The field before the start. Keith Tanaka (Team Rolling Hills) opted to run an injected Tamiya Porsche 956. He ran into some body mounting trouble in the race and lost much time, but the car showed good performance.
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TSRF 1/24 Scale races, November 4, 2006
Buena Park, CA
13th So-Cal Championship Race
Sterrett borrows a De Lespinay-built heavyweight, wins over the Steube identical machine!
The 13th TSRF So-Cal Championship Race was for 1/24 scale GTP, GT1 and ALMS machines.
Paul Sterrett is no friend of heavy slot cars. He has been running all his slot
cars as light as possible seemingly forever. When the TSRF regulations required
a minimum weight at the beginning of 2006 to make the cars easier to handle by
beginners, it was visible that Paul, who could drive the lightweight machines to
cruising wins while others could not keep them under control, was visibly not a
happy camper.
This changed somewhat after this race. Both Steube and Sterrett decided after testing that the 180-gram injected-body cars now had a substantial chance over the 150-gram vacuum-body cars. Actually, they still do not according to simple mathematics (see below), but those two can drive, and drive they did and they won a one-two finish once the handicap laps had been added.
| The field before the start. Keith Tanaka (Team Rolling Hills) opted to run an injected Tamiya Porsche 956. He ran into some body mounting trouble in the race and lost much time, but the car showed good performance.
|
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| Ready to race! John Javier, Roger Uusitalo and smiling Paul Sterrett, Sam Brwon, John Emmons who obviously has other things to do, John Kallas, Scott Corwin, Keith Tanaka and Doug Matthes. Missing from the picture are the "Froggies", Mike and Philippe as well as Kyle Matthes. |
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Behind those two, Philippe somehow managed to edge Sam Brown by a lap with a very slow but great-handling car. Scott Corwin had a fast car but ran into some trouble, still bettering the rest of the field. Doug and Kyle Mattes were impressive, and Kyle would have placed better but ran into some contact problems on black. John Emmons soldiered on after a couple of costly offs. John Kallas had a real fast car but still needs to discipline his ardors as the C&B format is a tough nut to crack. Roger Uusitalo drove a good conservative race, while his team mate Keith Tanaka, running an injected body jumped to 5th after the handicap was applied. John Javier needs more time driving but is improving at every race with a real good car.
Results:
|
Pos |
Driver |
Body type |
Laps |
Fastest lap |
|
1 |
Paul Sterrett |
Ford Mustang Probe ** |
206 | 7.3584" |
|
2 |
Mike Steube |
BMW GTP ** |
204 | 7.4100" |
|
3 |
Philippe de Lespinay |
BMW V12 LMP |
194 | 6.9806" |
| 4 | Sam Brown | Porsche 956 GTP | 193 | 6.8591" * |
| 5 | Keith Tanaka | Porsche 956 GTP ** | 190 | 7.8478" |
| 6 | Scott Corwin | Porsche 956 GTP | 190 | 7.0282" |
|
7 |
Doug Matthes | BMW V12 LMP | 187 | 7.1367" |
| 8 | Kyle Matthes | BMW V12 LMP | 182 | 7.0894" |
| 9 | John Emmons | Porsche 956 GTP | 182 | 7.1409" |
| 10 | John Kallas | BMW V12 LMP | 178 | 6.9734" |
| 11 | Roger Uusitalo | Porsche 956 GTP | 170 | 7.4180" |
|
12 |
John Javier | Lancia LC2 GT1 | 161 | 7.6404" |
* Fastest lap
Handicap computation, and why it is still valid as it stands.
Paul Sterrett's lap total is 206 laps, but he actually made 186 of them on track. The extra 20 is the current handicap afforded to the heavier injection-molded cars (minimum 180 grams) on the Hillclimb.
The fastest of the "lightweight" cars with vacuum formed bodies and a minimum weight of 150 grams was that of Sam Brown, who set his best lap at 6.8591". He was also able to maintain this speed quite consistently.
Well, our races last exactly 24 minutes, or 1440 seconds. This amount divided by this lap time comes exactly to... 210, a 4-lap advantage over the heavyweights.
Sam fell off a couple of times, and so did Philippe, both losing lots of time. There is little doubt that if both had kept on as they usually do, they would have covered the 206 laps as it is generally the winning number with the light cars. So at this time, there is little reason to change the handicap until the end of this championship. Next season, the format will change after an end of the year meeting between racers.
