Race Recap: UF1 Series 2012 – Race 8

Post Race Analysis
Well the 2012 season is over and it ended with a great turnout of 42 entries… Tony Phalen held onto his nerves, kept it cool till the very end and took a well deserved Championship… Even having a 12 point buffer with Dave Berger , Tony never backed down from any battles and maintained his gap till the end…Prepared for any incident, he had spar part assemblies ready to swap out in his pit area 🙂

Dave Berger and Team mate Fred Medel took the Team ( Constructors ) Championship driving Tamiya F104 ver2 chassis ALL season even at extremely difficult low traction tracks that heavily favored the IRS design of the FGX… They were a shining example of what how a team should be run… testing, sharing information, watching each other drive when not in the same main, all of that… Same can be said about team Lotus who gave them a fight all the way till the end…

2nd in the Championship was Dave Berger… consistent, methodical, focused, determined… Not sure how many more adjectives I can come up with… 🙂 Dave’s number one purpose joining this series was the team championship from day one… The fact he finished 2nd overall has got to be a big bonus…

3rd was Charles who broke down and switched back too the F104 after running the FGX all season… As easy as the FGX is to drive and as scale as it looks the characteristics of the 104 is more of a drivers car and is more rewarding to drive… Charles maintained his 3rd place position and stayed out of trouble…

Mike Kennedy is in 4th place as I predicted last month leap frogging both Mark G and Bill Martinez… His car was right on pace with Tony… No surprise he did so well on this track since he was the previous UF1 Champion last winter… This now makes team Lotus the only team with two UF1 champions… and the team to beat for this winter series…

Mr. Bill Martinez takes 5th spot edging out Mark G by two points… even with all the pre race head games Mark was trying to get into Bills head didn’t work… Bill qualified in the A main and did what he had to do…

Mark G finished in 6th spot after dropping two positions on the first race of the day… His first two races were both less then 1 second from receiving and extra point… 1 second is what determined if he was tied for 5th or got 6th 🙂 congratulations Mark… top 10 baby 🙂

Craig Hammon comes in 7th … haunted by that day in Surf City, but kept on battling like a real champion and never gave up… Mark G and Cuda , Team Caterham comes in 3rd overall beating out Red-bull 1 on the final day…

And Quincy slides past Doug Rebal for 8th position scoring 7 more points then Doug on this last day… Quincy is definitely a gentleman driver and always great car control… I over heard him a few times verbally letting a faster driver to pass, always keeping it clean…

Doug Rebal finds himself in 9th place, stoked that he made the top 10, again…. a stripped spur today caused Doug to pull back and baby the car around for the final few minutes costing him valuable time… after the race he did donuts to finish off that spur 🙂

And finishing off the top 10 is no other then Fred Medel who manages to do it even after missing a whole race day…. very nice…Fred and Charles always seem to get into some great battle and today was no exception … Race 1 they were withing a few feet of each other for half the race and even exchanged positions in the pits… nice… Fred is such a pure driver in the sense that he truly enjoys the satisfaction and reward in seeing his car lay down that perfect lap with the power put down just right… a purist indeed…

It’s fantastic seeing so many people getting into this series… I’ve been asked a few times as to what I think is the secret … I don’t know for sure… but the race format is way more fun then 2 IFMAR qualifiers and one race, at least for me… Also having only one class for the day is interesting… Who knows…I’m looking forward to the winter series with 15 minute races… that’s going to be very cool… As you guys probably know Tony Phalen is taking over which is a great load off me… now I can just be one of the racers… quoting from the “About” page I wrote a couple years ago :

“This Series ONLY exists because nobody else is doing it … And it’s basically a selfish way for me to participate in an event I wish already existed 🙂 ”

See you guys at the track…

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