Saturday, July 9th marked the beginning of Round 3 for the Slot.It Challenge Series with a few new wrinkles. This time, we race at 11 volts to hopefully level the playing field due to differences in motor performance and also will feature a “kill switch” to momentarily pause the race when there is a racing incident involving one or more cars occurring in an area of the track that is not easily accessible by the corner marshal.
Only four racers were present when tech inspection began. Vacations and other circumstances limited the size of the field on opening day. Once again, the field was dominated by Porsche’s. Ary had his New Man 956 Porsche complete with headlights, Jim entered his 956 Marlboro Porsche, Roy had his Martini and Rossi LC-2 Lancia, and Shawn entered his Coca Cola 962 low tail Porsche.
It was decided to race 3 drivers at a time, the fourth man would be the corner marshal with kill switch in hand. This worked out pretty well as it was fair to all competitors, but it did interrupt your “driver rhythm” with multiple pauses in some heats.
Heat 1 featured Jim, Roy and Shawn. Shawn took 1st with 72 laps followed by Jim with 71, and Roy finished 3rd with 67 laps. Shawn had fast lap of 3.962.
Heat 2 featured Ary, Jim, and Roy. Ary ripped off 73 laps for 1st, Jim was second with 69 laps and Roy also had 69 laps for 3rd. Jim set fast lap for Heat 2 of 3.982, his first sub 4 second lap in competition.
Heat 3 had Ary, Jim, and Shawn. Ary took 1st with 74 laps, Jim in 2nd with 73 laps, and Shawn finished 3rd with 71. Fast lap time went to Ary with a time of 3.947 seconds.
The final race of the day, Heat 4, matched up Ary, Roy and Shawn. First Place would be decided with this heat. When the rubber smoke cleared, Shawn had set an all-time record of 75 laps in a heat, and took 1st. Close behind was Ary with 74 laps and Roy limped home 3rd with 67 laps. Shawn had also set fast lap time for Heat 4 with a blistering 3.909 seconds.
When the numbers were tallied up, Ary took overall 1st Place with 221.75 laps. Shawn finished 2nd with 218.74 laps, Jim took 3rd place with 213.25 laps and Roy closed out the standings with 203.9 laps and 4th place. Once again, congrats to Shawn Gordon for inching the bar higher with that 75 lap performance in Heat 4, and the fastest lap of the day at 3.909 seconds, also set in Heat 4.
Once we have a full field, this could really turn into a very competitive Round 3 of the Slot.It Challenge series.
