REEDY TOURING CAR RACE OF CHAMPIONS – DAY 4 – FINALS

The 2009 Reedy Touring Car Race Of Champions is in the books. R/C Evil Empire is here to give you a recap on all of the happenings at this illustrious event.

Ronald Volker of Team Yokomo is your new 2009 Reedy Cup Invitational Champion! Before we go into how he won….lets recap the entire day from the beginning…The day started out with a 4th and final round of qualifying for the 13.5 touring and RCGT classes. Tensions were high for many on the bubble.

The forth round picked up nearly where we left off yesterday. Team T.O.P.’s EJ Evans continued his dominance in the RCGT class with another round TQ. If you remember, we listed the top 10 heading into round 4. Not a whole lot changed with the exception of the 10th qualifier. It was bad news for Jake’s Performance Hobbies employee Charlie Suangka whom was knocked from 10th qualifier to 11th by Colin Cocores. Good news for one driver and bad news for another…such is life.

TQ – EJ Evans T.O.P. Racing Photon sporting the Tamiya NSX body.

The 13.5 class had a 4th and final qualifier as well. This went much the same as the RCGT qualifying. The positions shifted around a bit among the bottom 7 qualifiers. The top 3 didn’t change a bit. EJ Evans continued his dominant qualifying by turning a 18 lapper in 5:02! This was extremely fast. There were racers in the mod invite class that didn’t even go this fast. It was a blazing time for Evans. His lines were as close to perfect as you could possibly drive a 13.5 powered car. It would be evident from this performance that the field was in for a tough fight in the mains.

One driver that had a tough luck time in 13.5 was Juan Aveytia. Juan was off to a great run in the final qualifier of 13.5 when his car broke….thus ending his A Main dreams.

Here’s Juan turnmarshalling….

At last it came time for the open mains. Here was the lineup for the RCGT, 13.5, and Open Mod mains. Each A main consisted of triple A Mains ran in a points format. 100 points was awarded to the winner, 99 to 2nd, and so on.

RCGT A Main lineup

13.5 Touring A Main lineup

Mod Open A Main Lineup:

The RCGT mains produced very little drama. At the beginning of A main #1 Juan Aveytia made a first turn aggressive move on TQ EJ Evans. The move spun Evans out. This wound up knocking him down a couple of positions. Juan would take the lead followed by the rest of the pack. Eventually, a small error would result in Aveytia putting himself in a vulnerable position to be caught by EJ Evans and the rest of the pack. Evans repaid the aggressive move with interest and moved by for the lead. EJ eventually stretched his lead and won by a large margin.

RCGT main #2 was open and shut for Evans. He lead from wire to wire. The two consecutive wins gave him the overall Reedy Race RCGT title. The final RCGT results were as follows.

The 13.5 mains went much the way RCGT went. T.O.P. Racing’s EJ Evans pulled a two consecutive firsts in A main #1 and #2. There was only 1 contested moment in A1 when Korey Harbke attempted to challenge Evans for the lead. There were a couple of moments when he was on his bumper very close. The overall car speed and lines for Evans allowed him to pull away uncontested. Here’s a picture we snapped immediately after the win.

It was amazing. Evans managed to wrap up RCGT A2 and 13.5 A2. That clinched 2 titles in 15 minutes.

The final 13.5 points looked like this.

Open Mod Mains.

The Open Mod A Main consisted on the top 10 drivers that did not make the field of 21 invitational drivers. While it was a “A” main, it didn’t have the same luster as in years past. None the less, we saw some good racing. In A main #1, 3rd qualifier Aaron Biner aka Darth Vader aka Lord Vader (yours truly) made a truly awesome move from the 3rd spot to take the lead from Team Xray’s Dave Ehrlich. After a fierce battle, Biner was passed in the short shoot by Ehrlich. He would take the lead for good and win A1. In A main #2, Ehrlich took the lead and didn’t look back. This would clinch the overall open mod title. The final tally gave Ehrlich the overall 1st, Biner in 2nd, and Speedworld owner Billy Bowerman in 3rd.

INVITATIONAL MOD REEDY CUP

The 2009 Reedy Invitational Cup began early Sunday morning with a nice win from Team Associated’s Juho Levanen, Paul Lemieux and Ronald Volker in their heats respectively. A bit of a controversy came into effect during a battle between Rick Hohwart and Paul Lemieux. Hohwart was in the lead through the entire race with Lemieux following just a hair behind. There was an aggressive pass where Paul aired it out over a dot and just about landed on Hohwart’s car in the last turn before the start/finish line. Lemieux crossed the line first in this one. Some felt the pass was overly aggressive and after some discussion with both drivers Race Management agreed. Hohwart was given the win for the round.

Round 2 saw wins from TRF’s Hupo Hoenigl, Rick Hohwart, and Juho Levanen. The Hupo win was just a 1/2 sec over AE driver Kevin Hebert. This was the best race of the round by far. Round 2 also featured the only time Ronald Volker and Juho would race in a heads up battle.

Round 3 would see wins from Hohwart, Volker, and Levanen. The wins were all pretty clean with no controversy.

Going into round 4, Yokomo’s Ronald Volker and Team Associated’s Juho Levanen were both tied for 1st with 2 first place wins. Yuho actually had 3 wins, but only 2 points would count toward the overall title. Since both Volker and Levanen had the same number it would set up a must win for both drivers in the 4th and final frame.

In round 4, Juho would lead off with a nice win. Ralph Burch also won his heat as well. Ronald Volker would need a win to set up a tie breaker situation. The Volker head was a clear victory setting up the tiebreaker scenario between Ronald Volker and Juho Levanen.

The rules of the tie breaker starts with the driver with the best qual points during qualifying. Since Ronald Volker was the TQ, he would be the 2009 Reedy Touring Car Race Champion!

Both Volker and Levanen drove great and deserved the win. It was a tough luck scenario for Juho whom won all 4 of his races and still couldn’t take home the title.

On the other side of the coin, it was awesome to see Ronald Volker start with a brand new chassis (Yokomo BD5) and make his move to the overall Reedy Title! The final tally went like this.

Here are some pics of the invitational class battles

Ronald Volker (ahead) chased by AE’s Lex Tyler

Freight Train through turn 1

Hupo Hoenigl chased by Kevin Jelich

Lex Tyler follwed closely by Scott Kimbrow

Josh Cyrul in a fierce battle with Rick Hohwart

Jason Moberly gets the worst of a start

Tyler Vik fails…

The award ceremony was nice. All of the main winners walked away with something. 1-10 received awards in the A mains and Invite Reedy Cup classes.

RCGT Top 3 Mike Molina (3rd – left) EJ Evans (TQ and 1st) (Middle) Juan Aveytia (3rd) (right)

13.5 A Main – Korey Harbke (3rd) (Left), EJ Evans (TQ and 1st) (Middle) Kody Knudtson (2nd) (right)

TQ and 1st in RCGT and 13.5 – EJ Evans

Mod Open A Main – Billy Bowerman (3rd) (left) Dave Ehrlich (TQ and 1st) Aaron “Vader” Biner (Right) (2nd)

Invitational Reedy Cup Top 10

After the top 10 invite awards were given, a champagne attack was initiated by Hohwart and Levanen….Volker was the target.

Volker tried to fight back.

In the end he got it in the eye…oops….should have worn goggles…..

Here are some pics of Ronald’s winning Yokomo/LRP BD5

Now that were done with the serious business…..heres the worst dressed award….Clint Riley….what were you doing? I think you should lose your stars for this!

Or….