Home Wing Results Menu      Wing Round 2 Race Report Race Results Tech Sheets Photo Gallery

February 8th 2003 - Slot Car City Las Vegas Nevada

The SoCal wing car group loaded up and headed out to Slot Car City in Las Vegas for round 2 of the 2003 series. We had the good fortune to attract a few nationally recognized racers from out of town join us. Rudy Garriga of Slick 7 drove down from San Francisco with his trusty sidekick Al Chuck, AKA “Owl Chump”. Paul Pfeiffer of Alpha made one of his semi regular visits and expert scale racer “Itch” was in town on vacation and joined us with borrowed equipment.

Spray Glue Group-12
With no qualifying, it’s straight to the racing. The “urban legend” of the locals having the advantage was never truer than in this race. The track owner, Mick Antonelli, just laid waste to the field. Mick had a 3-lap lead over his faithful servant Tyson Joyce after the first heat and never looked back. Tyson ran in second throughout with our new commander in chief, Chris “my country just lost the America’s Cup” Radisich taking the last podium spot. Rick Elting, Matt Carroll and Itch were the other racers.

Group-12
A little cleaning, a little gluing, a little more gluing and it was time to race the Group 12’s. Tyson Joyce was the fastest qualifier with a lap of 3.021. Bill Pinkston and Mick Antonelli were 2^nd and 3^rd.

Bill Pinkston led the first heat, but it was Mick Antonelli taking over in heat 2. Mick would lead the rest of the way with Tyson running second early. Tyson hit trouble in heat 6, letting Chris Radisich into 2^nd and Dale Garcia into 3^rd.They would finish that way with Tyson dropping to 4^th ahead of Bill Pinkston, Rick Elting and Darryl Atkin.

Group-27
We managed a full field of 8 thanks to some of our out of town visitors. Tyson Joyce made it 2 TQ’s with a lap of 2.398 ahead of Mike Graverson and Darryl Atkin.

Pat Ularte started on blue and led by 1 lap after the first heat over Paul Pfeiffer who started on yellow. Pat then moved to the bottom gutters while Paul was racing in the middle lanes and opening up a big lead. Mike Graverson had a terrible start, dropping 25 laps to the 2 leaders as he struggled on the red lane. Mike dropped a couple of more laps in heat 2 and then started winning heats and making up laps by the handful.  As Pat moved back to the middle lanes he started to close in on Paul. By heat 6, Mike was back in the picture. These 3 entered the final heat with Pat and Mike tied and only 10 laps behind Paul, with Paul finishing on black. Paul drove carefully and his lap times varied by less that ¾ of a second over the heat. Score it Paul by 2 over Pat, who had 1 over Mike. Rudy Garriga, Darryl Atkin, Al Chuck, Randy Thompson and Tyson Joyce were the other racers.

One Motor Open
We had 12 racers turn in cars for tech inspection, so it was everyone’s favorite, a round robin main event.

The early leaders were Paul Pfeiffer and Pat Ularte followed by Randy Thompson and Mike Graverson. Paul dropped out in the middle of the 3^rd heat leaving Pat with a clear lead on the average. Randy and Mike were unable to keep up and Bill Pinkston moved into 2^nd place during heat 4. Forrest Watchers was the last one in and after a bit of trouble on red, started moving in on the 2 leaders. Forrest moved into second during the 8^th heat, which was Bill’s last. The turning point was heat 10 with Forrest on yellow and Pat on green. Forrest ripped off the only 100-lap heat of the race and moved into the lead. Pat had no answer and settled for 2^nd. Bill took the final podium spot running a steel car. Al Chuck, Phil Larcom, Tyson Joyce, Darryl Atkin, Mike Graverson, Randy Thompson, Paul Pfeiffer, Rudy Garriga and Chris Radisich rounded out the field.

Track Calls
Paul Pfeiffer won the G-27 race with an F-2000 spec car. That means he ran a steel car at 52 grams and single magnet motors against the now common aluminum cars and motors with multi segment magnets. Paul also ran to F-2000 spec in the One Motor Open race and was running in the lead group when he dropped out.