MichiganCircleTrack.com is the online home of the MARC Times Racing News & Michigan Racing Scene and MARCTimesTV.

Mansfield, Ohio was the sixth stop for the Michigan Circle Track Sim-Racing League's Pre-season tour this week.  Sixteen Outlaw drivers took on the sixteen degree banking at the famous half mile oval.  The same fixed chassis and drive train set-up used by all the drivers was well configured and easily permitted racing in both the upper and lower groves of the track. The ability to race either grove certainly didn't translate to the ability to easily pass another car. Regardless of where anyone was in the pack, each and every position contested on the track was a knock-down, drag-out, fist fight that was as fun to watch as it was to drive whether the battle was for first or fifteenth position.

Louisville, KY driver Pete Gibson's 16.227 second qualifying effort, (110.926 mph), was good enough to place his No.39 Guitar Hero Chevy in the pole position.  Gibson, who has suffered from a string of bad luck, including DNFs at Berlin and Motor Mile, posted some of the consistently fastest laps of the night throughout practice and happy-hour.   Cheyenne, WY's Bart Fuerstenberger put his Ford on the outside front row of the grid in this, his second start in the series.   Fuerstenberger's time of  16.266 seconds,(110.660 mph) beat out third place starter John Hernly in the No.64 by a bit over 0.3 seconds.

When the green flag dropped, all indications were that this was going to be Gibson's night, but that all changed on lap 7.  Doug TerMeer in the No.91 glanced off the wall and into Gibson, sending the No.39 on a wild ride.  Gibson's spin handed the lead over to Fuerstenberger in the No.161. Luckily for Gibson, though, the "damage level" for the Pre-season has been set to "Moderate" rather than "Realistic" in the Sim . This allowed Gibson to get back out on the track in what would have otherwise been an undrivable car.  The situation with TerMeer had been brewing since the very first lap when he was turned around in the back of the field by fellow Kalamazoo racer KC Foote in the No.44. TerMeer and Foote were both trading paint in an effort to stay on the lead lap when the incident involving Gibson occurred.  Foote's Chevy was again in the thick of things on lap 26 when he brushed the apron of turn two, causing him to slide up into Mark Howland's Rudyard Auto Sales sponsored No.57. For Howland it was a ticket to pits for repairs after contact with the outside wall.

Sean Case in the No.77 Pontiac was challenging the Ford of Terry Stiles for the ninth place spot on lap 32. Stiles, although new to the MCT-SRL series, Stiles is a long time Sim racer.  Case, racing from Mount Sinai, NY, got the position and Stiles got a taste of the turn one wall. A couple of positions further back, Foote in the No.44 checked up to avoid the spinning car of Stiles and took a hit from Jonesville, MI's Jason Snyder in the No.56 Orange Crush Chevy as a result. On the restart, Foote again got spun, this time by Stiles as they exited turn two. Foote's spinning car knocked Case in the No.77 into the outside wall, allowing Stiles to get past Case again. This wouldn't be the last time Stiles and Case would tangle during the event.

There was another bit of interesting racing on lap 44 when Foote, Stiles and Randy Brown from Louisville, KY in the No.31, made it a three-wide race coming towards the stripe. It was a short lived affair however as all three were spinning wildly as they crossed the start/finish line.
Brown took the full brunt of the damage and lost 5 laps while in the pits. At this point, Doug TerMeer in the No.91 who was 4 laps down due to the lap 7 incident with Gibson had "lucky-dogged" his way back onto the lead lap.  By the time another 22 laps has elapsed, TerMeer was again a lap down as the leaders had caught and passed him. DeWitt, MI's Craig Curtis in the No.74 Pontiac was running fourth at the time when he slid up and made contact with the No.91 of TerMeer,  sending TerMeer for a spin.  All of the lead lap cars, with the exception of Craig Bristol in the No.36, had elected to pit during this caution. Bristol was able to lead a lap before pitting himself. Both the No.0 of Kalamazoo's Phil Loedeman and the No.77 of Case  incurred speeding penalties during their stops and had to go to the back of the pack for the restart. Stiles got the lucky-dog.

On lap 88, Loedeman's Chevy dropped down on Case's No.77, sending Loedeman around for caution number nine. On lap 99 Snyder in the No.56 self spun for the third time during the race. Honoring a “Gentleman's Agreement” which is common in the Sim-Racing community, Snyder parked it and called it a night. While pitting under the yellow brought out by Snyder's spin, Mark Howland must have had an angel on his shoulder. Howland managed to lead a lap by virtue of hitting the start/finish line ahead of Fuerstenberger in the No.161 without incurring a speeding penalty. Howland was completely unaware of his good fortune, indicating that he never had an opportunity to lead a lap during a post-race conversation with the other drivers. In opposition to Howland's good luck, Doug TerMeer's bad luck continued, when he got tapped by Bristol in the No.36 and sent for another spin several laps later.

Stiles and Case were mixing it up again on lap 115.  This round, Case sent Stiles for a spin in turn four. I slapped the outside wall trying to avoid the spinning Stiles, but was able to continue. Loedeman in the No.0 on the other hand, made hard contact with Stiles' car, putting Stiles out of the race.

While all this was going on in the back of the field, up front not a lot had changed until lap 122 when Hernly in the No.64 TV Land / ECCI Chevy cut under Don Colbath's KCDC Ford as they entered turn three and executed a textbook pass to take up the second place spot.  Howland made a similar move on Curtis on lap 124 to take the fourth position. Following another incident, Craig Curtis who was now running fifth, pitted on lap 127.  Curtis restarted in eighth position and was challenging me for the seventh place slot  on lap 136. Curtis thought he had cleared me exiting turn four, however I had gotten a good run on the high side and we were still door to door when he slid up into what he thought was an “empty” slot. The two of us ended up facing each other against the wall between turns one and two.

Loedeman bobbled in turn four on lap 140 and got an unneeded assist from both the No.77 and No.36. Loedeman fishtailed down the front straight before coming to a stop at the pit exit. The course stayed green, however Pole winner Gibson, who had threaded the needle down the straightaway avoiding Loedeman's, wildly swerving car, looped it entering turn two. Gibson made contact with the No.31 of Randy Brown, all of which sent several other cars spinning. The entire incident had gone on for ¾ of a lap by the time it was over. Both Case and Curtis somehow managed to snake their way through the obstacle course of spinning cars, picking up several positions each.

The final restart on Lap 147 had Case in the No.77 and Curtis in the No.74 racing hard for the fifth position. Case was the on the losing end of the deal, which set off another chain reaction of scrapes and bruises among several drivers. Case dropped from fifth to tenth and I ended up getting dropped from eighth to thirteenth as a result.  Fuerstenberger, Hernly, Colbath and Howland finished 1,2,3, and 4, just as they had been running since lap 127, with Curtis grabbing the fifth place spot.  Hernly, although pleased with a second place finish which moved him from fifteenth to eleventh in Pre-season points, was more than a bit frustrated.  “Every time I would put myself in a position to get past the the No.161, the yellow would come out,” he commented following the race, “It was darn hard to pass out there.”  All of that was just fine with Fuerstenberger from his point of view.

m.m.