Bappa di boopy
‘Twas the race before Christmas, when all through Vedano Al Lambro not a creature was stirring, not a bappa di or boopy; Except for one Autodromo…
Qualifying was close with Graham, Kevin, and Leif only separated by two tenths. Kevin narrowly getting the pole by a couple hundreds over Graham. The race to turn one was going to be a good one…buy why wait for turn one?
The green flag was out, let the classic Italian GP mayhem start! Ed misjudged the stack up into turn one and sent Bob Kern on a rollercoaster ride down the front straight.
Kevin and Graham took the first chicane side by side, none of them willing to give up the top spot down the next straight into the second chicane. Unfortunately Graham took a little too much curb and incurred and slow down penalty.
Lap one still wasn’t done. Paul Dillon had an off on the second lesmo, Jeff Lacey missed the Ascari chicane having to save the car. The man who took advantage of all the mistakes was AJ. Starting in 7th by the end of lap one, he was in P3.
Kevin and Leif kept fighting for the lead for the next 12 laps. Until the fuel stop arrived. Kevin had issues getting going again after fueling, giving Leif a 4 second lead. Kevin was unable to close the gap to Leif. The rest of the race was pretty clean.
When the dust settled, Leif took the top spot followed by Kevin. Jeff Lacey recovered from his earlier off to claim the final podium position. Andrew Mawson quietly stayed within podium sight for the entire race ending up in fourth. Michael Garvin had a clean race and posted a top five finish. Ed recovered nicely from his lap one incident to take P6. Darren ended up with P7 after starting the race last. Graham had the pace to win the race, but small mistakes put him in eighth. JD ended in a respectable P9 keeping it clean. Rounding out the top 10 was James Pearce. His post race interview revealed he forgot to take all the sandbags out of the Ford GT before the start of the race.
Rumblestrip will be off the next two Thursday’s for Christmas and New Years.
The next race is on January 9th at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.