FORMULA LIBRE HANDICAP SPECIAL EVENT 2016
Twelve drivers participated in our year-end Formula Libre Handicap special event. We had a really large number of cars on hand and of these, fifty of them did qualifying runs. Here's Ramesh's stable for the evening with their IDs being set:
Results
Following are the times for all cars that did qualifying runs:
After the computer hashed through the fifty qualifiers, the final race entries were computed based on qualifying times, group A being the fastest six, group B the next fastest, etc. Cars with times below 5 sec were excluded and duplicate drivers in each race were removed, resulting in a final schedule of six actual races. The first race would be 100 laps and race laps were reduced by 10 for each subsequent race. We also treated the qualifying positions as full point-scoring races to reduce the likelihood of drivers sandbagging.
Here are the final qualifying positions with each race shown in reverse starting order for handicapping purposes. The "Gap" column is the number of seconds after the start car that each of the following cars were released. If during a race any car did a quicker time than 95% of its qualifying time it would be demoted to last place. This time for each car is shown in red:
The first race run was a Ferrari Challenge for marshals:
Qualifying points "race" results. These are the points given for all qualifiers that made the grid:
Cars were all started from the pit lane in reverse grid order at varying handicap intervals:
Handicap race results. In all but the first race we had one non-starter:
Drivers pose for a pic before one of the handicap races:
Luke B and Peter:
Congratulations to the winners. Unfortunately we basically ran out of time and were unable to run the final two races. A special mention must be made of Dion's performance in his Boss Mustang which was running well and being driven very well when it lost a wheel. He was able to repair it and rejoin the race but his result did not reflect his very controlled yet well-measured driving in the race.
This special event closes off the FRC race calendar for 2016. It was a good year of racing with 19 events run after a late start in early March. In total, 24 drivers faced the starter, not a bad number for the year. Now we just need to get most of them racing at each event in 2017!
As usual, don't forget to see the updated fastest times for the FRC classes to know what the benchmarks are for your cars, the updated class average qualifying times and the updated fastest times for 2016.
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone and their families a Merry Christmas and all the very best in the coming year.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
