Fairways Racing Complex Forum

RACE REPORT #263 - January 17th 2019 (HS, APC, VS6075)

The first event for 2019 featured our Historic Saloon, American Pony Car and Vintage Sports '60-'75 classes and saw seven drivers vying for honours. With all the rule changes made for 2019 focusing solely on HS and APC, everyone was filled with anticipation of how the cars that had the new changes would perform. It was a mixed bag, some going quicker and others remaining basically the same as last year, but its still early days.

In the interest of completing the events earlier, we had worked out a schedule which reduced the number of races to two per class, but increased the laps per race by 10, from 25 to 35. This worked out reasonably, although we had to reduce this to just 1 race each for the once again split VS GT and Prototype sub-class races. We did manage to finish earlier than had become the norm and, like the cars, this system will be fine-tuned as we go along.

---

Results



The Historic Saloon starting grid comprised only Fords - five Capris and one Falcon. My Capri is on pole, followed by one of the Team Bhola Capris driven by Arden, Steve's Falcon, The second Team Bhola Capri with Ramesh at the controls, O'Brie's Capri and Peter's Zakspeed Capri:


Rear view of four Capris on the downhill back-straight that leads into Fosters corner:






American Pony Car starting grid. Steve's Javelin on pole, Ramesh's Camaro, my Challenger, Steve's Mustang Notchback driven by Richard, my similar Mustang driven by O'Brie and another of Ramesh's Camaros driven by Arden:


O'Brie's blue Mustang almost hits the wall as Ramesh's orange Camaro heads towards the final turn:


Richard's Mustang and my Challenger lie on their roofs after a coming-together in Fosters:










Vintage Sports '60-'75 Prototype saw Ramesh's Alfa 33/3 on pole followed by Steve's similar car, Ramesh's McLaren M8D driven by Arden, my little early-era Ferrari 275P and O'Brie's Ford MkIV:


My 275P lies on its side after trying to negotiate the infield 90-degree left-hander over the car's limit:






Vintage Sports '60-'75 GT starting grid. Ramesh's De Tomaso Pantera leads Steve's Porsche 914/6, Steve's Cheetah driven by Richard, my Cobra Daytona driven by O'Brie and my Cobra roadster:


The whole GT field going through the Carousel in tight formation:


Another view of the GT action in the Carousel:









(How this is computed: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=393)

Congratulations to the winners!

Next event's classes: Class grouping B - Rally Car (RC), Slot.It Challenge (SC), Formula 1 (F1) (3 races/stages).

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

Great night of racing as usual at FRC . If this 2019 season opening meeting is any guage of how racing will be this year, we're in for a good one ! Although the turnout was not a huge one, there were enough drivers present to have full grids for most classes. Although the event progressed quickly (mainly due to O'Brie's prodding), we still managed to have some good ole talk in between. It is always interesting to see how cars perform when new rules are implemented and this was certainly the case at this event. In my case, my re-configured Historic Saloon Mk.1 Capri was unable to race due to a chip issue. This was a disappointment as , in pre-race testing (which the defective chip did not prevent), the car was going quite well. Chip issues seemed to be the order of the day as I know others also had problems.
Congrats to the night's class and overall winners , Gordon and Ram. Congrats also to O'Brie on taking Index Of Performance honours.
Looking forward to the next event.
Steve

Thanks for a great night of racing , congrats to all racers for making it happen. see you all soon.

I had a great time! Thanks guys. The schedule of the races helped and we should seriously look at longer single races versus the 3 race format. That would help with the additional classes like SB and the VS split as well. Room for discussion here.

Hi guys i do agree with O Brie, that the single longer race worked out well, i am in favor of this as well. Thanks.

I also agree with O'Brie. Let's give it a try at the next event and see how things go.

Well it seems that I will be outnumbered here but I prefer the multi-race format, not least of all as it allows one to have some measure of recovery if there is an incident, particularly a mechanical issue, in the first race. I thought that we had gone through this discussion already and had decided on the two-race format as a compromise. If however the majority decision is for a single race, I will not object.

Steve, we've run one event with the two-race format (except for the final two classes). Let's give the single race format a try for the next event and see how it pans out. We can get a better idea of how suitable each is then.

Ok in the spirit of compromise and comrades etc. I do agree with Steve that if there is a mechanical problem with your car, sometimes brought on by someone banging into you,then we could look at stoping the race to allow an agreed amount of time for basic repairs. We stop for shunts, we could include a stop for “Obvious” mechanical problems. That way you are not eliminated from that race with no hope of a recovery. Do we include a change of car to speed up things? It would have to be decided before and the “reserve” car would have to be scrutinized and maybe also qualified before. But I my mind it will eliminate the loss of place for things like axles coming loose etc. just my 2 cents