Magny-Cours Recap

A beautiful, clear day with highs in the mid-60’s welcomed the SBMRL to hte Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours in France.  With good weather and a number of high speed straights, the day was set for a thrilling ride.  The cars lined up as follows:

P1 – Captain Slow (Jason)
P2 – Nero (Frank)
P3 – Mater (Ryan)
P4 – The Stig (Jason)
P5 – Ice (Ryan)
P6 – Launch Bornado (Frank)
P7 – Jamonito del Verde (Frank)
P8 – Danger Wheel (Ryan)
P9 – Jaronimus Maximus (Jason)
P10 – Jaap Snellrijder (Frank)

Both the Stig and Launch Bornado managed to time the lights perfectly, getting the jump on Mater and Ice, respectively.  Battles commenced immediately up and down the full length of the field as the cars raced to the first corner.  Captain Slow took the early lead, with the Stig, Launch, and Nero all in hot pursuit.  The Golf straight saw a lot of passing, with the Stig failing to keep up with the front runners and getting caught up by the likes of Jaronimus and Jaap.  Ice and the Red Bull drivers joined Jamonito at the back.

Nero takes to the inside in Adelaide

The second sector first saw the Stig, then Launch, take the lead as the battles at the front continued to go back and forth.  Captain Slow kept up as best possible, but Nero started to fade.  That allowed Jaap and Jaronimus to reel him in.  Jaap then found speed to burn through the straight leading to Imola and was among the front runners in short order.

Launch in the lead

Sector three didn’t see a lot of movement in position other than Jamonito beginning to sneak up on the midfield.  When they came round to the pits, Captain Slow was first across the line, skipping out on a stop due to a clean first lap.  Launch had nursed his tyres well but found an adjustment to his abused gear box was in order.  That gave Jaap the chance to complete lap 1 in second place as he barreled on.  Ice was the third and final driver to skip his pit stop, gaining several places after having fallen all the way to last coming around the final bend.

Ice charges past the pits

The second lap saw Captain Slow leading the pair of yellow Regency Motors cars down the long Golf straight.  Ice’s gambit allowed him to slide into 4th position.  Launch Bornado was the driver who handled the Adelaide corner the smoothest, and he was first in, first out, but without good speed heading into Nurburgring.  That allowed Captain Slow to gain on him.  In contrast, Jaap’s inability to emulate his teammate left him battling with Ice and a charging Jamonito.  The rest of the field followed closely, with the lone exception of Danger Wheel, whose opening of the second lap left a lot to be desired.

The midfield converges after the Golf straight

Skipping back to the midfield runners, who looked to be well behind Captain Slow at this stage, things began to shift over the course of the second sector.  The most obvious and shocking event of the race was seeing standings leader Jaap Snellrijder pull off to the side of the 180 corner after his engine gave out.

Jaap’s engine gives out

What was far less obvious as it was occurring were the rise of Mater and Jamonito.  Jamonito had caught up with Ice and Jaap in the Adelaide corner, and kept up with them both until Jaap’s engine demise.  He was subsequently able to catch Captain Slow in Imola.

Mater, on the other hand, was bottom 3 until an inspired 2nd sector charge.  He found speed aplenty in Imola, reeling in Ice a short while later.  While Launch cruised to his first victory, Captain Slow saw both Jamonito and Mater pass him by around the final bends.

The battle for 2nd comes down to the wire

Nero managed to pip Ice for 5th place as they crossed the line, and the Cobalt teammates finished one after the other for the 4th time this year.  The Stig’s 7th place finish was extremely disappointing after an extremely promising first lap.  Jaronimus finished just ahead of Danger Wheel to round out the field.

Final Results

There were a lot of interesting things about the race in France, but the first two are obviously the diametrically opposite fates of the Regency Motors drivers.  Launch Bornado finally wins a race in his 16th attempt.  Despite a fair amount of success, he was the only driver from the inaugural season who had yet to tally a win.  That leaves Jamonito as the only active driver without a win.  Jamonito’s 2nd place is the 4th time this year that he’s been the bridesmaid, so he has certainly had his share of success.  Mater rounded out the podium in 3rd place.  After his victory in Austin earlier this season, it marks his second podium of the year and the first time he’s ever finished in 3rd place.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Jaap’s failure to see the checkered flag marks the first time he’s suffered such a fate.  Given that he was as high as 2nd place during the race, that’s a tough pill to swallow.  For race fans, though, it’s a great boon.  The driver standings are now about as tight as they can get heading into the final race of the season.  Jaap holds a 2 point lead over Launch and Jaronimus, who are tied.  Jamonito is within 10 points of the lead trio.

A final note of trivia comes from the fact that for the first time in SBMRL history, the top 5 cars came from 5 different teams.  Jaronimus finishing ahead of Danger Wheel was the only thing preventing the bottom half from being a mirror image of the top.

On the team level, Regency Motors extended their lead over Osito Racing Company but only slightly.  The team title will come down to those two teams, as Red Bull is just a few points too far back to take the crown.  They can, however, steal second place away from Osito if things work out just right.  The bottom two teams scored the exact same number of points as each other.

With Jaap’s win in Sochi, Regency Motors have back-to-back wins for the first time.  The only other team to have accomplished that is Cobalt, who’ve done it twice.  Nero and Ice won at Sebring and Hockenheim last year, then had season-spanning back-to-back victories with Valencia and Spa-Francorchamps.  There was only one race between those pairs of wins, meaning that Nero and Ice won 4 out of 5 in that stretch.

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