After a very slow start where only two drivers and myself were present up to 7:30 PM, fifteen drivers ultimately took to the FRC circuit on Thursday night. Its been quite some time since we had so many enthusiastic attendees at a normal event, of which no less than four were FRC/digital first-timers. We also had Ramesh, Sam, Mike and Marcus doing their second FRC event, Mark his third and Peter on one of his visits from overseas. The rest comprised regular drivers Alex, Arden, Luke, Steve and myself, indeed a large and varied group.
Since the scheduled classes were American Muscle (AM), GT and LMP - our fully-modified cars - only Remesh amongst the new or relatively-new drivers had any cars to compete, so in order to accommodate everyone, we pulled out FRC's Porsche Cup (PC) cars and added the class to our schedule. Of course with nine PC drivers, we had to split the class into A and B subgroups based on qualifying times, with each class running three races. Thus the stage was set for the evening's racing.
We started with PC (A) and five drivers took to the track with Sam leading off from pole. As the races progressed, a pattern was emerging with Peter - who started last in the first race - totally dominating the class despite good efforts by Sam and Mike. Mark had steady races but the promise of Kathrine's quick front-row qualifying time fell to pieces under race conditions. PC (B) turned into a fight between the father and son pair of David and Reshad, each swapping first and second places in the first two races. Young Marcus was struggling with the slippery Porsche but managed to move up one position by beating Kevin in the final race.
Because of the late hour we ultimately ran just one race each for AM, GT and LMP. Luke took pole in both AM and GT, with Arden being the fastest LMP qualifier. In the AM race, competition between Luke's Camaro and my Boss Mustang was intense, with the two cars doing several side-by-side high-speed laps. GT was another story, Luke's Lambo Gallardo proving the best of the class by winning the race in an almost easy fashion, despite the speed of both Ramesh's Porsche 911, Alex's Porsche 997 and my Ferrari F430. The LMP race was taken by another very quick car doing its debut FRC event, Arden's Peugeot 908 HDi.
At the end of the night we had a surprise overall champion, the same driver taking the Index of Performance award!
Once again it was a pleasure introducing all the newcomers to digital racing, the FRC circuit and our way of doing things. Hopefully you all had an enjoyable time. I'm sure you're looking forward to running some of your own personal cars at FRC. Let the FRC Rules & Class Regulations be your guide in deciding which classes you'd like to try to conquer, set them up (remember to chip them) and then bring them along on the nights we run those classes. And to everyone, please try to arrive earlier so that we can complete all our competition at a reasonable time... it was almost 2:00 AM by the time I nodded off to sleep!
The results
Congratulations to the winners.
Next event's classes: Ferrari Team Challenge - 6 races @ 30 laps, Rally Car - three 5-lap stages per car (1 car at a time). Regulations for the running of these classes are here (FTC) and here (RC). 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