Formula 1 on the King – 2/4/25
The MVH Tuesday Night Retro Series made its first trip of the year to the Gerding King with the F-1 class this week. A field of nine ran the middle six lanes with three marshals. John Mills, a wing car racer, joined eight of the usual suspects, and was pretty fast.
Cars in Tech:
Cody Pare was turning the fastest laps in practice and didn’t slow down for the race. Leading from the start, his only threat was Rob Hayes, who was also turning fast laps and putting up big lap totals. Bob Hazelwood, Richard Payne and Dave Panich were in a relatively close race for the third podium position while John Esposito and Rick Pare were in a duel for sixth. Rolly Lapierre Jr. thought we were running coupes and didn’t have an F-1 car with him, so Bob loaned him his backup car. John Mills struggled with what appeared to be a lack of downforce.
Cody had an unsurmountable lead when time ran out as a couple of heats earlier Rob bent his car in a crash and lost multiple laps to bad handling. A trip to the pits revealed a broken chassis that, once repaired, returned him to his earlier pace but he couldn’t close the gap to Cody and had to settle for second place.
Going into the final heat, Bob Hazelwood and Richard Payne were tied at 203 laps and both were within striking distance of Dave’s 243 lap total to claim third place. When the dust settled, Bob had put up two more laps than Richard to take the position while Richard was displaced to fifth place with Dave taking fourth by 22 sections. Espo slipped past Rick to take sixth place by 12 track sections.
Cody had the fastest lap of the night with a 4.024 on green while Rob was the only other driver to get into the 4.0s with a 4.038 effort, also on green.
Overall Finishing order, laps completed, best lap time, best lap lane:
- Cody Pare 256/27 4.024 GN
- Rob Hayes 248/17 4.038 GN
- Bob Hazelwood 245/5 4.233 WT
- Dave Panich 243/27 4.207 OR
- Richard Payne 243/5 4.259 OR
- John Esposito 236/15 4.280 OR
- Rick Pare 236/3 4.456 YL
- Rolly Lapierre Jr. 228/3 4.380 BL
- John Mills 216/24 4.403 OR
UPCOMING EVENTS:
MVH Tuesday Night Retro Race Schedule for February:
2/11 Coupes on the Figure 8
2/18 Stock Cars on the Royal
2/25 Can-Am on the Sovereign (or Figure 8 if we don’t get enough racers to run the “Purple Mile”
NERR Season 12 - Race No. 6 is this Saturday, February 8, at 1010 Raceway in Bristol, CT.
Coupes and Can-Am will be running on the King.
Podium: (L to R):
2nd Place–Rob Hayes, 1st Place–Cody Pare, 3rd Place–Bob Hazelwood
Cody’s 1st Place Chassis:
Rob’s 2nd Place Chassis:
Bob’s 3rd Place Chassis:
