Retro CART League
Johnny Hamby took the pole and led the most laps to win the Mid-Ohio race tonight, ahead of a hard charging Rick Ravon and Marc Breuning. After missing the Pocono race and his unfortunate DNF at Road America, Hamby was happy to score maximum points in his bid for the championship. Currently, Breuning is leading with 103 and Hamelink is second with 92 – notably scoring points in all 8 races but without a win – and Hamby is in third now with 88.
George Sandman ran a perfect one on the bumpy streets of Belle Isle. Starting on the pole, he led 33 of the 35 laps and parked his machine in victory lane for the first time in the Retro CART League. Marc Breuning and Johnny Hamby rounded out the podium, with Bill Smithem in 4th and Cody Hunley in 5th.
Rick Ravon won the iSplash Indy 100, his debut race with the Retro CART Leage. Margin of victory 0.353 over Austin Dabbs, with Trey Mitts in 3rd. The top 4 drivers finished within .6 of a second after a long night of wheel to wheel racing.
Great to see 18 drivers taking the green flag. Awesome and close racing all night long. Few more yellows than last season, but a fun night none the less!
Johnny Hamby proved to be the quickest at Long Beach, starting from the pole and leading from flag to flag, scoring maximum points. George Sandman, who qualified on the front row alongside Hamby, got the shortest end of the stick in a lap 8 pile up in the hairpin that also damaged Breuning’s car, but the #61 driver was able to carry on. After lengthy repairs on his pit stop he dropped to 4th and opened the way forward for Chris Hamelink, who finished 2nd ahead of Cody Hunly.
Happy holidays to all drivers and fans, we’ll be back in January with the Indianapolis 100 event!
After reading up on the IndyCar licensing issues on iRacing and viewing several video’s of streamers on the issue, on behalf of our Retro CART League I’d like to say the following:
Our league/series will not change, as we are not running any of the cars that are affected by the changes. The Lotus 79 is not an IndyCar but a Formula One car. The CART organization no longer runs any high profile series in the USA or beyond and was in fact dissolved in 2003. Therefore, I foresee no licensing or copyright issues whatsoever.
Our series is based on 80’s and 90’s IndyCar style racing, but in our announcements and publications we refer to it as Retro CART and/or open wheel racing mostly. I suppose to avoid any kind of issues with iRacing and/or IndyCar, we should refrain from using the word ‘IndyCar’ and refer to what we do as ‘open wheel racing’.
We will continue to broadcast our races as planned.
Marc.
The Season opener at Phoenix [Legacy] showed close racing wherever you looked! Polesitter Johnny “I’m not much into ovals” Hamby lead early in the race, but behind him everyone was pushing. Inevitably, there were the drivers caught out by the close battles. Once Hamby got caught, it was Hamelink and Wineinger battling for top spot but Wineinger became a victim of the close racing being a little too close. After the pitstops, Hamelink was leading, with Breuning in 2nd. Breuning opted not to take tires and quickly took the lead.
In the final stages, his advantage evaporated and Hamelink and Fahey were all over him. Two laps before the end the battle was unfortunately decided with Hamelink’s car snapping around in turn 2, collecting Fahey in the process.
Breuning took top spot under yellow, with Joe Walker 2nd and Bill Smithem in 3rd, proving that it pays to keep going even when two laps down.