Gravity Racing at LenJet Raceway

Ashland, MA   March 26, 2016– The day started out slow when there were only 3 racers at Peter Lentros’ LenJet Raceway when the doors opened at 8:00 AM.  Peter, Paul

Ryer and I contemplated canceling the event but we decided to wait to see if anyone else would show up.  Luckily we kept the doors open – by 10:00 AM we had 14 racers in attendance; my goal was to get 8 racers with the hopes of 12.  Even more impressive, 9 of the 14 racers had their own Gravity car, five of which had actually built their own car – what a difference from our first race when Ryan Archambault and I supplied loaners to 2/3 of the field.  Thanks to everybody involved, Gravity Racing in New England might just take hold!

ECHORR Super Stocks on the Python

First up were ECHORR Super Stocks on Peter Lentros’ Python MaxTrax, a track requiring

cars with both speed and handling.  Heavily favored in this race were the racers from the local T-Jet club – The East Coast Outlaws; they race T-Jet Super Stocks on a regular basis.  And, to no one’s surprise, the top four finishers were all seasoned T-Jet veterans.  Had Greg Burstein not broken a guide pin, it would have been the top five.  Setting high lap totals in both Yellow and White, Ryan Archambault won the event followed by a real close battle for second between Matt Patrick and Paul Ryer, Paul taking the honors by sections.  Finishing the sweep by T-Jet experienced racers was none other than track owner Peter Lentros.  The first non-T-Jetter was Mike Resnick borrowing a car from sixth place finisher John Reimels (Mike forgot the rule about not beating the team owner…- JR).

ECHORR T-Jet SS Results:

	Racer	Yellow	Blue	White	Red	Total
1	Ryan Archambault	25	26	26	24	101
2	Paul Ryer	23	25	25	25	98.24
3	Matt Patrick	23	26	24	25	98.13
4	Peter Lentros	24	25	25	23	97
5	Mike Resnick	23	24	24	23	94
6	John Reimels	23	24	24	23	94
7	Erik Eckhardt	23	23	25	22	93.27
8	Rob Hayes	21	24	25	24	93.22
9	Bob Farnsworth	23	23	24	23	93.05
10	Tom Smith	20	23	23	21	87.09
11	Tom Bussmann	20	21	22	24	87.07
12	Dominic Leone	22	17	24	22	85
13	Durf Hyson	16	17	20	18	71
14	Greg Burnstein	24	0	25	12	61

 

Gravity Cars on the Champion

Next up was the feature event – Gravity Cars on the Champion.  The last time we ran

Gravity Cars on this track (July 2015 – JR), it was a close battle between Ryan Archambault using a Doug Morris built AFX pan car and John Reimels, running a Joel Pennington sidewinder clone.  Ryan won the event by two sections over John; the field was split amongst mini-motored cars, AFX pan cars and BRASCARs using the Mabuchi HT-50 motor.  This year the field was heavily biased toward AFX pan cars with only 3 mini-motored cars and no BRASCARs (technically the BRASCARs used last year were illegal; they failed the pin test but were allowed to run anyway to help fill out the field – JR).  Of the eleven pan cars entered this year, we had four Doug Morris built cars, four built by John Reimels and one each built by Dominic Leone, Tom Smith and

Matt Patrick.  For the mini-motored cars, we had one Scott Terry car, one Al Thurman car and one re-engineered car from Durf Hyson.   The heavy preponderance of AFX cars remains a bit of a mystery – the mini-motored cars struggled in the squiggles while the AFX cars were able to power through them.  On the rest of the track, it was a toss-up which cars were better.  When the race was over, once again it came down to sections between John Reimels and Ryan Archambault – this year John taking the laurels by a few feet over Ryan.  Greg Burstein did not have guide pin failure in this race finishing a very respectable 3^rdwith a borrowed car from Ryan followed by Erik

Eckhardt finishing a close 4^th with a borrowed car from John Reimels (Greg and Erik did NOT forget the rule about team owners – JR).  The first mini-motored car was that of Rob Hayes finishing in 5^th with his Scott Terry built anglewinder.  Rob was on the winning pace of last year showing the mini-motored cars are not totally out-classed on this track.  Sixth was taken by Peter Lentros with yet another Doug Morris car.

 

 

 

Gravity Race Results:

	Racer	Red	White	Blue	Yellow	Total
1	John Reimels	30	30	30	29	119.19
2	Ryan Archambault	30	31	30	28	119.11
3	Greg Burstein	28	30	30	29	117
4	Erik Eckhardt	29	29	29	28	115
5	Rob Hayes	28	29	29	28	114
6	Peter Lentros	27	29	29	27	112
7	Mike Resnick	27	29	28	27	111
8	Paul Ryer	26	28	28	27	109
9	Tom Bussmann	26	28	23	26	103.23
10	Tom Smith	26	25	26	26	103.14
11	Bob Farnsworth	25	24	24	24	97
12	Dominic Leone	23	24	23	25	95
13	Matt Patrick	24	23	23	22	23
14	Durf Hyson	14	20	11	18	63

 

IROC BRASCARs on the Parma

The last race of the day was an IROC race on the newly refurbished Parma track.  Thanks

go out to all that helped rebuild this track and bring it back to life – it was an honor to participate in its rechristening!  Unfortunately we decided to use my BRASCAR anglewinders for this event.  While they ran fine the week prior to the event, as the track got more and more broken in, the worse they ran.  This is NOT a reflection on the track but on the grippy nature of the anglewinders.  In hindsight, we should have used my BRASCAR in-lines…  However, everyone seemed to enjoy the event anyway.  The race boiled down to a battle between Greg Burstein and Mike Resnick, both racking up high lap totals on the very difficult blue lane (difficult because of the car, not the lane).  In

fact, Mike was able to turn the race high lap total on this lane which is simply amazing giving him a one lap victory over Greg.  Ryan Archambault finished third giving him the best finishing total of the day with a 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.  Proud track owner, Peter Lentros finished 4^th followed by John Reimels and Paul Ryer in 5^th and 6^th respectively.

 

 

Parma IROC Race Results:

	Racer	Red	White	Green	Orange	Blue	Yellow	Total
1	Mike Resnick	30	28	30	26	31	28	173
2	Greg Burstein	28	30	28	29	28	29	172
3	Ryan Archambault	31	26	28	28	25	29	167
4	Peter Lentros	24	31	30	26	26	28	165
5	John Reimels	26	29	29	28	22	28	164
6	Paul Ryer	27	28	30	24	24	27	160.43
7	Erik Eckhardt	29	30	23	28	22	28	160.21
8	Tom Smith	27	28	26	22	25	27	155
9	Tom Bussmann	28	23	28	28	18	27	152
10	Matt Patrick	25	23	27	26	26	24	151
11	Dominic Leone	24	26	25	23	25	25	148
12	Durf Hyson	25	21	22	22	19	22	131

 

Thanks go out to Peter Lentros for hosting this event and to ALL of the attendees for their participation.  This event exceeded my expectations, with your support we can continue to grow this style of racing here in New England.  The next event will be sometime in July at Paul Ryer’s  South Shore Speedway in Hingham.  Hopefully we can debut brass panned T-Jets for the IROC race.

 

Brass Car Advocate,

John Reimels