Six GRoNEers in Hingham

Mike Tiffany practicing on Paul Ryer's South Shore Speedway

Hingham, MA   April 7, 2019 – Six racers made it to Hingham for our first ever event on a Sunday.  With only six racers, we decided to insert 2 dummy entries so we could run all 4 lanes with 3 racers per heat allowing for 3 marshals.  We also changed up the order of the races, we usually run a gravity race first, followed by a T-Jet race and then end the day with a second gravity race.  Because I had to leave after the second race, we changed up the order so the gravity races were run back-to-back (one advantage to organizing the events…).

Gravity Race 1

A colorful field of Gravity Cars

Tom Smith installed a new motor in his latest build with the hopes it would last more than a few minutes in practice (at Rob’s event, the motor went after about 5 minutes of run time).  Paul Ryer was running an anglewinder with necked in rails that he built a few months ago.  I was running my first attempt at building a pickup shoe car – a non-center hinged car using the front of a BSRT chassis grafted to a brass nose piece.  Tom Gray, Jim Macartney and Mike Tiffany were all running cars I built for them last

Gravity Race 1 Podium - Mike Tiffany 1st, John Reimels 2nd, Tom Gray 3rd and Paul Ryer 4th

year.  After 90 minutes of practice, everyone was ready to race.  Mike Tiffany drove a fantastic race with very few offs to take down a well-deserved victory by less than a lap over my pickup shoe car.  Mike also set fastest lap in three of the four lanes so not only did he have few offs, he set a fast pace!  The battle for third was between host Paul Ryer and Tommy Gray with Tommy getting third by 3 sections over Paul.  Jim Macartney took fifth followed by Tom (at least the motor didn’t burn out) Smith in sixth.

Gravity Race 2

Gravity Race 2 Podium - Paul Ryer 1st, John Reimels 2nd, Mike Tiffany 3rd and Tom Gray 4th

Tom Smith went back to his Landshark in-line for the second race, Paul broke out the car he used at the last Nats where he finished 2^nd.  I used a center-hinged wiper car with real soft torsion bars, Jim borrowed my pickup shoe car while Tommy Gray and Mike stayed with their original rides.  Once everyone finished tuning their controllers to the cars they were running, we were ready for round 2.  Paul showed that his second at the Nats was no fluke by setting a blistering pace on all four lanes

Gravity Race 2 Podium - Paul Ryer 1st, John Reimels 2nd, Mike Tiffany 3rd and Tom Gray 4th

beating Mike’s lap total from the previous race by 5 laps.  Paul promptly put the car back in his box saving his good stuff for the Nats.  I finished second with the same lap total I got in the first race.  I guess pickups are as fast as wipers without the fuss.  Mike Tiffany finished third, 2 laps off his pace from the first race.  Tommy Gray got 4 laps more than race one but finished one position lower in 4^th.  Jim finish in 5^th followed by Tom Smith in 6^th.

T-Jet Race 3

T-Jet Podium - Paul Ryer 1st, Mike Tiffany 2nd, Tom Gray 3rd and Jim Marcartney 4th

I missed the T-Jet race so the only info I have is that Paul was using a T-Jet he recently built, based on the results, it looks like a fairly successful build!

I want to thank all the participants, without you guys, gravity racing in New England wouldn’t exist.  I also want to thank Paul Ryer, he had the track and the facilities in great shape.

Our next event will be at Peter Lentros’ LenJet Raceway in Ashland, MA on Saturday, May 4th.   We’ll be racing Gravity Cars on the Champion and T-Jets on the Tubbie for the first two races followed by either another Gravity Race or maybe Mabuchi HT-50 cars on the Parma.

John