The Goof - 20X2

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



On Friday afternoon, the Mercedes-Benz of both Koffing and Kayleigh McAlpine proved fast enough to occupy both spots on the front row. Koffing slid the #109 car through Turns 2 and 4 and due to the slightly colder temperatures in the afternoon, that translated to an almost full-throttle lap. Marnie Roxy and Michelle Oxford had also done quite well in the morning, and across the two heat races, the worst position that the McAlpine Motorsport Mercedes-Benz qualified, was 5th.
Being fast on Friday does not necessarily mean being fast on Saturday; though it should be said that both of the McAlpine Motorsport Mercedes-Benz in the A-Heat race scored points paying finishes.

The start of the A-Heat Race was a different matter. A-Compound tyres take a wee bit longer to come up to operating temperature than either the Bs or Cs and both Koffing and Kayleigh McAlpine slid back into the clutches of the pack very quickly.

The initial leader of the race was Garfield Arbuckle who was being chased by Stanley Spidalski who found initial drafting help from Dr George Claw and Darth Vader. Arbuckle showed flashes of the days of old, when 9 years ago he pushed Patrick Mann all the way to the last 5 laps of the season; only to lose the championship due to a cut tyre.
Spidalski in the Team UZKA Ford, wasn't all that bothered about challenging for the lead and was content to sit behind the orange Chevrolet for the first few laps.

The act of ruthlessness that spoiled both of their afternoons, came on lap 14 when Vader who had enough of sitting behind the pink #26, decided to push the Ford to the front of the race. Going down the back stretch, they ran right up to the back bumper of the #9 and tried to hold their nerve going through Turns 3 and 4. Coming out of Turn 4, Arbuckle had a wiggle and turned Spidalski down the track; and sent himself upwards and into the outside wall. Naturally, Vader, Claw, McAlpine and Robotnik all pierced the hole in the traffic which had been created and they went on to do exceptionally well.

Although sparks flew and Arbuckle's car had acquired a new Dover stripe, no caution was brought out and the two of them both limped back to the pits and effected pit stops under green. This practically ruined any shot that they had of scoring any points and Arbuckle came home in a commendable but pointless 12th; while Spidalski just sort of lumbered around and finished in 16th.

"Yeah, I know that this is just a racing incident and I'm not blaming anyone but at some point you have consider if it is everyone else's fault or your own. No great show can go on forever. It is for this reason that I am announcing my retirement at the end of the season and that one of my seven sons, I don't know which one, will take over the number 9 in 20X3."
"Do you know which son is likely to take over?"
"It's either going to be Angry, Ugly, or Sticky. Lovely is already the Crew Chief, Root-Beer is in the crew for the number 8, Buff-Fluff wants to stay in the crew for the 76, and Oh-No isn't fast enough."
- Garfield Arbuckle, to U62-TV



You could practically throw a blanket over the top four for most of the afternoon. The situation was such that the lead car in the group who had to push the hole into the air, ended up being the slowest of the four; with the car immediately behind being a touch faster.

The driver who led most of the laps in this race was Kayleigh McAlpine, who reasoned that she would rather be out the front and have calamity unfold behind her than barrel head long into it. Of the 100 laps which took place after the mid race round of pit stops, she led 84 of them.

Dr George Claw being a three time champion, also knew that being out front was not the fastest way to get around the track; so he spent most of the afternoon immediately tucked up behind the blue and orange Mercedes out front. He complained that the Tau V8 from Kia was a little bit down on power and admitted that he had been trying to agitate for a mid season refresh and a new suite of parts. Kia for their part said that they were working on it but that nothing yet had eventuated.

Ellie McIllan driving in a Cassell prepared Holden, was doing her own bit of complaining over the radio. As Dover is an abrasive concrete racetrack, the team opted to put A-compound hard tyres on the car. This meant that the car ran slightly skatey and loose. At a one mile track like Dover, McIlian could drive her way around the problem but it meant that she was only ever hanging onto the lead pack and couldn't control the pace of the race.

The only driver of the four who had a pleasant afternoon was Darth Vader. He unhurriedly rolled around at the back of the group for most of the century of laps and took to the top of the racetrack reasonably often because he could keep the throttle open for a longer proportion of the lap.

He eventually struck on lap 193 and had to check up behind McAlpine coming out of Turn 2, before rolling around the top of the track through Turn 3 and 4 and would get stranded up there for a number of laps while the other three hugged the bottom and wouldn't let him back in. He finally effected the move on lap 196 and got better drive coming out of Turn 2 and was able to put his car in front of McAlpine going into Turn 3.

Dr Claw tried to follow Vader around the top of the track but McAlpine closed the door on him and that was the order which remained until the flag fell; being Vader, McAlpine, Claw, and McIllan.



About the only thing which remains the same from season to season is that there is always constant change. Drivers are always looking for better rides and teams are always looking for better drivers.

Samuel Toucquanne arrived at the works Chevrolet team two and a half years ago and had expected to see better results by now. Chevrolets proved to be up to par by winning the odd race but Garfield Arbuckle in the twilight of his career hasn't been able to extract anything out of them in a while and the other seats are kind of revolving doors of talent.

The unexpected news to the paddock was that Project Layton would come to and end at the close of the season and although Sonia Hirokawa would remain in the series in the #40, she would be moving on from the manufacturer. This left a possible two seats in Wartburgs and DK Racing was very quick to acquire the licences.

It was a kind of meeting of several circumstances at once which saw Samuel Toucquanne wander through the paddock and speak to Donkey Kong. The presumption for 20X3 is that Toucquanne will be in either the #93 or #94 slot but the numbers themselves are kind of arbitrary.

Toucquanne's race here at Dover was mediocre at best. 15th place in the A-Heat Race was enough to qualify for the feature but he didn't really do much in the feature race. In fact, the only points paying position that Toucquanne has had this season was a sole 4th place in a B-Heat race; which kind of suggests that if he hadn't jumped ship then he would have probably been pushed out anyway.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:

9 - Darth Vader
6 - Kayleigh McAlpine
4 - Dr George Claw
3 - Ellie McIllan
2 - Koffing
1 - Jean-Luc Pikachu

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



Everyone knew that the Mercedes-Benz had a ton of short run speed at Dover and that this didn't translate into a long run during the race. Michelle Oxford put the #2 Fullers Mercedes on pole for the feature race and Bernie Bernie who started third and Oglivy Hedgehog who started in fourth, were prepared to let her go; knowing that they would catch her back up again over the long run.

Oxford led the race for exactly 1 lap, had to check up on cold tyres going into Turn 2 and was bumped into the wall by Bernie Bernie. She struck the wall and unfortunately for her, the bump into the wall broke a steering rod and the steering was ruined at an instant.

Bernie flew into the lead with Hedgehog in second but Oxford couldn't turn the wheel to the left and the car stranded itself at the top of Turn 3. This brought out a caution and the only car which came onto pit row was Ellie McIllan; who changed from a set of A-Compound tyres to a set of Bs, in the hope of getting some extra grip.

Bernie hadn't been this quick in a race car for a number of years. As the prime driver whose job it was to test news parts in the team, it was he who constantly had to plead with GAZ for any kind of budget for those new parts. Now that Vader was effectively bankrolling the team, he not only had the ability to test and break new parts but because he had the facilities to do so, the path to reliability was shorter.

Hedgehog was annoyed that he drew a complete blank from Round 5. Even though a season is long, he didn't want to lose touch with the top of the table. 20 points for a win is enough to swing the title but anything outside of that and the job is made far harder.



After the first round of pitstops on lap 84, Bernie regained the lead and for a while held court with a Wartburg 1-2-3-4 as Kronkyet, Vader and Kong slotted in behind him. This didn't last for long as those with faster long-run speed gradually pushed their way past.
Vader complained of a vibration that instantly manifested itself and came to the pits on lap 102 but even after a track bar and wedge adjustment, the vibration came back and remained undiagnosed. Kronkyet slid down the order after losing front end grip and found that the car just would turn in as well as he liked. Bernie just sort of fell down the order and had to admit that other teams just had a faster car on the day.
This brought Dr Ivo Robotnik to the front of the field and Eliie McIllan who to this point has had a quiet but reasonably productive season.

On lap 184 of 250 and into the last third of the race, caution was brought out after indiscretion and impatience. Rodan in the Datsun GTR was doing an admirable job of holding down fourth place, with Sasquini and Cornelius behind him. He had the doubly difficult challenge of trying to hold back two lanes of traffic to maintain his place.

The fastest line around Dover is generally to swing to the outside on the straights and then pull way way to the bottom through the pairs of turns at either end. Rodan tried to hold back Cornelius on the outside and then hope that they would be sufficiently far ahead enough to pull down in front of the Mazda. Cornelius was a willing partner in the effort. Especially down the front straight, the Holden would lock onto the back of the Datsun and push.

On lap 184 though, Cornelius pushed Rodan deep into Turn 3 and Sasquini who didn't want to give up the bottom, charged into the apex of the corner. Cornelius' push rotated the Datsun in Turn 3; which then sent all three of them into an uncontrolled mess into Turn 4 and Sasquini broadsided the Datsun. Ricardo Sasquini's abysmal year continues to continue continuing and none of these three finished the race.

This elevated Kronkyet, Bernie and Hedgehog back up the order and a heap of cars gave up track position for fresher tyres in the ensuing caution.



Although a surprise to everyone else in the field but of no surprise to him, Tse Sakamoto pulled off a classy win at the Monster Mile at Dover. In the A-Heat race he knew that he wasn't going to score any points and so he took the Mazda 989 to a fairly leisurely yet secure 18th place; a full 10 seconds ahead of the 19th placegetter. Nobody cares by what margin you did a thing, only that you did.

The closing stages of this race saw Sakamoto with a car that had begun the stint tight and as the tyres degraded, went from tight to loose. He was always in close company with Dr Ivo Robotnik who had a similar handling car, Ellie McIllan whose Holden was always loose through the whole run and wouldn't respond to any changes on pit row, and Bruno Gourdo in the Ford who was worried about the amount of front end bite that he had.

As all four cars were on a two stop strategy and all four cars were hoping for a caution so that they could extract any kind of advantage which nobody else had (and which never came) this became a war off attrition. Dover as a concrete bowl is very abrasive on tyres and although teams could put on B and C compound tyres, by putting drivers on A compound tyres, the drop off in performance is not a cliff to fall off.

Sakamoto was the driver who best managed that drop off in performace and made his charge to the front on lap 241; hoping that track position was king and that he could just hug the lower line and make everyone else go around him. That strategy worked and while Bruce Wayne tried to go around the outside, he got hung out to dry and came 6th, Bernie Bernie could only slide his Wartburg into 5th and the four drivers who remained out front also remained out of reach.

Points Awarded Main Race:

20 - Tse Sakamoto
17 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
14 - Ellie McIllan
12 - Bruno Gourdo
10 - Bernie Bernie
8 - Bruce Wayne
6 - Oglivy Hedgehog
5 - Koffing
4 - Dr George Claw
3 - Donkey Kong
2 - Kayleigh McAlpine
1 - Walter Kronkyet

Top 20 After 6 Rounds:

67 Donkey Kong
65 Tse Sakamoto
63 Darth Vader
62 Ellie McIllan
58 Kayleigh McAlpine
48 Oglivy Hedgehog
44 Hatsune Miku
42 Bruno Gourdo
40 Bandit Heeler
39 Al Yankovic
39 Kane McKane
30 Morgan Inkling
30 Jean-Luc Pikachu
30 Dr Ivo Robotnik
28 Jack Raymond
24 Henri Cornelius
23 Walter Kronkyet
21 Bernie Bernie
18 Dr George Claw
16 Koffing

Round 7 will be held at Mount Pocono on 8th May 2022.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 7 - Mount Pocono​

The B-Heat Race:

The two and half mile triangle of Mount Pocono is both a monument to and a result of modern hubris. The mountain was originally conceived of by Dr George Claw as a place to build an underground bunker of supervillany under. Having paid a little over $1 million in total for an entire mountain of rubbish, from various rubbish dumps, the mountain which stands as the tallest thing which the eye can see in any direction in this part of Kansas, immediately became a haven for all kinds of birds and wildlife, as well as recreational walkers and hikers. This soon posed a problem. One can not carry out supervillany in such a lovely tourist destination.
Having abandoned the project but still in possession of a mountain, the MAD Corporation cam to the conclusion that this would be a good place upon which to build a test track for their automotive suppliers of Kia; and apart from it being a 666ft mountain, Mount Pocono is an otherwise 1:1 scale replica of the tricky triangle at the other Pocono.

In Friday testing, drivers reported that the mountain was so steep that even the 600hp hybrid drivetrains were having trouble chugging up it. On the way back down though, the fastest speed of 228mph was recorded by Judge John Judd's Mazda 989. The big wonder now is whether or not 230mph is possible in these cars at this circuit.



The start of the B-Heat race got off to ignominious fashion for pole sitter Hatsune Miku. Having been the fastest car in qualifying, she then got to control the field as the came down the mountain, through Turn 3 and onto the front straight. Even before the green flag dropped, she had a loss in power and drove to the outside and could only watch as the entire field of 35 other cars flew by her before she even got to the end of Turn 1. It had been presumed to be some kind of electrical glitch but as the race wore on and cars started banging off the rev limiter down the front straight, what might have been seen as a random fault soon proved to be an area of concern for everyone and an area of concern that had to be managed.

Pulling to the inside were the Toyotas of Miles Prower and Bob Nikoban; with the two Mazdas of Kerrod Edmundson and Morgan Inkling not too far behind.

Mount Pocono is a track which is very wide down the front straight; so much so that it might be possible to go six or seven wide. Cars tended to fan out into no more than four lanes, as driving into the air at more than 200mph causes a fair amount of resistance. Drivers also found out that as they came off of Turn 2, the bumps going into Turn 3 and the very abrupt transition from downhill to flat, caused the front of the car to scrape. This race would be as much about being kind on the machinery, as it was being fast.

Nikoban would suffer some kind of flame out and retire from the race, just like Miku did. Prower would fall down the order to 14th and while he would qualify for the feature, his day would reward him with zero points. Edmundson, being more canny, was passed on several occasions and refused to put up any meaningful fight; reasoning that to simply survive would be the best option for scoring points. He finished 5th. Morgan inkling never found the outright speed and came home in 7th.

This B-Heat race would be won by someone way way down the qualifying order, who planned a longer and more measured race.



For a while, Chole Ankha in the #5a Toyota topped the standings. Team Yellow Toyota likes to place its six haulers within close proximity of each other and Ankha who is usually quite quiet, likes to observe and listen to the wealth of experience within the team. Before the race, she was seen walking past a cafe with Jean-Luc Pikachu who drives the #25 Toyota and he was obviously explaining something of the nature of the terrible triangle. Having been the series champion 12 years ago, Pikachu was brought back becasue of of his experience and mentoring abilities. As Pikachu was in the A-Heat Race, he acted as Ankha's spotter in place of her regular spotter.

The #5a Toyota spent most of the afternoon, rolling around about a lane and a half from the bottom of the racetrack. She complained early on that the car was too tight and wouldn't turn on entry fast enough and so Pikachu advised that instead of trying to fight the track, she would do better in maintaining lap times. The Toyotas were quick, if fragile, and Ankha sat in the top four all day. In front of her though, another story was brewing which would have implications for the final result.

For a while Gojira held and maintained second place before his speed dropped off over the course of the long run, Edmundson tried to keep his car bobbling about in the points, and Sticks Baja in the #6 DeWalt Toyota was working off of Ankha's lap times and tried to match them in the mid-pack. Baja would be rewarded with the final point from coming in 6th. Likewise, Asuka Soryu Langley who is also in a Datsun

But it was Jean-Paul Cassell and Robie Robie who after starting in 18th and 19th respectively, who found each other as temporary allies and frenemies. Locking bumpers and trying to push the car in front at Mount Pocono is a recipe for instant disaster but sitting as close to the car in front not only reduces drag for the car behind but also for the car in front as air detaches from the rear wing and tends to sail over the two of them. Robie sat in behind Cassell from the end of lap 2 and continued to shadow him; much to the Frenchman's annoyance. Robie would continue to play the waiting game and knew that his opportunity would evenutally present itself.



As this was a 200 mile dash and most of the time the cars are heading in a straight line at high speed, tyre wear isn't exactly an issue. Cars needed to stop only once and as this race ran caution free, that meant that the bulk of the field pitted on either lap 40 or 41. In fact apart from the lead changes at the beginning of the race, the only other lead change happened on lap 41 when Robie Robie won the race off of pit row and leapfrogged Jean-Paul Cassell.

Robie led all of the remaining laps and won the race by a comfortable margin; this bringing home his first win for Team UZKA and also bringing in 9 valuable points. Jean-Paul Cassell on the other hand, had race of bitter disappointment.

Having not scored as much as a single point this season, he was out to try and pick up anything from this race. He had a good start and jumped to the front and all he needed to do was hang on until the end. Mount Pocono with its ridiculous gradients, is a car breaker and just like Hatsune Miku had done on lap 3, Cassell would suffer on lap 46.

The black Holden threw its valves into the top of the cylinders, and the #44 machine cam to an abrupt halt going up the mountain. It came to rest on the side of the track and was quietly pushed behind the wall; thus no caution flag was needed. Robie on the other hand had a quiet run up front and was jubilant as he crossed the line with daylight in second place.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:

9 - Robie Robie
6 - Chloe Ankha
4 - Asuka Langley
3 - Gojira
2 - Kerrod Edmundson
1 - Sticks Baja

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



Both the #9 and #8 Chevrolets had been quick in practice and in the Friday qualifying session, he was so confident that he had a quick car that he only bothered to leave pit road with a few minutes left in the session and took pole with his only flying lap.

Normally that would suggest that Garfield Arbuckle knew that he had a fast car but on this occasion, it was because the #9 car had an electrical glitch which the crew couldn't track down. Garfield was determined to wring the orange Chevrolet's neck until it finally gave up.

The irony was that on lap five, it wasn't Arbuckle's car that destroyed itself in a cloud of smoke but the normally reliable Wartburg of Darth Vader. The black #77 which had been hoping for a top three finish, pulled to the inside of the track going into Turn 2 and even with the advantage of the stupidly massive hill, it couldn't make it back to the pits and a caution was thrown out. Being this early in the race, Arbuckle's crew brought in the #9 Chevrolet hoping to finally resolve the electrical gremlins but it never refired and the crew had to suffer the ignominy of pushing that car behind the wall as well.

Jean-Luc Pikachu who went to the lead early in the race, figured that the best place to be was up front in case anything like the big one should happen but it never did and he was soon run down by Al Yankovic who would show that the car to be in at Mount Pocono, was a fast Ford.
Yankovic held the lead until lap 27 when he was passed by Tse Sakamoto and Henri Cornelius; who both had cars which were very good on the long run.



The order was shaken up somewhat during the round of pitstops when Sakamoto's crew fluffed their pitstop; which allowed Bandit Heeler and Kayleigh McAlpine to sweep past on pit row. After the round of pitstops was finished on lap 41, the running order was Cornelius, Heeler, McAlpine, Sakamoto and Eggatha Robotnik.

Kayleigh McAlpine in only her fourth season was given help two seasons ago and has built a handy little operation; with it's home base at Silverstone. The Scot having worked in her grandfather's garage, took the unusual step of buying a second hand Chevrolet; then was given help in her second season by a generous benefactor. Last season, the team expanded from 3 cars to four and this season she has built some admirable results considering that Mercedes-Benz have been ambivalent about the project.
McAlpine knew that the Mercedes was down on power relative to everyone else. Her strategy here was to run as close to the wall as long as possible; so that the car ran as close to flat throttle as long as it could. The Mercedes-Benz 500G presents a boxier and squarer nose to the wind than other cars and so while it might have an aerodynamic disadvantage, the car runs cooler and is therefore more reliable.

Her mid-race dice with Eggatha Robotnik proved this. Eggatha tried to keep up but consistently ran too hot and had to drop back into cleaner air. McAlpine knew that all she had to do was steal the line away from Eggatha and she could make the Kia boil its radiator. This is exactly what happened. On lap 38 and just before the round of pitstops, Eggatha Robotnik pulled the #12 Kia out of the race and behind the wall. In fact, 6 of 8 Kias at this event, would suffer some kind of failure and only Mad Cat and Dr Ivo Robotnik would escape the heat races; neither of them score any points though.



The moment that the lead finally changed hands was on lap 48 when the leaders came across a battle pack which was too engrossed in its own troubles to be worried about what was behind. Dr George Claw and Rodan were two laps down had fighting over 18th position and therefore the last place before the cut off line. They were joined by Dr Robotnik who was a lap ahead of them but still a lap down on the leaders. That meant that Henri Cornelius encountered an internally angry set of cars who weren't even remotely bothered about letting him through.

This would have been resolved had it not been for the three cars fanning out on the main straight before it tightened up going into Turn 1. This gave Bandit Heeler who by this stage had found a lightning setup, to really eat up the distance between himself and Cornelius.

The run from Turn 1 up the mountain towards Turn 2 is stupidly steep. It is not unheard of for cars to exit Turn 1 at 160mph and to be 30mph slower by the time they reach the top of the hill. Cornelius upon finding no way through, also got the double whammy of losing a heap of speed on the mountain. By the time they made it to Turn 2 and down the other side, the squabble had almost resolved and this allowed Heeler to scoot through. Cornelius would eventually be passed by McAlpine and Sakamoto but this was the point at which it all fell apart in front of his eyes.

In close contention for a while was fellow Ford driver Bruce Wayne in the #66 Team UKZA entry. He was on a slightly different strategy and ran long towards the end of the race but this means that when he putted on lap 54 of 80, he converted 2nd into 22nd. This was more a case of a false dawn for the dark knight and he rejoined traffic which was long since up to speed.
Had Wayne made it into the feature race, then Team UKZA would have had all four of their entries in a feature for the first time ever. Robie Robie had already taken line honours in the B-Heat Race and Stanley Spidalski came in a commendable 5th. Al Yankovic knew that he was never going to get close to scoring a point and so rolled around the 200 mile event making laps and hopefully learning something about how to make the cars quicker for the Feature Race.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:

9 - Bandit Heeler
6 - Kayleigh McAlpine
4 - Tse Sakamoto
3 - Henri Cornelius
2 - Stanley Spidalski
1 - Go Mifune

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



There is something about Mount Pocono which just happens to favour the Fords. The differences in the shapes of the various models is only slight but those differences when placed in a more than 200mph air flow, are exacerbated and very quickly add up to something, however minor, which is enough to give them an advantage. Robie Robie won the B-Heat Race in a Ford and Bandit Heeler won the A-Heat Race in a Ford; so it was no surprise that the pole sitter and early leader was Kurt Langer who was also in a Ford.

Langer had spent three seasons with the team and to date, had not even so much as won a B-Heat Race. Three seasons and nothing to show for it was making the German unhappy. Every driver worth a dime wants to win races more than they want to be paid and even though Langer had no contract disputes, the lack of results meant that he could see no other option than to render his resignation at the end of the season.

In this early stage of the race, Langer was chased by ex-Honda driver Byuti Nananko who was herself in the middle of negotiations for 20X3, Mad Cat whose drive was more or less permanently assured, and Sonia Hirokawa who was doing admirably.

As this race was a tactical minefield, these four drivers who acted as rabbits, were all hunted down and passed. Not one of them would finish in the points. Arguably, this was a choice that was foisted upon them, for none of them had scored any points in the heat races either; so doing something different was the only option.

However, in this 100 lap race, there wasn't a single lead change for the first 50 laps. Nanako didn't have the speed to keep up with the group; Hirokawa had a fast car but was soon passed by cars sitting in her draft; Mad Cat found that he didn't have any drafting help and sank back through the order like a brick into a fish pond. That left Langer out in front; with Jean-Luc Pikachu in close quarter and Ellie McIllan hovering around close behind.
On lap 50, it was like watching downtown traffic at a city exit as car after car peeled off the track at the same time.



The race off of pit row to see who would claim the lead was as frantic as it was silly. Kurt Langer in the #43 Golden Fleece Ford was the first to blink and as soon as he came into the pits, it was like watching all of the cows come home at the end of the day.
He managed to get blocked on his way out of his pit stall by Asuka Soryu Langley and Al Yankovic; the latter of whom tried to use his car as a block to help out his team mate Robie Robie. That brought up as many as a dozen cars into contention and within eyesight of the lead.

Coming out of the pits is not a problem. Sorting one's self out through Turn 1 is not a problem. Trying to get traction down going up Mount Pocono on cold tyres is a universal problem and the airwaves were filled with complaints about how their tyres weren't warm and not properly bedded in.
Langer got forced wide going through Turn 2 and suddenly his previously impervious lead, crumbled instantaneously. To add repeated insult to injury, he was held on the outside going through Turn 3, Turn 1 on the next lap and couldn't find any way back into the train until almost a full lap had passed.

What followed was one of the most confusing battles of the season. The lead was held on various laps by Langley, Yankovic, Raymond, McIllan, Bernie, Robotnik, and McAlpine but ultimately, as the race wore on, it came down to who had the best long run speed and that appeared to be Oglivy Hedgehog in the #8 Chevrolet, Jean-Luc Pikachu who was being very patient, and Bandit Heeler who knew that he had a very fast car and had hung around in the very low 20s in the first half of the race.

McIllan soon realised that she didn't have the outright speed to make a challenge and so she decided to hang behind Pikachu. Pikachu was hoping that the race would come to him and so his lap times remained quick but constant. Oglivy Hedgehog realised that his car was amazingly fast but only over the short to mid run and so tried to take out as many fastest laps as he possibly could before the tyres gave up and he again fell into the clutches of the chasing peloton.



This race came down to a run out and chase down. Oglivy Hedgehog tried to reel out a lead which couldn't be chased down but the later that he got into the run, the more his tyres went off. Hedgehog was told on lap 97 to ease off bit and that if Bandit Heeler caught and passed him, then he should just let him go by. Heeler caught up to the back of Hedgehog on lap 98 and effected the pass through Turn 3 on lap 99. One lap later, the chequered flag fell and the pride of Queensland showed everyone a very dirty and blackened pair of heels.

The digital dashboard in Heeler's Ford had gone on the fritz and then completely unserviceable on lap 51 and just after the round of pitstops. For the rest of the race, he had to have his crew chief not only yell spotting instructions into his earpiece but also the gap and laptimes. Ironically, having information fed to him on a slower basis, meant that he had to change his attitude and think about his attacks as he passed cars through the field. By the time he got to the top ten, the field was strung out and traffic kept itself to an orderly fashion; with slow cars pulling over to the left and yielding to through traffic, going up the mountain.

On lap 90, Heeler acquired a visual reference on Hedgehog as he saw the blue Chevrolet at the other end of the front straight. He then asked his crew to be quiet and from that point, he was a perfect model of concentration. Although he wouldn't get the fastest lap (that meaningless accolade went to Al Yankovic who was also in a Ford), he was able to hit very consistent lap times, even without the help of the digital dashboard.

Jean-Luc Pikachu in the Toyota was able to fend off Ellie McIllan's Holden and take the final spot on the podium bu these two former champions took and gave no quarter. The Texaco Holden could find no way past the yellow Toyota Pikachu was more than able to cover any advance she might make. What is curious is that 7th to 10th place in the A-Heat race would finish 2nd to 5th place in the feature.

Possibly the biggest surprise package was that Tse Sakamoto rose to the top of the season's standings with Donkey Kong having failed to escape the heat race and therefore draw a complete blank from the weekend.

Points Awarded Main Feature Race:

20 - Bandit Heeler
17 - Oglivy Hedgehog
14 - Jean-Luc Pikachu
12 - Ellie McIllan
10 - Bernie Bernie
8 - Kerrod Edmundson
6 - Tse Sakamoto
5 - Patrick Mann
4 - Gojira
3 - Kayleigh McAlpine
2 - Sticks Baja
1 - Al Yankovic

Top 20 After 7 Rounds:

75 Tse Sakamoto
74 Ellie McIllan
69 Bandit Heeler
67 Donkey Kong
67 Kayleigh McAlpine
65 Oglivy Hedgehog
63 Darth Vader
44 Hatsune Miku
44 Jean-Luc Pikachu
42 Bruno Gourdo
40 Al Yankovic
39 Kane McKane
31 Bernie Bernie
30 Morgan Inkling
30 Dr Ivo Robotnik
28 Jack Raymond
27 Henri Cornelius
23 Walter Kronkyet
23 Robie Robie
22 Kerrod Edmundson

Round 8 will be held on 30th May at Cardboardland Speedway.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 8 - Cardboardland Speedway​

The B-Heat Race:

With the war between Russia and Ukraine making travel plans to Russia impossible, the round which was to be held at the Novograd Potatodrome became untenable. There was the suggestion that the teams could travel through the Interdimensional Rift, past ??? and out the other side but there would be no guarantee that they could get back again. Getting permits to enter the Interdimensional Rift already requires permission from the UN Department of Interchange Exchange System (UNDIES) and sending enough personnel for 72 cars and their crews through the rift, just posed too much of a security risk. It is generally assumed that COVID-19 was likely caused by a harmless coronavirus on the other side, that happened to find a host on this side.

This is where the world of the villains and the strange came together. If Mount Pocono was a failed attempt by a villain to build an underground lair, then Cardboardland Speedway is an attempt at building something on the cheap.

As the name suggests, Cardboardland Speedway is made entirely out of cardboard and was built on the ashen plains of Kansas. As a 1:1 scale replica of another mile and a half speedway, Cardboardland Speedway was expected to have a similar set of viable lines with some cars running the top and some hugging the bottom. Funding for Cardboardland Speedway came from M.A.D. and Robotnik Industries.



At 166 laps, the heat races were a shade over 250 miles; which meant that the order of the day was two stops. At roughly 56 laps a piece, cars could have a nice long run and still preserve the tyres quite well. IF they could keep out of each other's way.

On lap 13 Mario Mario spun the #64 Reece Mercedes going through Turn 4 and making proper use of the rules, caught the car and had it pointing backwards. The caution flag was thrown out and he was able to get a fresh set of tyres without losing a lap.
On the restart the field was bunched up together and in what would become a theme of the afternoon, the high speeds combined with the relative slippiness of cardboard as a racing surface meant that even the lightest of contact would turn cars into a carousel ride.

In an attempt to go four wide down the back straight, Ricardo Sasquini in the #55 tried to go to the inside of Henri Cornelius' #91 Holden. This didn't at all work and they were collected by Garfield Arbuckle's Chevrolet and Gwar Gura's Mercedes-Benz. The outside laen which held Konata Izumi, Mari Makinami and Michelle Oxford, very quickly assumed the front of the queue and led them at the next restart. This would be relatively short lived as normal running was soon resumed and the usual suspects soon found themselves back at the front of the pack.



Three-time champion Dr George Claw moved to the front of the field and was followed for a while by both of the Team Kong Wartburgs before Donkey Kong kissed the wall and cut a tyre. This left Hochi Samyang in the #96 Wartburg to try and chase him down.
Unexpectedly, both Bob Borobi and Tetsuwan Atomi were putting in a good run and this top four remained almost until the next pit cycle when Donkey Kong who was on fresher tyres, climbed back up the field; taking Bruno Gourdo with him, who had also found the wall and had to change tyres.

By about lap 80 it be came obvious that the long run speed of any car was non-existent and so cars began to pit seemingly at random to get them off-cycle and hopefully have the freshest tyres at the end of the race.
Garfield Arbuckle who had been claimed in the opening crash, put in a blistering run to fight his way back up from 35th to 13th. 13th doesn't pay any points but the run was good enough to learn a lot of about how best to set the car up for the main feature race and hopefully score points in that.

The unexpected story of the latter half of the race began to unfold from lap 106 when Hatsune Miku who was lying in 17th at the time, took the seemingly unorthodox approach of refusing to pass anyone until it was absolutely necessary and in doing so, she stretched out the end of he middle stint until lap 128; some 16 laps beyond the expected life of the tyre.
She stayed out and didn't even have to out in the effort to pass a bunch of cars while they all peeled off and then managed to secure an overcut by pitting from the lead and then reassumed the lead underneath green flag conditions.

On lap 140, Konata Izumi spun harmlessly while coming out of Turn 2 and this brought out a caution but very few cars took the opportunity to change tyres. She would just make the cut-off for the Feature Race by 0.09 seconds in a -three-wide dash over the line with Mario Mario who was the 18th and last qualifying car and Michelle Oxford who swore a blue streak across the line as she finished 19th and did not qualify.

No season would be complete without some kind of rumour flying about and when The Goof announced that there would be a new 4998cc unbranded V8 engine and drivetrain, complete with a hybrid system, this sent the rumour mill spinning at a hundred thousand rpm.
Mifune Motors immediately stated that they no wanted to be a customer of Mazda and their relationship would end at the end of the season. McAlpine Motorsport who was already adrift from Mercedes-Benz and running their own independent program, stated that they were looking for a new manufacturer to partner with and if none were forthcoming, they would invent their own branding. Project Leyton who were already not returning in 20X3, quietly sold their two Entitlement Contracts to Team Kong for $1 each.



As McKane was off-cycle and pitted later than practically any other car in the field, that meant that he had the freshest tyres and wasn't afraid to use them. Even though the Holden was cosmetically torn up, that amount of mechanical grip meant that he had the fastest car by as much as three seconds a lap. Hatsune Miku on the other hand, as a seasoned title contender, knew that she had to make her laps as smooth as possible in order to maximise tyre life and maintain lap speed.
This very different set of strategies towards the end is ultimately what decided the race.

It was never going to be enough. In trying to use up the tyres, McKane was progressively scraping away at his own speed advantage; by the time he got to the back of Miku's Toyota although he still had an in theory faster car, she made him go around the long way.
With virtually every car in the field exhibiting some kind of battle damage, McKane described his Holden as though it was like trying to drive down the motorway with a parachute open. Miku on the other hand felt that her Toyota had developed a new side force which was trying to push her car towards the wall.

It mattered not as McKane had nothing else to throw at Miku and she led him across the line by a matter of car lengths; which may as well have been a country mile.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:

9 - Hatsune Miku
6 - Kane McKane
4 - Donkey Kong
3 - Bruno Gourdo
2 - Dr George Claw
1 - Bob Borobi

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



Five wide at any circuit is always a recipe for insanity because the amount of uncontrollable forces that get unleashed if something goes awry, is like looking at the triangle in a game of 8-ball after the cue ball has struck it. Things just go everywhere.

After successfully managing to avoid the Turn 1 meme and the first lap of insanity, the field managed to create chaos going down the back straight on lap 2.
Race leader Byuti Nanako moved up the racetrack and Miles Prower in the #7 Toyota checked up briefly. Tse Sakamoto pounced on this and pulled out of the draft to move to the centre in his Mazda.
At the same time, Gojira and Jerry Tennosuke got a run with their two works Datsuns and also moved to the centre. To go around them, Felix Katt pulled to the bottom and Bernie Bernie who now found that he had a four-wide wall in front of him, could move through any of the lanes; seemingly with the draft in all of them.

Four lanes couldn't last though, as Turn 3 came upon them at a great rate of knots and so Bernie Bernie dove to the inside of all of them and made it to the bottom lane. After he rounded Katt, he tried to pull back into the centre of the track and from here, the dispute is whether Bernie's Wartburg clipped the nose of Sakamoto's Mazda or if the Mazda driver tried to punt the Wartburg.

"Look, I know that the United Nations is pretty busy right now but we have to take this bonehead move to them and get it designated as a crime against humanity. Idiot!"
- Bernie Bernie, to U62-TV

"I don't know what his problem is but if we're already going five-wide then moving back towards the centre is going to be a dangerous move. He needs to take a good hard look at himself in the mirror because he certainly wasn't looking at anything else in the mirror."
- Tse Sakamoto, to U62-TV

The driver who had the ace fall into her lap as though it just fell out of the sky, was Ellie McIllan. In the mess which unfolded on the back straight, she converted 22nd into 2nd place and chose to just sit behind Byuto Nanako. They would remain in close quarters until the first round of pitstops, when McIllan took on four tyres and had a horrid pitstop, while Nanako only needed to change the outside two tyres and pitted back into the lead.



As the race was 166 laps long, it split neatly into thirds; with the first round of pitstops happening at about lap 56. After the first round of pitstops and with the two leaders clearing out from the field, it then became a question of who could find the ascendency.

Team Mach ran strong with both Kenichi Mifune's #4 and Go Mifune's #5 Mazdas circulating nicely. Bandit Heeler decided to run the high line around the top of the racetrack and used it to some success. Dr Ivo Robotnik continually complained of a tightness problem and would take an air pressure adjustment at the next set of pit stops. Koffing who was having a rather sad weekend, having qualified 29th, was happy just to be in the front half of the field. Sonia Hirokawa would go on to suffer a chronic misfire and park her Wartburg for the afternoon.

Team Mach having run Fords, Chevrolets, and now Mazdas, were becoming increasingly unhappy with the engines and drivetrains that Mazda via Levins Racing were supplying them with. A Mazda had come very close to winning the title in 20X1 and team principle Daiskue Mifune had been expecting a comparable performance in 20X2. As Nigel Levins pointed out, his young charger Tse Sakamoto was again in the hunt for the championship and Team Osko with Morgan Inkling was putting in a tremendous performance. Mifune was having none of that and so announced that Team Mach would be looking for a new manufacturer before the 20X3 season.

Dr Ivo Robotnik who was running in this battle back, eventually found the front of it and gradually began to clear out. He figured that his tightness issue would not improve and changed to running a higher line around the racetrack than he would have liked to. The Kia, perhaps down on power, proved to be more stable as long as he kept the nose of the car out of dirty air.



The end of the race was a strange of affair. Byuti Nanako in the Hoppy 86 Chevrolet was the first off of pit row on lap 100 and only took on two tyres. The team was anticipating another caution which never came and so on lap 130, she pitted from the lead and surrendered; to finish a credible fourth.

This left Dr Ivo Robotnik, Kerrod Edmundson and Ellie McIllan all in close quarters and fighting each other for the lead. At various point throughout the last 49 laps from 101 until the race's end at lap 150, all three of them floated between all three places and all three of them led the race.
There is not really a lot of difference between the two ends of the racetrack but Robotnik's car which had better turn in, could take and hold the bottom line through Turns 1 and 2 more effectively than the other two. McIllan could roll the top around Turns 3 and 4 and carry as much as 15mph faster across the line. Edmundson had a car which was a useful comprommise and he mainly took to the centre of the race track.

The critical period of the race was between laps 140 and 143 when Robotnik was held up behind the Ford of Stripe Heeler and that allowed both Edmundson and McIllan to roll around the outside of Turn 4 and complete the pass through the tri-oval. Edmundson's Mazda was quicker on a clear lap than McIllan's Holden but she knew that if she could taunt him into making a mistake, then the deficit could be reduced in a hurry.
That mistake came on lap 143 when McIllan dove to the inside of Turn 1 and Edmundson in trying to cover the bottom, had to check up to avoid losing the tail of the car. McIllan then swept up the racetrack and that was the end of that scuffle.
She would lead the remaining 8 laps and the only one that counts, lap 150 of 150. She still wasn't happy with the car though, telling U62-TV that she had an understeer problem which the crew later found out was due to a broken power steering pump.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:

9 - Ellie McIllan
6 - Kerrod Edmundson
4 - Dr Ivo Robotnik
3 - Byuti Nanako
2 - Kayleigh McAlpine
1 - Koffing

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



The beginning of a Main Feature Race is always a chance for the teams to reset and try out what they may have learned in the heat races. Bernie Bernie having learned that he did not want to be part of someone else's chaos, screwed up his car as tight as it would go and put the Wartburg on pole. What followed was nothing short of flag to flag domination which sounds impressive but does not make for an interesting story.

Ellie McIllan who had won the A-Heat race, simply could not keep up with the Teutonic purple car ahead of her and although she circulated in second place for most of the afternoon, she had an equally uneventful race.

Cardboardland Speedway if anything, has shown itself to produce mostly dull races except for periods of massive amounts of confusion. This A-Heat race couldn't even do much of that as the only major incident happened on lad 26 when Miles Prower had a tyre go down and spun while coming out of Turn 2.

The only other driver who was affected by the Toyota's carousel ride, was Koffing who in checking up to avoid the out of control Toyota, put himself into what would have been a spins expect that he smacked the wall with the tail of his car and broke a half-shaft in the process. The Mercedes would somehow limp back towards the pits but as it finally lost drive on the entrance to pit row, the caution came out while it had to be pushed behind the wall.

This compressed the field back up again and Bernie Bernie would have faced a threat to his lead but he had help from Hochi Samyang who after holding back and letting him by, then proceeded to hold up even more of the field. Ellie McIllan faded back into the field and Garfield Arbuckle and Gojira were the next two to try and take up the fight.



300 miles is long enough for teams to consider running a three-stop strategy but at the pace that Bernie Bernie was running up front, the benefit simply was not worth it. Perhaps the most exciting period of the middle of the race was when Kerrod Edmundson and Al Yankovic exchanged 5th and 6th places back and forth.

Yankovic could make his For run faster by rolling around the top. Edmunndson repeatedly dove to the bottom of the racetrack but found that he had to wash off a lot of speed in order to make corner exit. Thus, one of the longer battles of the afternoon played out.
Both of them watched the other Ford of Stanley Spidalski sail calmly off into the distance; while they continued to fight for small pickings.

This dispute would ultimately slow both of them down as they were passed by Bandit Heeler who had better long run speed and by Hochi Samyang who at the last pitstop took on no tyres at all and by running her own race, would eventually claim sixth.
After the last round of pitstops, the front of the field read Arbuckle, Bernie, McIllan, Gojira, Edmundson, and Yankovic.



With only 10 laps to go in the race and with a car that turned nicely, rotated nicely and still had plenty of grip to put the power to the track, Bernie Bernie got a run on the outside of Turn 3 which gave him a slingshot around both third and second, which left him with only Garfield Arbuckle to chase down. Arbuckle was also having his best run of the season and wasn't about to give up the lead without a fight and so, seeing that Bernie was able to run the top, he tried to take that line away from him. Much to Arbuckle's disgust, Bernie ran a crossover move on lap 180 and slid up the racetrack, forcing him to check up. Arbuckle having lost what would have been seven car lengths, then had to run lines that he didn't want to, just to stay out of the dirty air from Bernie in front.

Bernie had not won a race since his unsuccessful tilt at the title in 20V9, which was 13 years ago. Since that season, he has driven for Team UZKA, what would eventually become Team Yellow, and the current race team which was the ex-GAZ works team. He has driven Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges, GAZs and now a Wartburg before seeing victory lane again.

Garfield Arbuckle was distraught after the race, having had probably what might have been his last chance at race victory taken away from him. The not very well kept secret that he will be retiring in favour of one of his sons in 20X3 is known by all of the paddock and Arbuckle's second place was as popular as Bernie's win.

There was little that Gojira could do after being passed and he had his little hands full with trying to keep Ellie McIllan behind him. The Datsuns have only achieved mid-pack mediocrity this season; with only Gojira having achieved anything remotely resemebling a result. Ellie McIllan on the other hand, still not happy with the Holden, continued to accumulate points; having almost done enough to draw out almost a feature race's worth of gap to Bandit Heeler in the season's was content to just collect the points.

Points Awarded Main Race:

20 - Bernie Bernie
17 - Garfield Arbuckle
14 - Gojira
12 - Ellie McIllan
10 - Bandit Heeler
8 - Hochi Samyang
6 - Stanley Spidalski
5 - Al Yankovic
4 - Kerrod Edmundson
3 - Hatsune Miku
2 - Henri Cornelius
1 - Bob Nikoban

Top 20 After 8 Rounds:

95 Ellie McIllan
79 Bandit Heeler
75 Tse Sakamoto
71 Donkey Kong
69 Kayleigh McAlpine
65 Oglivy Hedgehog
63 Darth Vader
56 Hatsune Miku
51 Bernie Bernie
45 Bruno Gourdo
45 Kane McKane
45 Al Yankovic
44 Jean-Luc Pikachu
34 Dr Ivo Robotnik
32 Kerrod Edmundson
30 Morgan Inkling
29 Henri Cornelius
28 Jack Raymond
24 Gojira
23 Walter Kronkyet

Round 9 will at Spa-Franchorchamps on June 20.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 9 - Spa-Franchorchamps​

The B-Heat Race:

Nestled in the hills near the town of Stavelot lies the former street circuit but now permanent road course of Spa-Francorchamps. The 4.31 mile layout combines very fast sections with arguably the slowest corners on the whole tour.

Spa is loved by some teams and utterly hated by others as the course tends not to produce close racing but exposes both strengths and weaknesses in the teams. This race weekend was no different.



Pole sitter Walter Kronkyet in the Wartburg, knew that he had a lot of short run speed but that this came at a compromise with handling and tyre wear. The plan from the Wartburgs generally would be to go as hard and as fast as possible out of the blocks and then hope that it would be enough for the rest of the field not to be able to chase them down. It wasn't.
Kronkyet led exactly two laps, with Vader passing him through the back of the circuit on lap three; with half a dozen cars passing him by the end of lap six.

By lap nine it even became a struggle for Kronkyet to maintain a place within the points as tyre degradation began to even more severely eat away at his lap times. Here we can see him holding down 6th place ahead of Jack Raymond's Holden and Amy Rose's Toyota; none of whom would finish in the points in this race.
In fact, Kronkyet's eventual 7th place in this race and 13th place in the main feature, pretty well much summed up his frustrations at this venue - pointless.

Vader who briefly led, also could not find an absolutely amount of speed and was soon passed in turn by a trio of Mazdas.

The front of the pack sorted itself out into a running order of Mifune, Sakamoto and Inkling; with Mifune eventually being run down by the works Mazda. Sakamoto would lead the majority of the laps in this race; also retaining the lead after swinging into the pits on lap 22 and going back out without surrendering the place on track.



An unofficial official policy document was leaked mid-week, detailing a change to The Goof for 20X3 from 72 cars down to just 40. The reasons as stated was that if a car had qualified for every A-Heat Race and Feature, that they would have to do 28 races on 15 race weekends. The proposal which was being touted would be a compromise between the various interested parties and for a 20 race calendar with only feature races. McAlpine Motorsports had complained that they weren't being given any support by Mercedes-Benz at all, Kia were looking to offload their responsibilities, Datsun were prepared to pull the plug entirely, and Wartburg who was now being run as a cover brand for machines built by 'The Galactic Empire' was seen as highly suspicious.

Just the existence of the leaked policy document caused Project Leyton to officially announce that they would not return; having scored exactly zero points in 20X2. Sonia Hirokawa's run at Spa hung a lampshade on the fact that the team really had no chance at all. By the end of the 45 lap race, she could only get her car to do 42 laps and being 3 laps down, meant that she never moved any higher than 36th. Even Ricardo Sasquini whose lack of results was beginning to annoy Mazda and who in this race just made the cut-off by finishing in 18th, lapped Hirokawa twice.

Up front, the race had turned into a kind of Mazda benefit run with Tse Sakamoto leading, Morgan Inlking within striking distance, and Go Mifune running in third. Spa was now becoming a traditional happy hunting ground for Mazda; because the extended high speed sections coupled with the very very slow sections just seemed to suit their setups. At least in this race, only the Chevrolet of Oglivy Hedgehog put up any kind of fight against them. By the round of pitstops on lap 23, he could follow Mifune reliably.



Inkling wasn't prepared to sit behind Sakamoto for the whole race and so on lap 40 of 45, she used his car as a brake and gently nudged him out of the way while going through the Bus Stop. Sakamoto was annoyed at the move and protested on the radio but race control saw nothing particularly interesting in it and so no penalty was even looked into, much less issued.

Levins Racing Team Owner, Nigel Levins, had to come over the radio to calm down his employee who subsequently ran deep into La Source and had to throw the car into reverse. Fortunately for him, the next car was way down the road and so second place was not surrendered.

Meanwhile, Morgan Inkling who had been informed that Sakamoto's challenge had evaporated, drove five laps around Spa-Francorchamps like a happy little bunny who had just won a million carrots. The pace at the front of the race dropped off but she was in no danger of losing the race win unless something catastrophic happened.

With Inkling out front and Sakamoto in second, the race looked like it could have been a Mazda lockout and nearly was except that on lap 45 of 45, Go Mifune had an intermittent KERS failure and rather than push the car and throw away the result, he let Oglivy Hedgehog pass through with no fight whatsoever. Hedgehog's third place was a goo reward for what otherwise had been a boring afternoon. Being boring is sometimes what bags results and 4 points for coming home third is nothing to be sneezed at.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:

9 - Morgan Inkling
6 - Tse Sakamoto
4 - Oglivy Hedgehog
3 - Go Mifune
2 - Darth Vader
1 - Mad Cat

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:



Henri Cornelius, having raced in the lower classes for French saloon racing, had been to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium before. He took the Holden to the front of the field ahead of Patrick Mann and Nic-Nat Nutmeg. All three drivers chose to employ a two stop strategy and use softer compound tyres and lighter fuel loads, in the hope that faster lap times around Spa would lead to enough time to be able to include the second stop. It didn't work. All three drivers although consistently faster than anyone else in the race, fell down to 10th, 11th and 12th after their first stop and would finish 19th, 22nd, and 27th respectively. The strategy was entirely fruitless.
Charging to the front of the field on lap 15, after passing the top three who had gone into the pits for service, Donkey Kong tore up Eau Rouge; bringing Arbuckle, Miku, and Yankovic behind him.

DK Energy is a truly awful energy drink, it must be said. Banana Ester is very easy to make in a chemical process but adding sweetener to it in a fizzy drink, does not make for a nice tasing thing. However, as both Monster Energy and Red Bull have proven, kids will drink practically anything provided there is enough sugar and caffeine.

Kong had not led very many races in 20X2 and so he was delighted to be up front. However, going through La Source at the slowest part of the track it was evident that he was asking too much of his Wartburg, as an unhealthy amount of blue smoke trailed off the rear end. Somewhere on the run, a seal had broken in the diff housing and the differential had for a time become a banana flavoured barbecue. Kong's solution would be to drive the car for as long and as fast as it would go, or break in the effort.
Apart from filling a reserve tank in the boot at the stops, the Wartburg refused to die. Even with a common hybrid drivetrain, the combination of ex-Communist and Galactic Empire engineers, had ensured that things were reliable. This was a hard won lesson which was starting to payu dividends.

It did mean though that Kong wasn't able to pull out much of a lead and there was soon a train of cars behind him; none of whom wanted to get too close lest the #95 actually break calamitously. For a while the train placed Kong, Gojira, Yankovic, McIllan and Miku in order.



Immediately before the round of pitstops, defending series' champion Al Yankovic skated through the inside of the Bus Stop and took over the lead; in front of a very irate Donkey Kong who felt that the Ford driver had not given him any room. Kong would surrender second place to Gojira at La Source and then be outpowered by the Toyota of Hatsune Miku heading out of Eau Rouge. The #95 machine would score 2 points in the A-Heat race but wouldn't gain anything from the Feature.

Yankovic himself would give up the lead at the round of pitstops as Jean-Paul Cassell and Ellie McIllan would both pass him in the pit lane; with the latter losing time because payback was ordered at Robie Robie in the #20 Team UKZA Ford absolutely crawled to his pit bay in an effort to hold her up.
The tactic proved to be somewhat useless as the only two cars held up by the tactic were Miku and McIllan and as they would end up in 8th and 9th behind Yankovic who placed 7th, defending zero points may have been seen as churlish.

Up front though, Jean-Paul Cassell had an excellent run up front and held the lead for a while; with Gojira behind him. Cassell who had been a works Holden driver was annoyed when Phil Monroe Racing was given the works role in 20X1. Having joined his workshop with the staff at McIllan Racing, he was increasingly becoming tired of the whole affair and although he had attained an Entitlement Contract for 20X3, he announced that he would not be returning as a driver. Thus, the #44 having been around since the inception of The Goof, would finally disappear after 28 seasons and zero championships. A podium here would be a nice result.



Cassell who had led the race, was reeled back in by both of the Fords of Bandit Heeler and Bruno Gourdo. Heeler nominally had the faster of the two cars but Gourdo, having raced at this circuit many more times, had more local knowledge and enough race craft to pick his way through traffic more effectively.

Gourdo passed Heeler going though the top end of the circuit on lap 40 of 45 and then was able to put a number of cars in between the tow of them, well before they ever made it back to the start/finish line. Heeler having given up the place, appeared to back off slightly and then matched Gourdo lap for lap, while the two of them made the run home for the flag.

As rumours of field numbers being dropped from 72 to just 40 for 20X3 in what was now being called "The Great Cull", plans were also being made with regards who owned the various entitlement contracts. Gourdo absolutely owned his #33 ticket and he likely owned the #43's ticket which was being driven by Kurt Langer. Presumably Gourdo would not want to field two cars in 20X3; and this made Langer extremely nervous. Gourdo had the backing of the petrol company Golden Fleece but Langer did not.

As for Bandit Heeler, the Heeler brothers built their own cars and so didn't really care. If they were running two cars or one car in 20X3, then so be it. Bandit's 2nd place here was solid; which meant that the results spoke for themselves.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Bruno Gourdo
6 - Bandit Heeler
4 - Jean-Paul Cassell
3 - Gojira
2 - Donkey Kong
1 - Robie Robie

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race:



The plan for Walter Kronkyet in the Main Feature race was the same as the B-Heat race; to go as hard and as fast as possible at the start and then hope for the best. Qualifying for the Main Feature had been topsy-turvy as many cars which had scored no points in the heat races threw very soft tyres on their car; assuming that tack position was at least something to be attained.
The strategy which had failed before, failed again. None of Kronkyet, Langley, Wazowski, Inkling, Toqucanne, or Rose, would finish in the top 12 but at least they put the sponsors on screen for a while.

In the case of Inkling, she may have had a decent run after winning the B-Heat race but coming down the hill, she was tagged in the rear left quarter and sent spearing off into the gravel trap by Amy Rose. The Mazda would eventually find its way out of its adventure but not before a dozen cars had passed it.

As for Kronkyet out front, his Wartburg would play a crucial part in finding the eventual winner of the race but not directly.
The Goof permits telemetry to be transmitted back to the pits but the only form of communication back to the drivers is via radio. Thus, even though the #61 crew knew that they were likely to lose the lead of the race, they also knew that their data could be given to someone else who might inherit the lead.

The Wartburg team got Kronkyet to experiment with different engine maps and blade control settings and the best of these was then passed on to Vader's #77 crew who then made adjustments to the black Watrburg at their only stop of the race; which came very late on lap 34 of 58.



The mid-section of the race which saw the field topsy-turvily reset itself, had more to do with who could make better use of fresh tyres than anyone else. For a while the field was led by Eggatha Robotonik, Donkey Kong, and Ellie McIllan; all three who pitted late, relative to half way.
Against the trend, Kane McKane pitted on lap 26 of 58 and hoped to go long on the set of tyres. This meant that his charge upwards through the field, happened while other cars were stationary. Having dropped as far as 21st, he recovered to fourth place; having passed exactly zero cars on track.

McKane was then held up to such a degree behind this trio of late pitters, that behind him, Sakamoto, Robie and Vader were taking tens of seconds of time away from his advantage. McKane would lead lap 34 and then no more, as trying to mount any kind of defence was an exercise in stupidity if he wanted to retain tyre life and make it home in a good place. Both Sakamoto and Vader passed him and Robie, who chose to sit in his draft going from La Source all the way to Kemmel, sort of dropped away and would challenge no more. McKane saw Sakamoto and Vader drift away down the road and Robie fade away behind him. This, he finished in a very lonely third place.

Bruno Gourdo who had won the A-Heat Race, was on a similar strategy to McKane and might very well have won the race; having pitted from seventh. His crew encountered a jammed rattle gun when changing tyres and the Ford would drop nearly twenty seconds while the crew had their own personal meltdown.
Gourdo's race would follow a similar pattern to McKane's but he never got close enough to Hochi Samyang and Kayleigh McAlpine to bother them.



Having been beaten in the B-Heat race by Morgan Inkling, Sakamoto already knew that his Mazda probably didn't have the outright speed to hold back a challenge from someone late in the race. By the time that Darth Vader arrived at the top end of the racetrack on lap 56 of 58, he was already resigned to the fact that picking up 17 points in a title fight was a pretty good option. Sometimes part of the skill of building a championship is knowing when to fight the battles.

Vader was quite surprised to see the red Mazda simply move out of the way for him and so he effected the pass as quickly as he could to make sure it would stick. For the next two and a bit laps, he saw the works Mazda become an ever smaller dot in his rear view mirror until it could not be seen at all.

This was quite a turn around from the B-Heat Race on the Saturday as the Wartburgs couldn't really maintain their long run speed. The solution, albeit not a very good one, was to tighten up the cars to the point where making it around La Source was an issue. Mostly this had to do with camber and toe adjustments and Kronkyet couldn't make the setup work for him at all, Bernie Bernie swore blindly over the radio and could only manage 12th, and Hochi Samyang who is generally very very angry thought that the adjustments did nothing and she came in 6th.

Meanwhile, Sakamoto came home in a sensible second place and rounding out the podium was Kane McKane who had spent the A-Heat race bobbling around the mid-teens and running the feature race on his lonesome for most of the afternoon. McKane was never fast enough to even see Sakamoto again but had lost sight of Robie Robie in fourth.

Sakamoto's sensible run was enough for him to rise to the top of the championship standings. Ellie McIllan and Bandit Heeler who both drew blanks, now found that they were within striking distance of Darth Vader.

Points Awarded Main Race:
20 - Darth Vader
17 - Tse Sakamoto
14 - Kane McKane
12 - Robie Robie
10 - Kayleigh McAlpine
8 - Hochi Samyang
6 - Bruno Gourdo
5 - Stanley Spidalski
4 - Go Mifune
3 - Hatsune Miku
2 - Jack Raymond
1 - Bernie Bernie

Top 20 After 9 Rounds:

98 Tse Sakamoto
95 Ellie McIllan
85 Bandit Heeler
85 Darth Vader
79 Kayleigh McAlpine
73 Donkey Kong
69 Oglivy Hedgehog
60 Bruno Gourdo
59 Hatsune Miku
59 Kane McKane
52 Bernie Bernie
45 Al Yankovic
44 Jean-Luc Pikachu
39 Morgan Inkling
36 Robie Robie
34 Dr Ivo Robotnik
32 Kerrod Edmundson
30 Jack Raymond
29 Henri Cornelius
27 Gojira

The next round will be at Mungo Scrubs in Queensland on 18th Jul.

 

[Cola83]

The A-Heat Race:
DK Energy is a truly awful energy drink, it must be said. Banana Ester is very easy to make in a chemical process but adding sweetener to it in a fizzy drink, does not make for a nice tasing thing. However, as both Monster Energy and Red Bull have proven, kids will drink practically anything provided there is enough sugar and caffeine.

I'm trying to figure out why this paragraph was in your description of the action/racing - BUT I totally agree with it

 

[Rollo75]

colour

Aside: I also love that that's the point being asked for clarification, as if the rest of the world I've built is sensible. The fact that he is driving a Wartburg and is also sponsored by an East German state-petrol company is neither here nor there.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 10 - Mungo Scrubs Grassway​

The B-Heat Race:

Mungo Scrubs Grassway in southwest Queensland was originally the result of an experiment gone wrong. The owners wanted to build a one mile dirt oval but the continual subtropical rain in the spring meant that the surface was subject to expansion, contraction, and severe cracking. To combat this, the owners seeded the track with buffalo grasses and thus, the grassway was born.
In 20V9 when Australia was on fire in the biggest bushfires that the world has ever seen, Mungo Scrubs Grassway suffered a degradation of the surface and the track was out of use for a considerable time period. 20X2 is the first year that it is back in commission.



By now, news of "The Great Cull" had passed around the paddock like an unexploded hand-grenade at a children's birthday party. It was going to go off and it would be messy. There wasn't though, the expected scramble for Entitlement Contracts that would be expected. As they were going to be offered to teams and drivers who had already scored points, then this would likely top out at about 40.

Two teams that would not be coming back were Project Layton of Professor Layton and Sonia Hirokawa running Wartburgs and the Hair Squad of Bobo-Bo Bo-bobobo and Byuti Nanako. The number of points that these two teams has scored was minimal and as neither of them had qualified for the double point races, they saw the rest of 20X2 as almost a dead loss.

More than likely Bobo-Bo and Byuti would return to their country and continue their old work, Professor Layton would go back to his university post, and Sonia would more than likely get a job as a full-time assassin. These would be very different from being a race car driver.

Byuti Nanako was the only one of this group who would take any points away from this weekend. By staying out in front at the very beginning of the race and running and completely orthodox race tactic by pitting on lap 100 or 200, she was able to stubbornly use traffic to retain her place close to the front and came away with fourth.



Having said that though, the top 12 of this race was a turbulent affair. As Mungo Scrubs has at best one and a half lanes of useable track, being stuck behind traffic would be like taking the elevator to the basement.
The lead for the first half of the race was held by Langer, Koffing, Cornelius, Mann, Edmundson, Claw, and as we see here on lap 133, Garfield Arbuckle.

Had the number of cars not decreased from 72 to 40 for 20X3, Arbuckle might have been tempted to stay on in the #9 while any number of his seven kids taken over. As it was, the #9 would be taken over by his son "Ugly". 20X2 was now becoming Arbuckle's "Farewell and Faffing About Tour".

On this particular charge to the front, Arbuckle brought Edmundson and Koffing with him as Dr Claw was stuck behind traffic coming out of Turn 2. Claw would have moved to the top land but these three cam storming through like the Hootenanny Express; stopping at no stations.

Chevrolet's 305 power unit had been proven to be very quick as demonstrated by Oglivy Hedgehog at Ontario earlier in the year. Here though, by swapping out various gear ratios Garfield Arbuckle ran what he called a "punchy" setup, which meant that he kept on shifting between 3rd and 4th gears, whereas most of the field were content to leave the car in 4th and use throttle modulation to that same effect. For a while, Arbuckle sat at the front of the field but he too got shot down the elevator shaft and finished the heat in 6th.



Edmundson in the Mazda and Koffing in the Mercedes, continued to keep close company. Koffing, having realised that he was not going to be able to get around Edmundson, played tail gunner in the spirit of cooperation - that is, Koffing wanted to held Edmundson but also was more than prepared to pounce should the red machine show any signs of weakness or opening. Koffing never found it. Jean-Luc Pikachu who came up rapidly behind them, did.

The winner of the B-Heat Race, showed that he had mastery of racecraft and timing. On lap 185 he got a run on the bottom and went from 10th to 7th. On lap 194 he went around the top from 7th to 2nd. On lap 198 he boxed Kerrod Edmundson's Mazda in behind Dr George Claw's Kia and took the top spot.'
Jean Luc Pikachu was champion more than a decade ago, was taken on by Team Yellow Toyota after a five year hiatus. His performance here at Mungo Scrubs showed that he was still as wiley and as crafty as in 20W0.

Having won the championship in 20V0, not many of the competitors that he faced back then are still around today. While the personalities may have changed, the sport is still pretty much the same with 40-odd cars, beating and banging around; hoping to be out front at the end.

Since Robie left at the end of last season, Team Yellow Toyota has been in something of a slump. In 20X2, only Jean Luc Pikachu has featured in the top 20 in points and the management in Aichi is not exactly thrilled. Nevertheless, Toyota intends to stay on in 20X3 and Patrick Mann who will be more than likely stepping away in what has to be about the worst kept secret in the paddock, will stay on as Team Principal.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Jean-Luc Pikachu
6 - Kerrod Edmundson
4 - Koffing
3 - Byuti Nanako
2 - Kurt Langer
1 - Garfield Arbuckle

 

[Rollo75]

The A-Heat Race:

The unusual surface at the Mungo Scrubs Grassway is such that having just been pounded with a 200 mile B-Heat Race, it needed to be watered before the A-Heat race and then again tomorrow on the Sunday for the feature. The grassway basically is a mile and a third dirt track which is sowed with grass and then rolled. Unlike other dirt tracks, the track is not graded but instead is allowed to remain fallow for two months between race meetings.
Drivers complained on Friday practice, that the surface was showing signs of cracking and asked that extra watering happen between races so that big chunks wouldn't break off.



Antony D'Tigrette had acquired a new colour scheme at this round after an expected deal with a major hardware store fell though. Union 76 filling stations stepped in and upped their funding of the #76 and this was the result.
It was also now becoming obvious that something about the works Chevrolet team was just hooked up and singing. A 305 cube, 24 valve engine can be a wind instrument at times, playing a single not symphony.

By lap 9, D'Tigrette had climbed from 11th to the front of the field and led Cat, Heeler, Wayne, Kronkyet, and Inkling for the points paying positions and probably should have extended the lead while in clean air. There is an interesting about clean air on the nose and that is that although clean air on the front of the nose helps with front end turning, the amount of wind resistance is enough, even on a relatively shortish track like Mungo Scrubs, that the cars following are able to get an advantage by sitting in the draft and perhaps even stealing air off

As the race had been caution free up until that point, the race to and from pit lane was determined by who was first to blink. Sitting way deep down the field, Hatsune Miku and Amy Rose took their Goodsmile Toyotas to pit lane and sunk to the rear of the field on lap 98. On lap 99 it was like someone had yelled "Free Sausages!" in the car park of a hardware store and immediately a horde of cars came to pit.
Running to the front, Robie Robie won the race off of pit row, with Stripe Heeler and then Bruno Goudo making up a trio of Fords at the front.

Coming back through the field though. Tse Sakamoto tightened up his car and on fresh tyres, was wall riding his. way through the field. Although far from being anything like a preferred line, he was able to make it work and Go Mifune in a non-works Mazda, latched on to and followed behind in his wake.



The race had more or less settled into a groove as cars dispersed themselves roughly evenly about the racetrack. Miku and Robie held and maintained a ten second lead over Sakamoto and they had lapped everyone up to 17th.

On lap 124 and racing for the minor points paying positions, Eggatha Robotnik got a little too ambitious and nudged Morgan Inkling up the track going through Turn 1. This meant that Walter Kronkyet had to check up but was unable to do so. He hit the rear end of the Mazda; which turned him around and he in turn was collected by Stripe Heeler in the Hammberbarn Ford. Gwar Gura in the Mercedes tried to come out of the top groove but she also hit the stricken Wartburg and her race came to a sudden halt.

In the swirling madness which trailed behind, the then race leader Mad Cat, checked up and was rear ended by Bruce Wayne and Antony D'Tigrette took damage on the front right hand side, breaking a toe link. What could have been a good run for a lot of drivers, ended behind the wall.

One the four car mess was cleared, the cars re-racked and restarted, Robie took the lead by going around the outside at Turn 1 and Bandit Heeler following made it a Ford 1-2 for a while.



After spending the opening period of the race at the back of the field and hoping to stay out of trouble, Hatsune Miku made a charge upwards through the field from 21st, from about lap 102. When it was realised that there was a run on, this brought on a charge from Go Mifune in the Mazda, a run from Oglivy Hedgehog in the Chevrolet, and a strange tactic from the works Mazda team who decided to bring in Tse Sakamoto for a two-tyre stop under green flag conditions on lap 120.

Having learned the lesson earlier in the race, the Mazda team worked out that they could lose 30 seconds getting in and off pit lane and then recover as many as 60 seconds over the course of 30 laps. In theory that would put the #58 Mazda into the lead; assuming that they'd lost no time trying to pick their way through traffic.

And so it was that Sakamoto made a similar charge upwards through the field that Miku had done and by the time that he made it to the rear quarter panel of Miku on lap 148 of 150, he had tyres which were 18 laps fresher and had already gotten used to rolling the top. Nevertheless, he still came down the racetrack and forced the issue; causing Miku to check up and lose three car lengths in the process. This was actually enough for Sakamoto to show Miku the badge on the back of his car and bring home a heat win.

Robie and Heeler who were just a wee bit behind, weren't close enough to do much of anything and Go Mifune led home a stack of eleven cars within a second, who had formed a very angry pack, late in the race.

Points Awarded A-Heat Race:
9 - Tse Sakamoto
6 - Hatsune Miku
4 - Robie Robie
3 - Bandit Heeler
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Oglivy Hedgehog

 

[Rollo75]

The Main Feature Race

The Main Feature Race on Sunday was significantly cooler than the races on Saturday; with ambient temperatures barely climbing into the 70s at all.



Having dialed into the track quite well, the works Chevrolet team intended to just blaze a trail of glory across the sky or fail in the process.

Arbuckle decided to copy his own "punchy" setup from the #9 Chevrolet to the #8 platform. In real terms it near enough made no difference to the lap times of Hedgehog; who given the tight nature of the mile and a third oval, continued to run the same lines that he had done previously.

Behind him, Go Mifune's tactic was to tuck in behind the blue Chevrolet and then hold postition. This infuriated Henri Cornelius who had started on the outside of Hedgehog and then couldn't fall in behind. The top line around the racetrack was slower at both ends but Cornelius knew that his Holden was faster than the white Mazda. The Frenchman also knew that Mifune was perfectly entitled to hold position and so he had to accept that fact.

Edmundson who decided hang behind the front four, had spent considerable time behind Arbuckle in the B-Heat Race and thought that that paid pretty good dividends with the result of second place. Jean-Luc Pikachu in the Toyota hadn't done so well in qualifying for the feature; so Edmundson figured that he would be one less thig to worry about.

Mifune finally passed Hedgehog on lap 35 going into Turn 3 and then promptly lost the lead again on the exit from Turn 4 as a tighter entry meant that he also had a tighter exit and Hedgehog got a better run. Cornelius despite watching all of this, saw Hedgehog slide up in front of him and then had to check up as the Mazda elbowed his way in going into Turn 1.
Behind them, Arbuckle and Edmundson, both being old hands held back and watched the shenanigans play out in front of them.

For about five laps, Mifune tried to roll the top around the outside of Hedgehog but again, the blue Chevrolet was better dialled into the track. The Chevrolet was better at keeping and holding the line on the bottom than either the Mazda of Mifune or the Holden of Cornelius was capable of.
Thus, the race settled back into a fairly quiet parade until about lap 95 when the halfway round of pitstops occurred.



The race off of pit road didn't see any change in the standings at all with the top five all coming into the pits on lap 94. You could count them into pit lane Hedgehog, Mifune, Cornelius, Arbuckle, and Edmundson and count the off in exactly the same order. This left Hatsune Miku in the lead as 8 cars sped by while they were in the pits.
On lap 96, they all got stuck behind Testuwan Atomi and Michael Maus who were in 33rd and 34th place respectively and they all lost sufficiently enough time for the 8 cars in front of them to pit and return in time. Those 8 cars were Miku, McAlpine, Claw, McIllan, Gourdo, Yankovic, Heeler and Koffing.

The next 30 laps were ind of static as cars turned rather aimless laps and chipped away at the miles. McAlpine made no inroads on Miku, and Hedgehog and Arbuckle began to rise through the order again as they had intended to from the beginning of the race.

Koffing complained of a vibration in the rear of the car and the likely cause was that he had kissed the wall at some point. The method that a ball of gas controls a motor car, is via telekenesis. Exactly how a ball of gas feels vibrations in a motor car remains unknown. Nevetheless, Koffing was able to stay in the draft of the two Fords of Gourdo and Yankovic quite effectively.



Mungo Scrubs is generally seen to be a one and half groove racetrack. Cars can either hugh the bottom or try an approach slightly above that but there basically is no outside lane to speak of and being hung up out there is usually a prescription for a drug called 'Sadness'.

Kayleigh McAlpine had finished 10th in the A-Heat Race and was not about to let the weekend be a disaster. Her plan would be to always pit as late as possible, so that that way she would have the freshest tyres upon which to finish the race.

Garfield Arbuckle who was holding down fourth place, took a bump from Dr George Claw and spun going through Turn 3 on lap 173. Arbuckle drove straight into the pits and then was held a lap later for speeding on pit lane. Being this late in the race, a few takers decided to all dive into the pits and McAlpine running in 12th was one of them.
On the restart, it was obvious that the cars with the freshest tyres had a distinct advantage and this included McAlpine who carved through the field like a heated battle axe through a stick of butter, Ellie McIllan who also ran even closer to the botrtom of the track, and Bruno Gourdo who had followed McAlpine but lost the race off of pit row.

After passing Dr Claw and Miku in traffic, McAlpine then proceeded to try and put as many lapped car between her and any potential challengers. What followed on the team radio, which although actually was English, sounded absolutely unintelligible to anyone listening in.

Points Awarded Main Feature Race:

20 - Kayleigh McAlpine
17 - Hatsune Miku
14 - Dr George Claw
12 - Ellie McIllan
10 - Bruno Gourde
8 - Al Yankovic
6 - Bandit Heeler
5 - Koffing Koffing
4 - Oglivy Hedgehog
3 - Henri Cornelius
2 - Go Mifune
1 - Garfield Arbuckle

Top 20 After 10 Rounds:

107 Tse Sakamoto
107 Ellie McIllan
99 Kayleigh McAlpine
94 Bandit Heeler
85 Darth Vader
82 Hatsune Miku
74 Oglivy Hedgehog
73 Donkey Kong
70 Bruno Gourdo
59 Kane McKane
53 Al Yankovic
53 Jean-Luc Pikachu
52 Bernie Bernie
40 Robie Robie
39 Morgan Inkling
38 Kerrod Edmundson
34 Dr Ivo Robotnik
34 Dr George Claw
32 Henri Cornelius
30 Jack Raymond
27 Gojira

As a sufficient number of cars had already scored points in the first 10 rounds, the double points paying rounds were fully subscribed. There would be no Redemption Round in 20X2. Instead, the next round will be the Le Mans 3-Hour to be held on July 31.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 11 - Le Mans 3 Hours​

Hour 1

47 drivers had already scored points this year; so there was no need to hold Redemption Round. Goof Management has now released their 20X3 policy document detailing that for next season, the maximum number of entries in a race would be 45 for 43 grid spots and that as only five manufacturers had actually comitted to building cars, that those five would be required to build at least seven cars.

As this year's event was now the fourth time that The Goof had been here, a lot of setups from last year were applicable. Ford (or rather Team UZKA) successfully lobbied Goof Management to increase the rev limit to 10,000rpm; which everyone assumed was because they were likely down on power.



At 2 o'clock, in the blazing heat of July, once again the French countryside rumbled into confusion with the sound of more than 25,000 horsepower being put to the ground. Pole sitter Stanley Spidalski got off to a good start and the field trailed behind him like a very angry snake. Ford had done remarkably well with five of the top ten grid spots being filled by the marque.

Following Spidalski was Dr George Claw who had taken second position with a a dream run on the Saturday. Qualifying runs are foten impeded by finding stray traffic around the 8.38 mile circuit but the Golden Fleece team had given Gourdo a clean run with no traffic at all. Thus, he showed that to be successful, one needs both good luck and good management.

Darth Vader in the Wartburg got an excellent start and split the two Chevrolets of Arbuckle and Hedgehog in front of him. The pilot in black, racing For the Empire, was keen to make a good showing here because a maximum 40 points here and and Bathurst can really turn a season around.



On lap 6, at the end of Mulsanne, Vader's hopes came to an abrupt end when he tried to close the door on Jean-Paul Cassell's Holden. The Frenchman, having qualified 11th had had a glorious run upwards and was now closing in on taking away the final podium position in the running order.

Vader, who was still watching Claw ahead of him, did not notice Cassell's lunge through the corner at tge end of the long straight and considering that Cassell wasn't really that close when they crested the final rise, he hadn't expected him to pull level either.

The impact bent the steering arm of the Holden and Cassell couldn't even compete the lap. After driving up the road for a bit, he pulled the car to the side of the road and medical crews feared the worst but it was just that the Frenchman was dejected and disappointed that what would be his last race in France, ended in such ignominious circumstances.

Vader was mostly unbothered by the incident and continued on the tour until he made it back to the main straight and stopped short of the pit entrance. The car having lost all drive and all instruments, suddently came to a silent halt. Pushing the car at this point was pointless and it wasn't until the car was taken back to the pits via the internal service roads that they worked out that the impact had thrown several wires from the CPU unit and the KERS System couldn't get inti limp home mode. Vader would watch the rest of the race from a television screen in the catering carnival behind the pits. Wearing all black and a cowl in the French summer sun must have been hot but as usual, the man in black remained silent and brooding.



The first major casualty of the race happned at just on the half hour mark when Kayleigh McAlpine's Mercedes-Benz just expired calamitously and let go. Going down the long Mulsanne Straight, engines are inclined to bounced off the rev-limiter but at some point on the way back to the pit complex, some of the 48 valves were driven through the cylinder heads; resulting in a catastrophic engine failure.

Teams are allowed a total of three engines for the season. A team running multiple cars may pool them and because McAlpine Motorsports is a four car operation, it started the season with twelve engines at its disposal. This failure junked yet another engine and so the pool was now reduced to just five engines for four cars. With Bathurst coming up in a fortnight, there is a very real possibility that gthe team may have to resurrect a very dead engine.

"Yeah I know... disappointin'... I were up and he were all aaht... under t' bridge an.... through the right hand and... well I wouldna knee... ach boom, an it shat itself! Well I were feckin' furious... well what ye gan do abaht it?... can of Special Brew. Cheers, lad!"
- Kayleigh McAlpine (mostly unintelligible), to U62-TV.

Just before the hour mark, Stanley Spidalski breezed past Robie Robie for the lead and the two of them would retain Team UZKA's domination up front. Al Yankovic on the other hand, did quite have the pace of the other two and it was now obvious that a title defence had drifted away and was now gone. He would circulate aimlessly all day and pick up a rather meaningless 12th place.

 

[Rollo75]

Hour 2



Team Yellow Toyota after challenging for a championship in 20X0, now found itself bouncing along the road of oblivion. Team Principal and twice champion Patrick Mann, had only scored one points paying position and that was a 7th in the feature race back in Round 7. Sticks Baja had been mainly employed for her technical prowess but couldn't extract results from the car. Bob Nikoban had scored only 1 lousy point. This meant that only Miles Prower and Jean-Luc Pikachu were cashing in results, with the latter steadily fighting into the top 10.

Pikachu had been lured back from retirement some 12 years after he'd posted his unexpected championship win and given that there were no real expectations of him this reason, he was having a hoot. At Le Mans, his aim was to help anyone else in the Team Yellow Toyota squad secure as many points as possible because quite frankly, he didn't really care.

Patrick Mann had been too slow all weekend to make any kind of impact on the race standings. Miles Prower was reasonably close to Pikachu on the road and so the two of tnem ran in tandem for most of the day. Pushing someone at a superspeedway is an acceptable tactic but at the bumpy and somewhat narrow Circuit De La Sarthe, it is far less attractive an option. Nevertheless, drafting is more efficient than just being a single car presenting itself to the air; so at every opportunity, the two Toyotas would swap places forth and back.

For their efforts, they would be rewarded with a boring and solid 6th and 7th place; with Prower switching to the front after the last corner and crossing the line ahead of Pikachu.

In a curious deal, Pikachu had agreed to race for Team Yellow Toyota on the basis that in return for not demanding a salary and only having his expenses covered, that he would run his own messaging on the car. Thus, Pikachu is running "sponsorship" for the Electrical Trades Union (ETU). Evidently the electric mouse thinks that there is power in a union.



"PANIC! PANIC! This is not going to end well!"
- Kane McKane

Holden's run at Le Mans remains absolutely abysmal. Henri Cornelius' #91 entry boiled itself just after the hour mark and McKane's car suffered a brake master cylinder failure.

McKane had been holding down 11th place in front of the Ford of Al Yankovic and the two Kias of Mad Cat and Dr George Claw. On lap 23 panic stations set in after passing under the Dunlop bridge and having to surrender three places at the top end of Mulsanne.
Cars usually cruise down the Mulsanne Straight at 190mph. McKane knew that the brake pedal was becoming extremely long but slowing down too much, creates its own safety dilemma and so he was accompanied down the entire chute with waved blue and yellow flags.

At the final rise on the straight, McKane threw the car into 1st Gear and then tried to aim for a sand bar at the right-hander. He was mostly successful. He still managed to clip a retaining wall and the car rolled over and then harmlessly back onto its wheels.

"You don't often get a minute and a half to consider how you're going to crash and it's a testament to the strength built into these cars, that I can walk away from this so easily."
- Kane McKane, to U62-TV

In the hole on the order which he had occupied, the two Team MAD Kias of Claw and Cat played similar tactics to the Team Yellow Toyotas, Yankovic continued too fall away and coming upwards, Donkey Kong in the Wartburg got past the Mercedes-Benz of Marnie Roxy who was slightly worried that the failure of the #3 would also visit her #960.



Spidalski who hadn't led a race for a very long time, was told to pull back his dominance of the race because Team UZKA realised that a 1-2-3 finish might very well be on the cards for them. Spidalski and Robie were both quick and with Yankovic hovering around 6th, a little bit of racecraft would ensure that the three of them could run together as a trandem.

Going down Mulsanne on lap 24, Ellie McIllan found that her pass of Spidalski for the lead was unexpectedly easy. He didn't really put up any resistance and by the time they cam to the sharp right hander at the end, she was already well clear.

News had already arrived from the end of Mulsanne that fellow Holden driver, Kane McKane's accident was caused by the KERS system seizing; which meant that he had become little more than a passenger. Exactly what caused the ssytem to fail was unknown and wouldn't be known until data had been downloaded from the car itself. Naturally, this posed an unknowable threat to the #74 Texaco Holden because what it ever it was that failed in one car, could very likely fail in another.

Ellie's answer to the advice was with typical English stoicism:
"If it happens to us, we'll deal with it then. Until then, for England, Harry, and St George!"

In either the response of a champion or someone who is quite quite mad (or both) Ellie McIllan then pulled out the lead over Spidalski and he decided that a solid podium was on the cards, rather than trying to get involved in a needless melee and throw it all away.

With "The Great Cull" now being a fixture of the plans for many teams and drivers for 20X3, the wheel of uncertainty was spinning ever faster. Although the experiment of Jean Paul-Cassell and McIllan Racing was not a failure (with Ellie McIllan still very much in the title race), Jean-Paul now in his 32nd season was finally willing to hang up the helmet. Cirumstances were such that he was willing to hand his entitlement contract to McIllan Motorsports in exchange for them also accepting a tied driver. Contract negotiations are ongoing.

At the end of the second hour, the running order was McIllan, Spidalski, Robie, Sakamoto, Gojira, and Kronkyet.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 12 - Bathurst 500​

Once again The Goof returned for its annual pilgrimage to the holy mountain of Mount Panorama near Bathurst. Technically the Mount Panorama Racing Circuit is a street course because most of the year, not only is this a road with houses and people living on it but just like any other suburban street, once a week the bin men come to collect people's rubbish.

This is one of the larger venues, with crude camping facilities both behind the pit complex as well as over the top of the mountain. This time around, it was Ford fans who were out in force with their flags and in particular, flags and banners for Queensland's favourite son, Bandit Heeler.

This year, the race had been brought back to a 10am start; considering that the circuit does not have lights and with sunset before 6pm, the chances of late running needed to be mitigated.



The flash of cars through Hell Corner for the first time is a sight which has been blazed into the minds of Australians for 60 years. The sounds of The Goof, running 5L V8 engines coupled with the electric whine of the hybrid drivetrain, is familiar but different.
Pole sitter Dr Ivo Robotnik became the first driver to post a lap quicker than 2m05s. His 2m04.997s time came late in the qualifying session; in the cool of an August afternoon. To go from mid-30s to early teens is a jolt to the system but the cooler air did mean more power available.

Ellie McIllan, who has only ever finished on the podium here, thought that she had the fastest time at 2m05.006s and hoped to put the Holden on the inside of the first corner and then sprint off into the distance. Starting on the outside meant that she was vulnerable and was. Kayleigh McAlpine in the #3 Irn-Bru Mercedes-Benz, jammed her nose in where it aught not to go and by the time that they had reached Hell Corner, she had already elbowed her way to second place.

Behind them the two Wartburgs of Vader and Kong formed a temporary manufacturer alliance and successfully held out Robie Robie's Ford. Robie's season at his new employer has been less than stellar; with the little yellow robot not exactly achieving the same level of performance that he had at Toyota. At this race, he would achieve nothing of import and in fact walk away from the weekend with no points at all.



As far as the mosty important move of the race went, fans didn't have to wait long because it happened on lap 3. Robotnik who was hoping to defend the line going through Murray's Corner, was held and pinched to the inside by Kayleigh McAlpine who had spent two laps trying to work out where she should go.

The Kia drove into Murray's on the inside but McAlpine held the line on the outside, was able to beake way later, and then because she had taken a wider line through the corner, had a very large speed advantage heading up Mountain Straight. Robotnik could do nothing as he saw the Mercedes effect the move, pull in front of him and then complete the pass before they got to Griffin's Bend.

As it was only lap 3 of 128, Robotnik put up no resistance.

"3 is bumper... quarter... door... side... clear."
"We wait."
"Understood, boss."
"We'll find out how quick it actually is going down the mountain."

If Robotnik had any chance of taking back the lead on that same lap, by the time they hit the rise on Conrod Straight, it had evaporated. The question now would be how fragile the Mercedes was, given that it had exploded in a cloud of nonsense at Le Mans.

Behind them, Ellie McIllan saw the move, thought about following McAlpine but was too far behind to effect any kind of pass. She would lurk behind them.



To lose one car is an accident. To lose two cars begins to look like carelessness. To lose three cars in a single accident is cause for corporate outrage, except in this case the company didn't even exist to care.

Following the unpleasantness in Russia, GaZ Motors unceremoniously, unexpectedly and completely unannounced, withdrew all fund and technical support for the 8 cars running their machinery in The Goof. Normally this would be cause for abject panic but Lord Vader of Cheem, by force of will, convinced the company to hand over all original IP and the cars were rebranded as the former East German marque Wartburg. Wartburg had no problem with this, since they'd already suffered and existence failure. All parts would be now made in "The Empire".

Wartburg had had an okay run in qualifying. They'd managed to get all four cars 13th and better; with Donkey Kong posting a set of all purple sectors, which were then knocked off by the three drivers in front of him.

The issue going through The Cutting on lap 7 was that Dr Ivo Robotnik had a moment and lit up the rear tyres in a smokeshow. Ellie McIllan behind him had to check up; which then caused Donkey Kong to check up, so Vader tried to escape by heading around the outside. Bernie Bernie who was completely unsighted, ran straight into the rear of the black car in front of him and this also ricocheted into the car in front of him.
Kong was livid and ran off into the scrub yelling obscenities. Vader could have been angry with the mess in front of him. Bernie was just worried what his boss was going to say about it.



A 500 mile race is not just about the fight for the top of the stack but also the whole gammet of stories which unfold further down the order.

Oglivy Hedgehog had initially been thought as a title contender but as the season wore on, his hopes gradually fell apart. For all of the speed shown at the beginning of the season, there were a lot of results were nothing came of the team's efforts at all. Here, he just couldn't get the Chevrolet dialled into the circuit and constantly complained about the car's tendency to tail wag going over the top. For the early part of the race, he was in company with Dr George Claw, Go Mifune, and Koffing.

Go Mifune disgraced himself at this circuit and at the corner before this one, some three years ago when he nudged his father Daisuke Mifine, into the wall going through Reid Park Turn. A few years of experience has improved his racecraft but it still hasn't exactly equated into roaring success. Around here, the Mazda was quick enough to hold its own but not quite quick enough to pull back the lead which the leaders had stretched out.

Dr George Claw never really found the speed that was needed this weekend. The sister car driven by Dr Ivo Robotnik was blisteringly quick but even with an identical set up, the #10 car in Claw's hands was not able to match pace with the #13 in Robotnik's. Robotnik likes the Kia to be really really twitchy and Claw found that this was just not useful for his smoother style. Robotnik tends to stab the throttle and then wrestle with the wheel, whereas Claw prefers to feed the power in more slowly. Still, for Kia to bring home three cars in the points, is a very good result indeed.



While the top two had cleared out, a fistfight was developing for third place. Morgan Inkling and Tse Sakamoto in the two Mazdas, did not consider forming even a temporary alliance as doing so might surrender the positions to the Chevrolet and fast Fords nearby.

From about the end of the first hour, Inkling tried to stay as close to the front of the battle pack as she could because she had a car with a good amount of front aero grip. The Chevrolet of Arbuckle was set up such that he had the car trimmed back; which made the car far more skatier across the top of the mountain but that lack of grip came with the benefit of lack of drag. Whereas Inkling was topping out at 185mph, Arbuckle was the fastest in a straight line of any of the cars in the whole race; occasionally reaching 190mph. By about lap 40, he was finally free of the Mazdas and was free to try and chase the two out front (which he never did).

This left Inkling and Sakamotot to fight for 4th and 5th place; with Gourdo and Yankovic behind them. By the time of the second round of pitstops when all four cars had dropped out of the battle and rejoined the track, the distance was strung out to about seven seconds between them all. Unless there was a major disaster which brought out the safety car and bunched the field back up together again, then there wouldn't really be that much of an on track fight. There wasn't.



In fact what happened, that instead of the field being brought closer together, the leaders pulled out so much of a lead that they ended up lapping everyone up until 8th.

Ellie McIllan had been wishing for a safety car all day if she had any hope of putting in a good performance yet despite the treacherous nature of the mountain, it simply didn't come. She was on avererage a second and a half slower per lap than the leaders; which at a shorter track would be disasterous but around here is recoverable. Just before the final set of pitstops on lap 94, McIllan was passed by the leaders while in the pits and this was her out lap; in which she was passed by yet more cars.

Arbuckle and Inkling were still embroiled in their battle with Sakamoto looking one from a distance and Gourdo and Yankovic looking from a slightly further away distance.
By this stage, Garfield Arbuckle had worked out that he could reel out a lead between The Cutting and Forrest's Elbow and still be safe when Inkling tried to pull it back going down the three big straights. He could finesse the Chevrolet by floating it between the corners over the top, whereas Inkling just didn't have the bravery to do that.

Meanwhile; as far as the Fords were concerned, with Gourdo being harassed by Yankovic it was incredibly fortuitous that he happened upon Kurt Langer in the second of the Golden Fleece entries. Langer duly let Gourdo through and did such a good job of holding up Yankovic that the challenge evaporated. For Langer's part, he was still hoping to hawk out his services for 20X3 and was hoping to be noticed on a stage this big.



Having had three cars involved in a single accident earlier in the day, the Wartburg teams were keen to come away with their pride. Having been transported back to the paddock, the teams frantically patched and taped their battered machines, so they'd be fit to run again.

The 500-mile race at Bathurst tends to be one of the friendlier races of the year, with the crowds realising how hard it is to get any kind result. When the three Wartburgs emerged back on track, there were cheers all over the mountain. The fact that they kept circulating, shows grit and determination from teams whose future is likely uncertain.

Late in the race and through a series of problems, what emerged was a five-way battle for 13th and downwards; with the whole crop being three laps down from the leaders. With Claw and Cat in Kias, Vader and Bernie in Wartburgs, and Koffing lurking about in a Mercedes-Benz, this tri-cornered manufacturer fight was one of the more entertaining of the afternoon.

Triple champion Claw didn't really care about keeping the car pretty and Vader, who was already sporting battles stripes, beat and banged on each other, while Cat, Bernie and Koffing hoped not to be collected in the potential carnage.
That carnage never arrived and it was Koffing on lap 122 who pulled out a blinder of a move under brakes and forced the Mercedes-Benz past both Bernie and Cat, in a semi-controlled slide, on the entry to Murray's Corner. By that stage, Claw had asserted his dominance over Vader and that stoush had been concluded.



Kia is one of several manufacturers not returning next year after "the great cull" and this would normally strike fear into an organisation who is dependent on someone else for parts. Eggman Industries released an official press statement which said that it did not care, given that it has in the past run Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges, Plymouths and even a Maserati. Kia would get three cars into the points today and put their name in front of the cameras but a good result today was still really not good enough.

In arguably one of the most frustrating drives of his career, Dr Ivo Robotnik led exactly two laps; which were both the wrong ones to lead. In terms of race results, nobody cares who led the opening lap; nor does it count for points or pride. To lose the lead on lap 3 and then watch as the blue and orange Mercedes-Benz drifted slowly away from him all day, is close to heartbreaking.
Nevertheless, Robotnik gave the #13 machine a very good run. His season had been relatively rubbish up until this point, with the only other place of interest being a second back in Round 6.

As he was unable to chase down Kayleigh McAlpine, Robotnik spent great portions of the afternoon speaking directly to Racecam and the viewing public. With the race win being tantalisingly out of reach, the driver of the unlucky #13 machine thought that he would have fun by making quips and bon mots to camera.

"These are the Toyotas of Pikachu and Baja. I have no idea what they are hoping to acheive today. There's four of the yellow slugs around here and they're all going slower than the construction workers' union picnic."

"One of the Heeler boys on the left there. Those lads have got a bunch of barbeques and a big coffee boiler going out the back of their pits. You can wander down there for some free sausages on bread. They're putting the food trucks out of business."

"Hooking it through MacPhillamy, you crest the rise of the hill and just get a glance at some Ford flags, a few Union Jacks and a Scottish cross, and one yellow flag that just has a picture of bananas on it. It's like a tent city up there; probably fuelled by cheap beer and people who haven't seen vegetables since Thursday."

"Here's Miku. Bit of an air-head. She's got that Toyota disease this weekend. Slower than a wet Wednesday."

"This Mifune kid up ahead of us. He thinks that he's all of that and a bag of chips. Really he's just a kid spending daddy's money and he's not even veyr good at it. At least that thing is white. "Surrender" is a good flag for that car to be flying."



As far as race wins go, McAlpine's was pretty close to perfection. Having taken over the lead on lap 3, the orange and blue Mercedes-Benz pulled away from everyone and never even looked like giving up the lead again. Especially after the engine detonantion in the Le Mans 3 Hour only a few weeks ago, you really couldn't ask for a better turnaround.

For a 500-mile race, going caution-free for a long time is a rarity. Apart from the bust-up at The Cutting early in the race, there were only one car incidents where someone either spun and returned without incident or where someone scraped the wall, returned to the pits and parked the car for the day.
The absence of yellows meant that McAlpine could build up a lead and then pull into the pits and get serviced before pulling back into the lead. Although Dr Robotnik did on occasion have a faster car and they did swap fastest lap back and forth, this was an exercise in slowly building up an advantage and by the time that they encountered lap traffic, the only way that Robotnik could have closed the gap was through a caution but it never came.

40 points here and the relative failure of the championship leaders to extend their points haul, meant that McAlpine shot up the standings and now has a very real shot at the title. With only 60 points from the feature races and a further 27 possible from the heats, then realistically, everyone below fourth place has no title hopes any more and even then, Bandit Heeler who is now 52 points behind Ellie McIllan very likely also doesn't have a chance.

Points Awarded Round 12:

40 Kayleigh McAlpine
35 Dr Ivo Robotnik
30 Garfield Arbuckle
25 Morgan Inkling
20 Tse Sakamoto
17 Bruno Gourdo
14 Al Yankovic
12 Ellie McIllan
10 Kurt Langer
8 Bandit Heeler
6 Donkey Kong
5 Dr George Claw
4 Darth Vader
3 Koffing
2 Bernie Bernie
1 Mad Cat

Top 20 After 12 Rounds:

154 Ellie McIllan
152 Tse Sakamoto
139 Kayleigh McAlpine
102 Bandit Heeler
89 Darth Vader
87 Bruno Gourdo
83 Hatsune Miku
83 Donkey Kong
74 Oglivy Hedgehog
72 Al Yankovic
69 Dr Ivo Robotnik
67 Jean-Luc Pikachu
67 Gojira
64 Morgan Inkling
60 Robie Robie
59 Kane McKane
56 Stanley Spidalski
56 Bernie Bernie
49 Garfield Arbuckle
45 Dr George Claw

Round 13 will not be held at the Novograd Potatodrome due to ongoing conflict but will be instead held at the Three Sevens Speedway at Sega Land, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, in a fortnight's time.

 

[Rollo75]

Round 13 - Three Sevens Speedway ​

The B-Heat Race:

In previous years, the first B-Heat race after the two big crown jewel races, has been an angry angry beat down; with literally the entire field having no shot at the title whatsoever. Having been excluded from the big points paying races, most of this field, even if they were to somehow secure perfection and win all heats of the final three rounds, would still only score 87 points and mediocrity. This year was no exception.



In the early stages of this race, Asuka Soryu after starting behind Eggatha Robotnik, dove under her on lap 4 and made the move finally stick by the end of the tri-oval. Officially Three Sevens Speedway has four turns but with the very long sweep on the front stretch, it effective has five.

Soryu was followed by Sticks Baja in the Toyota, who has had an otherwise awful season. Having been brought on along with Miles Prower as part of Team Yellow Toyota's expansion program in 20X1, apart from dribbly results back in Round 7, the season to this point was fruitless. Here though, she had a chance to convert good track position into points.

Behind them was an even sadder tale. Samuel Toucquanne in the works Chevrolet, had been officially given his marching orders at the end of the season. As Chevrolet were going to retain the services of Hedgehog and d'Tigrette, with Garfield Arbuckle's son Ugly taking over the No.9 car, there was not only not the room for -Toucquanne but his non-existent results with the equipment, merely served to prove the case. After starting on the outside of the second row, he would fall progessively to 11th and again score no points.



Among the other drivers who were not coming back, were those of the GE satellite Chevrolet team, Mikhael Maus and Felix Katt. Maus never got the hand of the car and Katt was never fast enough.

Even on a relatively short track like Three Sevens Speedway, Maus' skill deficit was on brutal show as on lap 50 of 150 and while he was still circulating, he was a mobile road block to the then third placed Asuka Soryu who has pitted late in order to get an overcut, of the leaders Baja and Robotnik. Coming out behind Maus, who was acting as a plug for both Strong Bad and her team mate Mari Illustrious, Soryu was well and truly annoyed by the black and white car's donkeying about.

She would suffer further indignity when on lap 51 while still failing to get around Maus, she was passed on the underside going through turns 3 and 4 by both Sonia Hirokawa in the Wartburg and the Kia of Jar-Jar Binks. The NERV team managed to secure one place in 20X3 but seeing as Datsun would not be returning as a manufacturer, then what brand the team will be running is still unknown.

Rising through the field after having an abysmal pitstop, Eggatha Robotnik took her Kia from as far down as 9th, all the way back to the podium positions. Although clearly having the short run speed, Eggatha in only her second season, has not yet convinced the world that her racecraft is world class. As Three Sevens Speedway is a shortish track, where the driver is forced to work more or less constantly, she was expected to squander her good starting position however as the race wore on, she proved that not only was she prepared to put the bumper to people but that she could find lines as well as anyone else.



After the final round of pit stops, the running order was Baja, Robotnik, Soryu, Hirokawa, Binks and Sasquini in the final points paying position. Most of the field pitted between laps 98-102 but there was a small select group who stayed out to improve their track position.

On lap 103, pit road was closed when Jerri Tennosuke spun in the Datsun coming off of Turn 4 and was collected by Patrick Mann and Olivia Micini. This left the six drivers who had not yet pitted, in the rather unique position of making their tyres last longer than they otherwise wouold have done and thus delaying the final pit stop; which also meant fresher tyres at the end. For Michelle Oxford, this was a shaft of gold from heaven.

Oxford had scored exactly zero points in two years and although she was going to be replaced for 20X3 by someone else who was bringing in more money, a shot at a race win is always something that any race driver is going for. Oxford pitted on lap 106 and although she was shot back to 20th and on the end of the longer line, she now had tyres which were as much as 8 laps fresher.

Her run began with a massive push down the back straight from Marnie Roxy who was a lap down and by the end of lap 109, she'd taken the elevator from 20th to 8th. The lead up from swapped back and forth between Baja and Robotnik as the two of them became ever more desperate to get to thr front and maybe pull out an advantage. By lap 138, Oxford was sitting behind them and watching as they traded paint and scrubbed their tyres even harder. On lap 148, Oxford pulled an audacious move by trying to roll around the top of 3 and 4 and then straight-lined the tri-oval; which neither Baja or Robotnik could hold back. By the time they had reached Turn 1, she was already through and then hugged the inside line through 3 and 4 because she could roll the centre better on fresher tyres.

All she had to was hold her line and her nerve. With repeated yelps of desperation, she barked at her spotter to remain silent while she picked her way through traffic for the last three angst filled laps. When she crossed the line to finish lap 150, her crew went nuts and flooded pit row. Goof Management decided to do nothing about this outpouring of ecstasy, considering that it simply wasn't worth it. Michelle Oxford having claimed her maiden race win had now inked her name in the record books forever.

Points Awarded B-Heat Race:

9 - Michelle Oxford
6 - Sticks Baja
4 - Eggatha Robotnik
3 - Asuka Langley Soryu
2 - Mike Wazowski
1 - Sonia Hirokawa