Another great Saturday of racing at The Doghouse in Gilbert, South Carolina on May 21. We had a great time, even though the gathering was small for numerous reasons. The cast of characters:
(From L to R: Yours truly, Jim "SlowBeas" Beasley; Bob Arneson; Dan Parker; Marty "Dr. C" Cwiakala; and our Doghouse host, Richard Sylvester.)
For this race, our weapon of choice was (once again) the extremely popular -- and quickly becoming one of our favorites -- JK Indy cars. These things are fun to drive, handle beautifully, and are a total blast to race. The cars:
(Front row, L to R: Dan Parker, Bob Arneson, Beas, and Dr. C. Back row: Richard Sylvester)
The four-lane, 75-foot track always proves to be a great one for our Doghouse races. I still feel we were extremely fortunate to acquire it from Jay Guard when he found another and was forced to make room for it. Our good fortune. We've put in a lot of laps on that track.
And for this day, the racing was fast and even faster as the day went on. We ran three races of five heats each. The results:
The first race was a bit slower as the track was still cold -- and so were some of the trigger fingers on the controllers. We didn't have much of a warmup session before starting the races. But we were ready to go, so we jumped in, head-first.
As you can see, the second race was as close as it could possibly be, as Richard and I both had 203.9 laps. Take a look at the photo finish:
That's how close it was! What a great race. Richard put up one heck of challenge. So we knew the third race would decide it all. Our format is that we take each racer's top two heats, and toss the lowest of the three, for the grand total. When all was said and done, I was lucky to take a slight edge in the combined totals:
There's nothing finer than great racing with great friends on a relaxing Saturday. We're in talks about the June race now. Looks like the return of IROCs. Stay tuned...and keep it in the slot.
