Fairways Racing Complex Forum

RACE REPORT #265 - Feb 14th 2019 (MP, RGT, RLMP)

We had a full grid of exactly six drivers for each of last evening's three scheduled FRC classes, Modified Production (MP), Restricted GT (RGT) and Restricted LMP (RLMP). We stuck to our 2019 race structure of a single longer race for each of the three classes, running 60 laps in MP and RGT and 75 laps in RLMP. This new format allows cars that have accidents the opportunity to make back lost time and all who participated prefer it to the old three short races per class format. Early in the night during the practice session, Richard had an accident with his personal Opel Calibra which resulted in this unusual ending:



He ended up retiring the car and raced a few loaners instead.

Qualifying showed that the cars are very closely matched, particularly in RLMP where the top five were within 0.386 sec, fastest to slowest. In all the races, places were traded continuously throughout the field and drivers had to concentrate hard with the quick speeds of the cars over these longer races.

Once again we couldn't rely on the old rule that "the Powerbase is always right", this being the only negative aspect of having driver kill switches which sometimes cause a car to coast across the start line after power is shut down, thereby sometimes losing the lap. Let's put our collective thinking caps on and try to figure out a foolproof solution.

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The results



Modified Production starting grid - Ramesh's Opel Calibra on pole followed by my Zakspeed Capri, Ramesh's second Calibra driven by Richard, Steve's Zakspeed Escort, Ramesh's Alfa 156 driven by Luke and O'Brie's BMW 320i:


Ramesh's Calibra lies on its roof in Fosters Corner as my Capri approaches:


Ramesh's Calibra and Steve's Zakspeed Escort about to enter the final turn while O'Brie's BMW 320i flips in the background:


Richard spins the second of Ramesh's Calibras as he enters the main straight:




Restricted GT starting grid - Pole-sitter is Ramesh's TVR Speed 12 followed by Peter's beautiful Ford GTE making its debut at the hands of Steve, Ramesh's BMW Z4 driven by Luke, my Viper, my Porsche 911R driven by Richard and O'Brie's similar Porsche:


Richard's 911R spins entering the Carousel while Steve's Ford GTE lies on its roof in the background:


A closer view of Steve's Ford GTE accident:




Restricted LMP starting grid - My Toyota 88C is on pole followed by Ramesh's Mazda 787, Steve's Lola B09/60, Luke's MG Lola, Ramesh's Ford Daytona Prototype driven by Richard and O'Brie's Porsche 956:


Ramesh's Mazda streaks past Richard's upside-down Daytona Prototype:


Steve's Lola goes off into the infield and ploughs into Kyle's Boss Mustang monument:


Luke's MG Lola rear wing lies in the vegetation amongst the wildlife:







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

Congratulations to the winners.

Next event's classes: Class grouping A: Historic Saloon (HS), American Pony Car (APC), Vintage Sports '60-'75 (VS6075).

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

Loved the slotcar racing on Valentine’s night at FRC ..!

The new endurance style racing was superb !

Checking back, it was my first FRC event for the year plus at this style of regular racing. Hindsight would have it - not sure what would have happened if there were more than six drivers.

However as the night progressed, the ideas kept coming with the 6 drivers present and in the third class of (RLMP racing) cars, a plan for 75 laps was an excellent experience because there where battlefields of racing at different parts of the circuit. In other words - the racing felt very realistic. More importantly, if you crashed - there was more than enough time to catch back up.

On another note - I made the effort (words used by Gordon) to setup one of my LMP cars. A recently acquired Scalextric MG Lola No.33 model and just in time for this racing event. I must mention - it took some doing setting up the car with the USD rule and would say about 7 true hours. Of course not all at once but a week before the 14th. February ...

Anyway, getting the chance to do a few test laps at the track, I knew it wasn’t going to be competitive. However, Gordon had a look at the car and told me what should have been done and within 10 to 15 mins he himself did the suggested tuning tips and the Lola was ready for racing.

The long and short with the writing above - welcome slotcar tuning advice is more than available at FRC. So thanks Gordon for the help and to Ramesh for sponsoring his well tuned MP and RGT cars.

All three racing classes were very entertaining. So much so, remembered causing (not deliberately) some spectacular and separate “drive throughs” on Steve and O’Brie. Sorry about that guys and specially to O’Brie because I caused his car to go airborne and clean off the table to the ground. Nonetheless, I did avoid afterwards causing any more trouble or damages to any cars.

All in all, hope who wasn’t present at FRC had a lovely Valentine’s night.

Luke

Great comments there Luke. Everything was well described and I'm glad you enjoyed it as I believe we all did. Look forward to seeing you back again at upcoming events.

Great night of racing as usual at FRC. Was nice to see Richard again show up with his cars which now seem to have their chip issues sorted out. Now just to work on fine-tuning the cars to improve their on-track performance. Great to see Luke turn up and race his own MG Lola in LMP. It performed as we all know Luke's preparations are capable of, ie. extremely well ! I was quite pleased with the performance of the Ford GTE in GT class. Hopefully Pete will be there to race it next time. That means however, that I'll need to step up the performance of my other GT cars to race against it !
Congrats to Gordon on winning Mod Prod and to Ram on winning GT , LMP and Champion Driver. Congrats also to Luke on his Index Of Performance award.
Looking forward to the next event.
Steve

Great night!! In spite of getting my ass handed to me by Ramish’s stable once again. Next time Ram!