Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Moving on up! (Race the Rockies #2)

The 2nd round of the Race the Rockies regional championship was contested on June 28, 2009 at The Track at Centennial (www.thetrack.us). Much of the Rocky Mountain Kartworks team (rmkartworks.com) was on hand for practice on Friday and Saturday. The weather was pleasant all weekend, if a bit hot at mid-day. The attendance was pretty good and the racing was clean. I don't recall a red flag all weekend, just many smiles and hard work by all.

Stock Moto (S3)
GP drivers Cory Milne and Jeff Field looked strong going into race day. Cory snagged pole with a 53.20 second lap and Jeff over-drove for a 4th position, just 0.45 seconds off. In the first 10 lap prefinal, Milne and Field stretched out a gap on the pack with Milne taking the win and Field less than 4 tenths behind. The second prefinal was much the same with Field in 2nd by 2.9 seconds to Milne. The final race was set to be a close fight between the two GP teammates. Field took the point in the early laps of the 20 lap final with a good start. Jeff and Cory swapped positions several times on lap 4 to see Milne stretch out a lead that would not be given back. Field was mired in traffic while attempting to close the gap, but came home 2nd. That was enough to move Field into the lead of the championship.

Milne
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Field
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S5 Novice Shifter
This weekend, the restricted junior shifter class was filled with 2 young guns behind the wheels of GP karts. Cole MacEwen and Austin Schimmel are always in a close fight. On this day, Cole snagged the pole by a mere 0.139 seconds. Austin took the win in the first prefinal, with Cole returning to the point in the second prefinal. Austin again found his pace in the final getting by Cole and driving to a 7 second victory. A great effort by both young talents.

The S5 battle
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Schimmel
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KZ2
After some motor trouble and setup experiments in practice, Myles Marolt piloted his GP chassis to qualify 4th in class, and hauled himself onto the podium for a well earned 3rd place. Also, Dave Conyers earned the top step of the podium with a strong drive in his GP kart in KZ2 masters.

Marolt
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TAG Masters
GP team driver, Mike Jansen, had a tough weekend chasing electrical woes. With no spark on the engine, he qualified 9th with no timed lap. Mike hauled himself to 6th in the first prefinal only to have problems again, preventing him from starting the 2nd prefinal. After some hard work in the pits, he had much to do on track in the final. With some great driving and a bit of luck, Mike found himself in 3rd on lap 9 of 20 and moving to 2nd position in lap 13. Holding that position from some strong competition was good reward after a hard weekend. Mike now leads the championship.

Jansen
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Overall, it was a good weekend for the Rocky Mountain Kartworks team. The next round of Race the Rockies will be a temporary course set up in down town Denver. Very exciting. Here is the mylaps Results data

Here are some videos of all 3 shifter races from on-board #102 spec shifter driver, Jeff Field.

Race the Rockies Round #2, Spec Honda Heat #1 from Jeff Field on Vimeo.



Race the Rockies Round #2, Spec Honda Heat #2 from Jeff Field on Vimeo.



Race the Rockies Round #2, Spec Honda Final Race from Jeff Field on Vimeo.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like 5d waited until he passed the broken kart and then made his move. Clean smart racing! Yellow was static and the drivers were aware of the broken kart. Real Cool indeed! Smart racing #5d

Sam

Anonymous said...

just adrenaline..!!! well done..!!