Thread: Electrathon - A Different Kind of "Hotrod"

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I'm a little slow to report our latest results; I was waiting to get some pictures...

As I said above - after the December 11th race I cut out the 1/8 x 5-inch plate motor mount and replaced it with 1/4 x 6 plate. Our next race, and the first one of 2022, was a return to Plant City High School's front parking lot on January 8,2022. This is a long front straightaway and a backstretch with a double chicane, joined at the ends with hairpin turns. It's a bit tricky for first-timers because it's easy to overdrive the turns after such long straights. Once a driver learns the patience required to run this course, it's not too bad. It is, however, hard on tires and spokes.

My new #13 car, with all its bodywork in place this time, performed flawlessly all day. I finished both races with a little battery power to spare. Unfortunately, the driver (me) was not as flawless as the car. At the drop of the green flag, and after the first turn, I realized I had forgotten to put on my gloves! Gloves are required for drivers of open-cockpit cars. I knew I was in violation of this safety regulation, and I wondered how long it would take for the race officials to catch me. The answer is 13 minutes... Yep, 13 minutes into the first race I got black-flagged. I had to go into the pits, find my gloves (I was sitting on them!), and put them on. By the time I got out of the car, donned my gloves, and got strapped back in (with the help of the Plant City emergency crew), I had lost about 6 minutes. Those 6 minutes put me about 9 laps behind the second place car and a bunch more behind the leader. A deficit like that is almost impossible to recover from, so I just took it easy for the rest of the race. Since our overall finish for the day is a total of both races, I began the second race with a significant handicap. The only hope I could have was for one of the other Advanced Battery cars to have a problem that would sideline them for a while so I could make up the lost laps. It didn't happen - all three of us finished both races, so I got another 3rd place, more or less by default.

Meanwhile, Jerry Bristow drove my purple #94 car in the Open Standard Battery class. In the first race he beat Rodney Schreck by 2 laps. In the second race, Rodney beat Jerry by 2 laps. That gave them the same number of total laps! So how do the race officials break a tie? They use the two competitors' total elapsed times. Rodey beat Jerry by 0.16 second - the closest finish in Electrathon Florida history!