TSR 1/24 Scale races, February 11, 2006
Buena Park, CA
Steube wins first 2006 SoCal TSR Championship Race.
This was the first race with the tightened format, getting closer to the advocated rules to give everyone a fair chance to the win. Handout motors, selected for their consistency, were used for the first time. These are then surrendered after the race, and identified for any alteration. The ones found to be a little too slow or too fast are then plucked and eliminated from the motor pool. A minimum weight of 150-gram for cars with vacuum formed bodies, and 180-gram for injected bodies (to benefit from the 20-lap bonus) was applied. It made little difference in lap times, but made the cars much easier to drive for the amateurs.
The race was quite intense and turned into a festival of crashes, the most serious when the trigger return spring of Philippe de Lespinay's controller broke while the car was reaching the banking, with the resulting crash costing him any chance to an overall victory. Paul Sterrett had the fastest car, but also had an off, costing him dearly at the end as Sam Brown, always consistent, sliced into second place from him by less than a lap. While others stumbled, Mike Steube drove a perfect race to begin his championship quest. Yoshio Akiyama won the "amateur" class that gets a good chunk of the prize money.
| Dennis Samson won Concours with a nicely painted and realistically decorated replica of the 1999 Le Mans winner, a BMW V12 mostly driven by Yannick Dalmas. |
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One has to be cool to race TSR cars, and Ridge Ellis is working on that by wearing the proper Joe Cool shades, smartly hiding behind his pacemaker and his flotilla of TSR-mobiles... |
| Our Japanese friend Yoshio Akiyama has been one of the fastest out there, but needs to work on his consistency to become seriously competitive. We trust that he will as he is improving with each outing. His BMW V12 is impeccably presented. |
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Next race TSR Championship Race February 25, 2006, for LMP/GTP/GT1 in the 1/24 scale. We are still testing the 1/32 scale cars to decide on minimum weights.
RESULTS:
|
Pos |
Driver |
Body type |
Laps |
Fastest lap |
|
1 |
Mike Steube |
Courage C60 |
206 |
6.710" |
| 2 | Sam Brown | Porsche 956 | 199 | 6.810" |
|
3 |
Paul Sterrett |
Courage C60 |
198 |
6.640" * |
|
4 |
Philippe de Lespinay |
Audi R8 ** |
191 |
7.250" |
|
5 |
Dennis Samson |
BMW V12 |
180 |
6.861" |
|
6 |
Yoshio Akiyama |
BMW V12 |
170 |
6.749" |
|
7 |
Daniel Snipe |
Porsche 956 |
167 |
6.959" |
|
8 |
Roger Uusitalo |
Porsche 956 |
162 |
7.410" |
|
9 |
Ray Gonzales |
Lancia LC2 |
157 |
7.689" |
|
10 |
John Emmons |
Lancia LC2 |
155 |
7.189" |
* denotes fastest lap
**
denotes injected body (+ 30-gram), with a 20-lap bonus applied.