This is our first "Race Report" since the last official event on March 5th, 2020, some 310 days ago! Prior to this, we had four "Session Reports" for the times a few of us met in September, October, November and December last year. With the start of a new year, I thought that I'd go back to referring to our FRC get-together events as "Race Reports" and including these results in our official FRC database from which we can all get proper statistics and better information.
That said, yesterday we had our first event for 2021 where we did a large amount of testing and practice driving, eventually having three races for just our Kitbash class not long before packing up. We had a turnout of five drivers, one of whom was an old FRC regular who it was great to see on the track again - none other than Nicholas E, alias Spick, whose last event at FRC was on December 30th, 2013, seven years ago! Over his years at FRC, Spick participated in 537 races, beginning in July 2009 and became one of the quicker drivers we've seen. This was his first taste of no-magnet cars at FRC and he tried out quite a few, quickly getting up to speed. Others present were Steve, O'Brie, Keith and myself. The day before was Steve's birthday and before starting any driving, the three of us present removed our masks and had a toast to him with three "turpentines", Peter's name for the beer O'Brie has recently been bringing:
As mentioned previously, we all did a lot of "free practice" driving. O'Brie brought along his new Clubman Caterham/Lotus 7, a Christmas gift from son Sean in the UK, giving it its first test session. It had some teething troubles, as expected, but it did improve during the session. For this event we saw a few of the Vintage Sports GT no-magnet cars run for the first time and they actually went very well. It was already getting quite late, with the sun low in the sky when we decided to run some races before everyone had to leave, so we agreed to run three Kitbash races.
The results
Because of the late decision to do some races, we rolled a dice for first race grid positions, resulting in Spick on pole with Steve's Mustang GT350, O'Brie second with his Peugeot 205, Keith with Steve's Nissan Skyline, Steve with his Chevy Lumina and my TriumphTR4A:
We reversed the grid for race two and used the results of that race for the final grid.
Action on the exit of turn one with Steve's Lumina on its roof while O'Brie, Keith and I go by on the outside, bumper to bumper:
(How this is computed: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=393)
Congratulations to the winners.
Next event's classes: I'll keep you posted, however they'll be non-magnet classes.
Don't forget to see the updated overall fastest times and the fastest times by driver and class for 2019 to know what the benchmarks are for your cars, the updated class average qualifying times and the updated fastest times for 2019. Older stats can be found in the Archive area of the forum.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon