Round 1 - Daytona International Speedway
The B-Heat Race:
The beginning of any new season is a bit like the first day back at school. Everyone is unsettled and there is always the question of what classes that everyone will be going into.
The two big questions over the off season was where Oglivy 'Sonic' Hedgehog and where Robie Robie would end up. Sonic like Konata Izumi was a driver for the Subaru team which folded at the end of last season and whereas she took up a drive at Datsun, he was a free agent with no destination. Eventually, he signed on as a works Chevrolet driver, as Felix Katt moved on to the new BLK Team.
Robie Robie on the other hand, spent the end of last season in an ex-McIllan Racing '59 Mustang; which only came to light after the merry-go-round had stopped, was prepped by Team UZKA. Team UZKA has expanded to four cars for 20X2; with Robie Robie moving into a spot which he virtually held, and billionaire Bruce Wayne returning in the #66 Wayne Industries colours.
The opening round of the 20X2 season was held up the road from where the last round of the 20X2 season was held; in that it was held at Daytona International Speedway as opposed to the sands of Daytona Beach. This was mainly doe to political issues with the City of Daytona; where the city council wouldn't approve a beach race this year. The three races were all 250 miles long and 100 laps a piece.
Pole sitter Oglivy Hedgehog having started the season in new equipment, got the jump on the rest of the field and moved ouit to an early lead. Behind him though, the opening day squabbles were just beginning.
Having campaigned what were officially registered as 'Ferraris' but with zero input from the Italian factory and even questions of disapproval as to how they got the Ferrari engines in the first place, Team OSKO with Judge John Judd and Morgan Inkling found themselves having to negotiate with the preferred manuacturers for 20X2. With Chevrolet, Ford, Kia, Toyota and Holden all tied up, then this meant dealing with McAlpine Racing who are running the entirety of Mercedes-Benz fabrication for 20X2 themselves, Datsun, Mazda and GAZ. Running a GAZ was cheap, Datsun was chaotic, and Mazda would be difficult to convince. As they were a two car operation already and Mazda wanted to close their slots, Mazda accepted Team OSKO's application but only if they were running customer cars of Mifune Motors. Team OSKO apprently didn't care and took the offer.
Morgan Inkling put the #41 Mazda 989 on tenth place and made a fairly decent kinf of start, and then found that on a superspeedway she could actually make use of the draft. The Ferrari powered bodge jobs of last season never ran fast enough to be able to get close enough to make use of the draft but with thuis new toy, it was as if she'd been given licence to go wild.
There was no plan. Go hard or go home seemed to be the ethos of Inkling and by the end of the first lap she'd already made it to the rear bumper of Dr Ivo Robotnik's car in 4th. He wasn't about to surrender the position so easily and with reigning champion Al Yankovic in front of him, this would be a difficult task.
When practically the whole field pitted on lap 25, nobody dared pit out of sequence except Jean-Paul Cassell who decided to meaninglessly lead a lap. He was already on the tail of a long line of cars and so rejoining the tail after a pitstop was not a concern.
Inkling found herself with less that adequate pit work and she dropped three spots and then decided to go even harder, figuring that if she could overtake as many cars as possible before the tyres degraded, then she might find it easier to defend the spots later.
This shot is of lap 55; when after having followed Robotnik down the back straight, Inkling went underneath him in Turn 3 and pushed him up the racetrack and then went to the outside of Al Yankovic and Samuel Toucquanne through the tr-oval. By the end of lap 56, Inkling was in second place and ready to chase down Hedgehog in a whirlwind of madness and fury.
"Thirteen. Who is that?"
"Robotnik."
"He's gone.... Sixty-two. Who is that?"
"You don't know that's last year's champion?"
"I don't care if he's the King of Town and Mayor McCheese. He's in my way."
- Driver Morgan Inkling and Spotter Meggie Spletzer, lap 55
Threading the needle is a valuable skill for any driver who having made it to the lead, wishes to stay there. By about lap 47, Oglivy Hedgehog had lapped everyone up to 7th place and was about to put a lap on Sticks Baja in the Dewalt Toyota and rookie Boris Andropov in the #47 Komrade Kat GAZ. GAZ's story in going from a two car operation to a proper eight car preferred manufacturer is nothing short of bizarre; and for season 20X2, the works team brought in Boris Andropov and Darth Vader, to bring both youth and experience to their ranks. Unfortunately with youth also comes a lack of experience and when Hedgehog tried to send his car around the outside of Andropov, the Russian who experienced a side draft force and a wiggle going into Turn 1, slid roughly a foot up the racetrack and into the rear quarter panel of the passing Chevrolet. Hedgehog in turn tagged the back or Baja's Toyota and nearly slid into the path of Rodan's Nissan GTR-8 but somehow that didn't happen.
Hedgehog being the lead car when the caution came out, was sufficiently far enough ahead, that when the pace car picked him up, he was still in the lead; which meant that when the mad dash en masse for the pits happened on lap 49, he pitted from the lead and exited back into the lead, after having been the one to cause the caution in the first place.
The big question would be, having acquired the lead early and by virtue of getting an undercut, would Hedgehog be able to keep the #8 Chevrolet out in front? That answer would be found out as the field bore down on him as the race wore on.
Title contender last season, Tse Sakamoto in the Mazda 989 sat behind in second place but couldn't make much of an impact and Hatsune Miku in the #00 Toyota in third found that when cars moved over for Sakamoto, they wouldn't move over for her as they were unaware that she was there. She herself was under constant challenge from Greg Rellings in the #52 Mazda; she knew that given that Sakamoto had a fair amount of speed in the car, that Rellings would as well.
It wasn't until the final round of pitstops that a challenger did emerge and that was Kane McKane in the factory Holden. This was now McKane's fourth season in Holden equipment and the second in factory equipment. The people in head office in Melbourne gave an ultimatum to their team; citing that because the results weren't there, they would be withdrawing factory support at the end of the year unless something turned around.
With that kind of pressure, McKane wanted to get runs on the board early and so having made it to sixth place, he thought there might be a run on towards the end of the race. He passed Spidalski on lap 80, Miku on lap 83, and Sakamoto on lap 96; which gave him only a few laps to try and find a way around Hedgehog; who had led every lap bar three.
The run finally did come on lap 100 after he got a massive tow down the back straight from Stripe Heeler in the second of the Hammberbarn Fords. Stripe duly moved out of the way and McKane now found himself behind another blue streak.
In the end, by holding the inside Line through the tri-oval and forcing McKane to go the long way round, Hedgehog did just 0.1 of a second enough to keep everyone else behind. The big lesson here is that enough is enough because nobody really cares how much you won by, as much as they care that you did.
Points Awarded B-Heat Race:
9 - Oglivy Hedgehog
6 - Kane McKane
4 - Tse Sakamoto
3 - Hatsune Miku
2 - Greg Rellings
1 - Stanley Spidalski