Shipley Finishes Nearly Perfect Third Lap At Sotchi For The Title!

Numbers continue to grow this year, with 62 racers competing in this year's Formula De tournament. Each of the four heats ran five tracks, with 36 playing in more than one, and eight playing in every heat. As usual, the table host was free to pick any track they wanted, and we saw seventeen different tracks played in the heats. Among those tracks, only Valencia, Buenos Aires, and Hockenheim Ring were repeated, so lots of variety this year. Of the twenty qualifying races, only three finished clean with no crashes. While it's possible to advance without a win, that's the only way to guarantee, so racers were pushing it to the limit.

Rich Shipley won two heats and so earned an automatic pass to the Final table. Among the eighteen other winners, five had conflicts, and so one player with a double second joined the field to play in two seven-person races, from which the top three would advance. The top seeds were able to pick from any Asmodee track that had only been played once, from which Buddhi and Singapore were selected. The Singapore race is more technical, and was selected by last year's Champion Stephen Peeples, specifically to weed out the competition. They left body and engine debris all over the track, making for some tricky navigation. Buddhi was a bit less exciting, though it did see first and last place switch between the start and end of the race.

Rich took the pole position in the Final, with the remaining players rolling off against the person with the same finish in the Semifinal. That order was:

1. Rich Shipley
2. Eric Meader
3. Stephen Peeples
4. Conrad Eisen
5. Patrick McLafferty
6. Kevin Burns
7. Haakon Monsen

The Final was three laps at Sotchi and allowed racers to customize their cars with two extra build points. Builds were chosen in secret, and while nobody had the exact same build, everybody brought extra tires. Three drivers opted for only two Body points, which can make for some cautious driving if the dice don't cooperate. But this race had some pretty clean driving, with no body damage at all in the first lap.

Kevin started off the race with a bit of bad luck, with an engine stall that cost him a turn. Haakon started in the rear and was making moves from the start. He failed an engine check just after the fourth turn and got into first by the seventh turn. Both Haakon and Eric failed an engine check coming into turn eight. This was the second for Haakon, but he brought five, so no problem there. Unfortunately, he was low on tires and brakes and spun out on that same turn

The second lap saw our first roll in sixth gear, with a few people needing to slow down instead to reach the pits. Haakon blocked the pit exit on the way out, costing at least one other driver a turn. The WBC tournament uses the optional redline rules, which gives another way to lose engine points. Rich spent his penultimate point to jump into the lead on the fourth turn of the lap, having just lost one to speed in the previous straightaway. Behind Rich, Kevin drove over debris to enter the third turn, which the next two drivers fell short of. Things got crowded near that approach, giving Conrad the first body damage of the race. Kevin would get the second, at the end of the second lap. Rich had a perfect sequence of rolls into the last two turns of the second lap, making him the one to beat. Players were hoping for max rolls any time he entered a higher gear.

Resources were running low entering the third lap, with most players taking their technical pit at this point. Conrad chose to bypass the pits, jumping from fifth to third. He continued this risk taking throughout the lap, at one point driving over two debris at once. The first roll was safe, but he was on his last Road Handling point, and each one has a twenty percent chance of failure. And so, Conrad became the first one out.

Stephen took the seventh turn of the lap a bit too fast, crashing out next, with Haakon soon after. Rich had the win in the bag at this point, with Kevin, Eric, and Patrick duking it out for the last spots on the podium. Kevin missed the final turn by one space with no spare engine points, giving him fourth. Eric rolled slightly better coming out of the turn than Patrick did, taking second.

Of the seven racers we started with, four of them finished. Congratulations to Rich Shipley, who started in the front, lost it for a bit, but was basically untouchable for the final lap. Looking forward to seeing lots of new and repeat players next year, especially if we get the racing schedule coordinated.