopped twice when cars which wandered into the infield, had to extricated by heavy equipment as they became stuck fast.



In just his opening season, Garfield "Ugly" Arbuckle, being one of seven sons of seasoned veteran Garfield Arbuckle, has had to come to terms with stepping out of the shadow of his somewhat famous father. Although in the 18 seasons that Garfield Arbuckle campaigned, he never actually won a championship title. "Ugly" doesn't have that to live up to but he absolutely does have his father literally yelling in his year and watching over his shoulder while his brothers look on.

Here at Trenton Motor Speedway, Arbuckle took the pole on Satuday and expected to scoot away into the distance but much to his annoyance, this was easier said than done because although he had a fast car when running by itself, the still humid conditions meant that the air was heavy and caused even more of an advantage to cars tucked in the draft than normal. Arbuckle's pole could not be converted into much of a race advantage and by lap 6, he decided to fall back into the clutches of the chasing pack and anonymously sit within it.

Early runs came from Go Mifune in the Toyota, which also found that being out front was not all that it was cracked up to be; Hochi Samyang who tried running in the outer lanes because she could really hug the inside through Turn 3; and Claude de Rouge in the #11 Elf Chevrolet, who otherwise seems out of his depth in this series.

The strategy being employed by most of the field at this place, being a 200 lap and 300 mile race, was to change tyres from about lap 66 until about lap 80 if someone could manage their tyres; and then again at lap 130 to about 160. The middle of the race became a confusing battle of strategies as drivers ducked in and out of the pits but by lap 163, the whole field had stopped twice; with the running order being: Mifune, Arbuckle, Yankovic, Kronkyet, McAlpine, d'Tigrette, Gourdo, and Sakamoto round out the points paying positions.



This race should have gone from flag to flag without a caution. The pace although somewhat frenetic, was measured enough that in most cases, cars were spaced roughly evenly about the track and gave each other ample room. This was not the case with Yankovic and Kronkyet though. They would finally open up a can of chaos and pour it out onto the track on lap 176.

Evidently Kronkyet was still holding a grudge against his once former teammeate, due to an earlier bump and run going through Turn 1 earlier in the race. As revenge is a dish best served hot and piping, the best place to exact such revenge was going through the right-handed Turn 3. The tap that Kronkyet gave Yankovic looked no worse than the one he'd been given on lap 8 but due to the way that the cars are inherently unsettled going through the kink, this resulted in the Falcon being sent spinning into the grass.

"**** this ****. **** that ****. **** all the ****. Someone ought to black flag that **** **** **** to the moon."
- Al Yankovic, via U62-TV.

Curiously, Kronkyet was not given a black flag for bad sportsmanship but for dropping debris on the run from Turn 3 to Turn 4 and was called in to fix the damage. Yankovic rattled across the infield and merged back into traffic in a lowly 11th and this was further exascerbated by needing to replace the tyres which had junk all over them, and he would end the day in the mid-20s and way way way shy of any hope of points.

The real winner of this dispute was Miles Prower in the Burger Rings Toyota. As cars scattered going through Turns 3 and 4, he saw the route forward open up like a modern day Moses crossing the Red Sea. As he passed underneath Asuka Soryu Langley going through Turn 5, he was now in command of the lead. Langley then had to contend with Kayleigh McAlpine and Sticks Baja who were both quite quick and also gunning for the lead of the race.

When the green flag dropped on lap 183, the order was Prower, Langley, Baja, McAlpine, Inkling, Spidalski, Sakamoto and Arbuckle.



The end of this race would be the culmination of strategy and how well people had managed their equipment. Prower was leading the race at lap 195 and had pulled out a lead but the fuel warning light came one and he was forced to switch to the auxilliary emergency tank.

His nearest challenger was Asuka Soryu Langley but she was under fire from Morgan Inkling, who reall had the bit between her teeth after hearing over the radio that Prower might not make it to the end. Inkling's Lap 196 proved to be the fastest of the race as she ripped around as fast as she could, with a well sorted car which itself was almost empty of fuel. She dived under Langley coming out of Turn 4 and now had Prower within her sights. Prower's lap times were being damaged by having to contend with slower traffic.

On lap 197, Morgan Inkling rode around the top of Turns 1 and 2, which put her way on the inside of the right hand kink at Turn 3, and from there she cut clean across the bows of Miles Prower and gave him no line going into Turns 3 and 4. By the time she crossed the stripe to start lap 198, Prower was 7 car lengths behind and already in survival mode to bring the car home for a podium place.

From here, Prower had done just enough to survive the threat of Langley because she would also have to contend with slower traffic and he had already worked his way past and created a buffer. But it was Inlking's laps 199 and 200 which removed any and all doubt that this was a flash in the pan. Team OSKO with some technical assisstance from Levins Engineering, was now staring at the very real chance of a title fight.

"... just yeah. We had a plan, we stuck to it, and it paid off. Sometimes you do need to be lucky as well as good and today, we were a bit of both. The car was tight all day long until the very end when the tyres began to degrade and we went from being very tight to almost too loose. I thought I was going in the wall near the end but... we're here and we're drinkin' the champagne, baby!"
- Morgan Inkling, to U-62 TV

The most noticeable change to the season's standings came right at the very top, where Jack Raymond's initial lead in the season has finally been eroded. This round marked seven rounds without the Holden driver scoring anything significant and the team had to admit that it would have to rely on updates prepared for Le Mans and Bathurst to save the season.

Points Awarded Round 14:

15 - Morgan Inkling
10 - Miles Prower
8 - Asuka Soryu Langley
6 - Sticks Baja
4 - Kayleigh McAlpine
3 - Ugly Arbuckle
2 - Antoine d'Tigerette
1 - Bruno Gourdo

Top 20 After 14 Rounds:

45 Kayleigh McAlpine
43 Jack Raymond
40 Morgan Inkling
37 Kane McKane
35 Al Yankovic
31 Mario Mario
28 Jean-Luc Pikachu
28 Bob Nikoban
28 Asuka Langley
26 Bruno Gourdo
24 Bandit Heeler
21 Chloe Ankha
19 Konata Izumi
19 Sticks Baja
18 Tse Sakamoto
18 Walter Kronkyet
18 Stanley Spidalski
17 Dr George Claw
17 Garfield Arbuckle Jr.
16 Miles Prower

The next round will be held at the somewhat precarious Mount Pocono on July 30.