The weather finally took a day off and temps crested in the reasonable 80's. We gathered a group of racers and gave the cars a good run. Some runs were gooder than others.
We had one pre-race issue and one race issue. The BARC car #19 had loose pieces of most everything floating around inside. Goose took the car apart and basically put it back together and made it reasonably raceable - it was still the major handful. The Brumos car #111 decided to take a heat off. It just quit running. I took it apart and couldn't see anything wrong. I set it back on the track sans body and it ran. Put the body back on and it still ran, back in the race! WTF! Slot cars...
So our merry band of racers was Paul, Dave, Al, Rico and Goose sharing the driving duties while Mitch and I attended the corners with the others helping between driver stints and my lovely wife Victoria handling the excel spreadsheet and keeping Kleo the cat at bay.
I ran a qualifying set for each car and there were some serious bullets being fired. This was easily the fastest set of cars we've ever proxied here. Multiple cars were running sub-seven second laps. We don't see that here.
Here is the qualifying times as driven by myself in the center lane with power at a romping 10 volts:

So comments...
If your car was in the mid-7's and higher it may not be competitive in this field for this track.
If your car was in the low 7's, it was very fast.
if your car broke the 7-second barrier I was probably checking for traction magnets! ;-) :scared-eek:
I was amazed at how many wonderful cars there were in this field. Almost every car that touched the track felt like a track hugging rocket.
Finally it was time to stop talking and start chalking. Some cars race better than they qualify and some worse. We were about to find out which.
I should point out that during the race banter the most interesting point of conversation became the debate over how many heats there are in a 39 car race. Some of you reading at home may already know the answer, don't spoil it for the rest. We eventually arrived at an answer many of us could agree on. :angry-tappingfoot:
The Penguin Point course is a tight. twisty layout with a 15 foot straight to tie all those corners together. This is a track for the handlers more than the speed demons. Fast just makes you an unguided missile. Handling will make you a winner. That reminds me... when Porsche first entered competition in any form they went to a hill climb. At that event their car went up the hill so fast for it's class the scorers refused the time and made them go back and run again - something must be wrong. When they produced about the same time the second trip through the scorers were left with no other option but to accept the time. Thus began the legend of the little german cars whose best skill was maintaining a rapid rate over uneven, twisting terrain.
But would that be enough to take on the mighty Fords?

Maybe not every day. Maybe not every day on this track. But for one day, this day, Porsche was good enough.
Yes, it's a Porsche Sweep!

One more round to go.