At Boo's request, we raced on Tuesday as he was heading back offshore to work on Thursday, our regular race day. Eight drivers turned up for the event which included competition in Restricted GT (RGT), Slot.It Challenge (SC) and our inaugural Rally Car (RC) contest. Amongst them was young Jonathan (Steve's son) and at nine years of age he set a record, becoming the youngest driver ever to compete in a formal FRC event when he drove in all the rally stages.
We qualified the two race classes - RGT and SC - with the usual competitive times for most cars. The top six RGT cars were separated by just 0.321 sec, with SC being slightly more spread out with a difference of 0.737 sec from first to sixth. Myself and Alex took the front row in RGT and Steve and Dougie did likewise in SC.
The RGT races were amongst the closest FRC has ever seen, there being a different winner in each race. This left the championship to be decided on second and third places at the end of the night. When the final points were compiled there were two sets of ties, the racing having been so close. The SC races were largely dominated by the fast Toyota 88Cs of Steve and myself, these cars taking all three first places and two seconds. Other good performers were Alex, Luke and Kerwin, but their cars were no match for the Toyotas.
After completing the races, we moved on to our first ever stage rally. As with real rallying, cars took to the stage one at a time rather than all at once as is done for racing. Each stage comprised five laps of the circuit, with the total elapsed time for the five laps being recorded. The driver with the lowest time for each stage became the stage winner, the rally winner being the driver with the lowest total time for all three stages. As with the races, points were awarded to each stage place using the same 9, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 system except that all drivers placing higher than fifth were awarded one point since there really is no theoretical limit to the number competitors in a rally stage. These points were then included when establishing the Champion Driver of the Event.
When the rally cars took to the stages, things looked totally on the edge since without magnets the cars were a lot "looser" than normal. There were wild oversteers at almost every corner and crazy rollovers as drivers struggled to do good times. One of the wildest yet fastest was none other then young Jonathan who showed the veterans how its done, taking his all-wheel-drive Citroen C4 to three successive second-fastest stage times and planting himself firmly as a contender for the event's rally crown.
Luke ensured his own record book entry by being FRC's first rally stage winner with his Subaru Impreza. After being beaten by his nine-year-old son in the first stage, Steve stepped up to the challenge to win the last two stages. Dougie did a good job in my Ford Focus while both Kerwin and Boo struggled in their under-developed cars. In the face of this fast competition, I knew I could not get my home-built Subaru Impreza to run as quick as the best, but other things conspired to really put me out of the competition. In all three stages my car was not recording some stage sectors (laps), so instead of doing the requisite five laps, I would have to drive six, seven or eight laps before the Power Base decided I had finished. This of course did my times no good, but I still had fun driving the tail-happy Impreza.
All in all, the Rally Car class proved to be very successful and a heck of a lot of fun. I'm sure that everyone who competed is looking forward to a rematch, including those who fared less well, once their cars are sorted out.
The results
Congratulations to the winners.
Next event's classes: Lambo Series - 6 races @ 30 laps, F1 - 3 races @ 30 laps, Modified Production - 3 races @ 30 laps. Don't forget to see the updated fastest times for the FRC classes to know what the benchmarks are for your cars. Also of interest are the updated class average qualifying times.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
