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Every father's nightmare ... two teenagers
contemplating their learner's permits. |
The six finalists jockey for the unlead
... crash cards at the ready to play on anyone who mistimes their
move to the front. |
A Photo Finish ...
Formula Motor Racing kept the same format and times
with three preliminary heats that generated a total of 19 games
with the six-race-per-game format. Tables were randomly assigned
six players, with five players being the default when the number
of players did not break into even multiples of six.
The stats for the 19 games were:
Min score for win: 30 (unchanged from 2007)
Max score for win: 46 (increase from 44 in 2007)
Average score for win: 34.95 (decrease from 35.82 in 2007)
Min score for second place: 27 (unchanged from 2007)
Max score for second place: 37 (slight increase from 36 in 2007)
Average score for second place: 31.11 (increase from 30.29 from
2007)
We had two games where the winner had to be decided by the tie-breaker
rules. One big change occurred in the five-player games where
the bank car (aka the non-player car) finished either fifth or
sixth, not even close to winning a race.
The winner of the "I lost the most cars to spin-out, engine
blown or crash" prize had to wait till the semi-final round
where Danielle Zack had lost both of her cars in the first three
races. Honorable mention for the prize goes to April Gardner,
who in the third heat, lost a car to crash in each of five races.
Both Danielle and April should take this as a good sign as the
winner of this prize in 2007, Tom McCorry, was the drawer of
the "Queen of Spades" to win a free copy of Formula
Motor Race provided by GMT.
16 or the 19 heat winners appeared for the semi-finals. Checking
the list of second-place racers present gave Chad Gormly and
Nikki Bradford their entrance to the field of 18 needed for the
semis. One name not on the list of semi-finalists was young defending
champion Dan Lewis. The record of Formula Motor Racing not
having a repeat champion would remain intact another year.
The 18 semi-finalists were assigned randomly to six-player tables,
with first and second place racers advancing to the Final. Those
surviving for another round were:
Matthew Fetzer 43 points
Jordan Flawd 38 points
Forrest Speck 34 points
Rich Fetzer 33 points
Nick Smith 30 points
Pam Gutermuth 28 points
Terri Wicks tied Rich Fetzer with 33 points in their game, but
lost on the tie breaker with Rich winning the sixth race. This
yielded our first father-son team in the Final, but left us with
no repeating laurelist. Only Forrest Speck had previously experienced
the Final in this event.
The Final started calmly with no crash in the first race, but
Rich Fetzer lost a car to spin out and Forrest Speck blew an
engine. Forrest did win the race with his other car and Rich's
surviving car took second so their losses were mitigated. Race
2 saw Forrest and Rich each lose another car to crash, while
Jordan Flawd lost one to spin out. Race 3 proved the most difficult
with Jordan and Matt each losing a car to crash, while Rich had
one spin out and Forrest blew an engine.
At the mid-point, it was still anyone's game with only a six-point
difference between first and sixth place.
Nick lost his first car in Race 4 to a blown engine, but did
manage to win the race to give him the lead at 21 points. Jordan
moved into second just one point behind by finishing second and
sixth. Nick would lose a car again in Race 5 to spin out, and
fall from first to fifth with 21 points. Scores going into the
final race were: Forrest 28, Jordan 23, and the father-son team
of Rich and Matt tied with 22 points,.
Forrest had a big enough lead that if one of his cars won
the race, he would be the overall winner. The only cars knocked
out fell victim to the same crash card, costing Pam and Matt
a car each. Pam's other car won the race, one of Jordan's cars
came in second (this would be key), Matt's other car came in
third, one of Rich's cars came in fourth, Nick's car came in
fifth and Forrest's car came in sixth. The final score had Forrest
and Jordan tied with 29 points, Matt at 26, Rich 25, Pam 24 points
and Nick with 23 points completing his fall from first after
four races to last after six.
For the first time the WBC championship was decided by a tie-breaker
with the order of finish in the last race being the difference.
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Late GM substitute Sean McCulloch
helps Junior Monitor Laurie Wojtasczyk herd the cats ... I mean
kids. |
Four soloists ready to move up in
class. It won't be long before they'll be threatening Danny Lewis's
record for humiliating adults. |
Formula Motor Racing Junior
There were 16 little race drivers sans learning permits loosed
on the streets of the Heritage room this summer. The best of
these was Brian Sherwood who was followed in order by Jordan
Shea, Gracie Putnam, Andrew Doughan, Thomas Melton and Adam Wojtaszczyk.
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