Christina Hancock qualified for the Final but 2011 champ Tim Carnahan did not.	Kevin Keller is on his way to his third title as defending champ Terry Schultz watches.
Italian Fabio Pellegrino won twice in the preliminaries at Jack Beckman's expense.	Bruce Rae, Mark Kennel, Don Tatum and Jimmy Fleckenstein watch the far turn.

Over three days at WBC, 28 drivers competed to qualify for the big race on day 4. Qualifying heats were split into two different tracks, with the top qualifiers from each track advancing. There were a lot of familiar faces, and a couple new ones as well, all vying for the title, but in the end it was the veteran Kevin Keller who took home first place, becoming the first person to win the WBC Speed Circuit title three times.

The first qualifying heat's tracks, Montreal and Sao Paolo, were fast and tight with a lot of carnage. Montreal, in particular, saw only five finishers out of the 11 who began the race. The second day's tracks were Sepang and Yeongam, where position changed often and unexpectedly. The last qualifying heat saw some old favorite tracks, Spa and Silverstone, and again the dice gods reared their heads and sent the unwary packing.

In the end, Fabio was the only racer who won twice, but Mario and Jim managed to double-qualify with a second and a subsequent win as well. The bigger oddity of the week was that most of the third place finishers from each race either qualified later, or had already qualified. In the end, this meant that because we had double-qualifiers, virtually all of the third place finishers qualified. Even more unusual was that one of the fourth place finishers, Phil White, also advanced, after we had dropped all the way to the 6th tie-breaker to determine who would get the last seat.

The Final was played on a relatively new track, New Delhi, and it was a very challenging course which allowed for a number of racing styles to flourish. Jim bid high for pole, and then rolled a chance in the second corner to run off away from the rest of the pack in the early lead. Fabio, Mario, Kevin, and Phil made it through the first two corners after Jim and became the chase pack.

Chris L. got shut out of the first corner by Phil and began slow-playing the first lap, which caused him to fall back several positions while he sat and waited. Randy stalled off the starting grid which forced him into the back pack, with Bruno, Tim and the Hancocks. Doug, who was trying to catch the chase pack got pushed off his line several times which forced him to spend more wear.

By the second lap, Chris L. rolled chance in the same spot Jim did the turn before to catch back up and find himself in the chase pack. Jim was not having as good luck at this point in the race, with the Italians having now caught up to him, forcing him to make bad decisions. He eventually rolled a chance in the middle of the second lap, spun, and chose to pull off the track at that point. Fabio and Mario, now in the lead, fought each other at every turn, but always spent their wear carefully and traded the lead several times.

Kevin, Phil, Chris L, and Randy were now the chase pack and officially caught the leaders by the last lap. Coming down the fast straight with lots of company Fabio over-plotted and had to late-brake ahead of the corner. Unfortunately, the dice were not kind and he broke his brakes which caused him to lose a wear. Since he was planning to spend that in the corner, he was now forced to roll a chance he hadn't palnned. That roll went poorly as well and he crashed off the course. Amazingly though, none of the four racers behind him got caught in his wake, and everyone else successfully navigated the corner.

The four leaders immediately ran into further trouble when Randy attempted to force pass around Mario. Mario blocked his way and Randy's roll failed with collision which caused Mario to spin out since he was out of wear at this point. Behind them Christina and Tim, with wear waiting to spend, had met up with and passed Phil and were looking ahead to the leaders.

Kevin, now in the lead, had been playing his typical race - holding position, not wasting wear, and waiting for his moment which had now come. He found himself in the lead with wear left to spend and little competition behind him to stop him. He flies into the big loop, corner #6, at maximum speed with Chris L. drafting behind him for some advantage.

Kevin finishes out the corner, leaving the rest of the racers in his dust, and on a solid line to win easily. Meanwhile, Randy has recovered from his failed forced pass and used his wear advantage to catch back up to Chris on the way out of corner #6. The two of them proceed to fight for second through the last three corners, but Randy's wear advantage makes the difference and he takes the blue wood with Chris right behind him in third.

Christina and Tim have passed everyone else by, but run out of wear in the process, and no longer have quite enough to pass Chris and Randy. They finish in fourth and fifth place, respectively, while Phil takes the last of the laurels in sixth place. Mario crosses the line in seventh leaving Chris H. as the last finisher in eighth place

Jack Beckman, Gregory Smith, Randy Needham, Tim Mossman and Russell Harley try to quaify in the preliminaries.

Tim Mossman moved into 7th place in the BPA Speed Circuit laurels standings by winning the 2nd PBeM tournament over a field of 26. He came from the back of the pack with a late forced pass and a successful chance dice roll to seal the win on the New Delhi track. It was the first tournament win for Mossman who finished sixth in last year's contest and has finished 3rd or 4th at WBC three times. Rob Kircher, fresh off his March Madness PBeM title, racked up more offseason laurels with a second-place finish. Michael Aubuchon doubled his laurel totals with a third place finish, fading from the early lead as his tires wore. Martin Burgdorf of Germany finished fourth followed by Doug Schulz and Curt Collins in the laurels. Rounding out the finalists in order were: Canadian Bruce Rae, Robert Runf, Chris Hancick, Jeff Cornett, William Kennard and Buck Karpowicz.

A third PBeM tournament will be starting after WBC again using two heats to qualify 12 finalists. Contact wbcspeedcircuit@gmail.com for details.