Good news, folks. The January 17 race is now history and it was another victory!:D:D Saturday's race course was set up as an oval on the Driver Education field at Wharton High School in northern Tampa. It actually was a similar course to the one we ran last month at Middleton, but this one was not a "boneshaker" like that one.:HMMM:
My son wasn't available, so I got an old friend of mine (and former go-kart champion), Jerry Bristow, to drive the #13 car. The cars were lined up according to car numbers, so Rodney Schreck #4 from Miami was on the pole, Bristow in the #13 was outside front row, and my #94 was deep in the field. It was a pretty uneventful race and at the end Schreck finished first, Bristow was second, and I was third. All three of us turned 126 laps and there was a mere 6 seconds from first to third.:rolleyes:
In the second race the starting field was inverted, so I started outside second row. Schreck and Bristow were at the tail of the field. At the start, the two cars in the front row separated coming off turn two, so I shot between them to take the lead. Down the backstretch Bristow managed to pass the entire field to take second behind me. He matched me move-for-move through traffic for about the first two-thirds of the race until Schreck caught and passed him. At 20 minutes to go I dialed up the throttle, as usual. I seemed to have some uncanny good luck with traffic at some points while Schreck and Bristow were struggling to get through it. That worked to my advantage as, late in the race, I caught and passed Bristow to put him a lap down. I had Schreck in my sights and almost caught him, but then the traffic started hindering me and helping him.:( We finished that way. Schreck and I had turned 128 laps; I had about 3/4 of a lap on him and a full lap on Bristow.:3dSMILE:
In Electrathon, the total laps for the day is what matters and when the officials totaled the laps Schreck and I both had 254. The tie breaker then is total time; Schreck logged his laps in 2 hours and 31 seconds, but I did mine in 2 hours and 29 seconds. I won by a mere 2 seconds!:D It is the closest finish in Florida Electrathon history.:cool:
Aside from cars that I built finishing 1, 2, 3 in the Open Class, the car that I built in the first part of this thread also finished second in the High School division. The Tampa Bay points keeper commented that my cars have become the "class of the field" and they are "fast and reliable"...:)