Star Wars Event – GRoNE Style

Ashland, Massachusetts  May 4, 2019   We had eleven drivers for our Star Wars Day Gravity Event at Peter Lentros’ LenJet Raceway.  No one came in Star Wars garb so no extra laps were awarded, however Paul Ryer threatened to come as Princess Leia in her slave attire but thankfully he couldn’t find a costume his size…

Gravity Cars on the Champion

First up were Gravity cars on Peter’s Champion track.  The last time this track was used for Gravity Car racing was at the 2016 Nats where Scott Terry won with a total of 125.06 laps using Joel Pennington’s AFX based car.  Three years of development later, the mini-motored cars now seem to have the upper hand with the top three finishers beating Scott’s lap total.  For this race, the field consisted of 10 M20 motored anglewinders and one M20 sidewinder.

While racers dug out their AFX cars for practice, the mini-motored cars seemed to be the best option however, to be totally honest, no one had an AFX car as good as the one built by Joel.   The battle for the top spot was close with the top four finishing within 3 laps of each other with Paul Ryer taking down the win by virtue of his performance in the gutter lanes.  Paul was using the sidewinder he built for last year’s Nats where he finished in second place.  Following Paul

home in second was Rob Hayes with his modified Scott Terry anglewinder, one lap behind Paul.  In third was John Reimels using one of his center-hinged anglewinders followed by Peter Lentros using a pickup shoe anglewinder built by John Reimels.  The battle for fifth was equally tight with Donny Hall finishing one lap ahead of Mike Tiffany and three ahead of Tommy Gray.

 

	Driver	Red	White	Blue	Yellow	Total
1	Paul Ryer	33	31	30	33	127
2	Rob Hayes	31	31	31	33	126
3	John Reimels	31	31	32	31	125
4	Peter Lentros	32	29	31	32	124
5	Donny Hall	30	31	30	30	121
6	Mike Tiffany	28	31	31	30	120
7	Tommy Gray	28	31	31	28	118
8	Cody Pare	29	29	24	30	112
9	Tom Smith	27	28	27	28	110
10	Jim Macartney	27	28	26	27	108
11	Paul Crosby	27	26	27	24	104

 

T-Jets on the Bear

After a quick lunch of pizza, it was time for HOPRA T-Jets on the Bear.  Paul Crosby had a conflict so the field was down to ten.  Once again, the battle for the top spot was very close, this time only three laps separated the top 5.  Rob Hayes got his revenge on Paul Ryer beating him to the line by half a lap.  Peter Lentros finished third, 2 laps down on Rob followed by John Reimels and Donny Hall another lap down; John

beating Donny by half a lap.

 

	Driver	Red	White	Blue	Yellow	Total
1	Rob Hayes	25	25	26	25	101.47
2	Paul Ryer	25	25	25	26	101.05
3	Peter Lentros	24	26	25	24	99
4	John Reimels	23	25	25	25	98.40
5	Donny Hall	24	25	25	24	98.05
6	Cody Pare	23	23	22	23	91
7	Tom Smith	21	22	24	22	89
8	Tom Gray	20	22	24	22	88
9	Mike Tiffany	20	21	25	22	88
10	Jim Macartney	21	21	22	21	85

 

IROC BRASCAR Anglewinders on the Parma

The last race was supposed to be an IROC race on the immaculately restored Parma track using some Mabuchi HT50 motored Landshark anglewinders.  While the track was immaculate, the computer running the race was less so.  At the conclusion of the race, the computer crashed making retrieving the results impossible.  While everyone claimed to have won the race, I believe the actual winner was Cody Pare but without proof, the race had to be abandoned.

Thanks go to Peter for hosting the event and special thanks go to all attending the event.  It was great to see a healthy eleven racers for the gravity race proving that even in the crowded New England HO race calendar, gravity racing is craving out its own niche.  As folks prepare for the Nats, we’ll lay off gravity racing for a few months but maybe we can squeeze in a race over the summer.

 

John Reimels

GRoNE Master of Ceremonies

Brass Car Enthusiast