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[rvec]

Three weeks of the crud kept Jack at home another Monday evening. Get well soon buddy, we miss you. Ron Johnson and Mark H. from Cottage Grove joined six locals for the Vintage ProTrack and Dirt Devil at STR on 1/25/16. Track conditions were quite good and in fact new fast lap and total lap records were set in Vintage ProTrack.

Highlights

• James blew away the competition in Vintage ProTrack setting a new lap total record of 82.4 and new fast lap record of 5.552 seconds. In a close contest for second place, Ron Johnsons 66 Chevelle edged out Bobs black 57 Chevy.
• The Dirt Devil contest turned out to be a three man race. Bob came out on top followed by James and Rich. A single lap separated first from third.

Below are a few images of the cars.
 

Vintage ProTrack

James 65 Ford is hard to beat and Monday evening was no exception. The car literally ran away from the competition finishing 5 laps ahead of second place. In the process James set a new total lap record for the class of 82.4 laps and a new fast lap record of 5.552 seconds. While others got tangled in some serious wrecks, James ran a very consistent race at 95.31% to boot.
Ron Johnson and Bob Hanna battled it out for second place and in the end, Ron edged out Bob by a single section. Ron L. ran a very consistent race (95.42%) with a much slower car but fell short of a podium finish by a single lap.
Below are details of the finishing order and images of the grid
 

Dirt Devil

The Dirt Devil race was punctuated by many wrecks and nerfs. Only Ron L. managed to stay above the fray running a very consistent race (96.02%) with his blue 63 Chevy. The Dirt Devils are very fast and quite a change from the Vintage ProTrack rides which are slow, have little in the way of brakes and dont handle very well. I think the completely different feel of the two classes coupled with the fact that the Cottage Grove boys have not raced at STR in several months led to much of the carnage.

As good as Ron Ls consistency was, it didnt compensate for the fact that his car was at least .2 seconds per lap slower than the top tier rides. In addition, Ron Johnsons green 66 Mustang was in the top tier, in terms of fast lap time but many offs put Ron Johnson out of contention for a podium finish.

The race turned out to be a three man shoot-out between Bob, James and Rich. All three cars turned fast laps around 5.1 seconds. James yellow 67 Mustang tuned the fastest lap (5.084 seconds), however, the short wheelbase made the Mustang hard to drive at a consistent pace. Bob and James had finished their rotation prior to the final heat. By that time it was clear that Bob had it won. Rich needed a nearly 23 lap heat to overtake James. Although Rich ran a clean final heat it just was not enough. Rich fell short by a single section.

Details of the finishing order and images of the grid are shown below