This week the crew soaked in the beautiful sights of Belgium and came ready to tackle Zolder and make up for the lack of overtakes that Brno provided last week.... and that prep paid off!
Heading into this week, the league was stunned by the announcement that due to work obligations, our Driver's Championship Points Leader
Patricio Campos (Pitricio) would end up missing the next 3 races and would not return until the Season Finale. For all drivers, this meant a solid finish at Zolder would be crucial to being able to insert themselves in the now possible Championship chase. But before you can finish, you have to qualify! For the first dozen minutes, it was pretty competitive between
Tyler McIntosh (MacAttack0922) and
Charles Sumner (Hootius) as the 2 drivers stayed within a couple tenths of each other and traded the Pole back and forth a couple times. Then as time was winding down,
Tyler laid down an absolute heater and took the Pole by a full second over
Charles.
Kyle Spencer (KDawgHonda777) comfortably took the 3rd position. Now it is customary in this league that a battle in qualifying has to be determined by an insanely small margin, and this week that award goes to the battle for 4th place as
Mark Kaelin (Bubba18) smoked
Vince Nadal (TSpottr723) by a whopping .002 secs.... Yes that's right, a whole 2 one/thousandths of a second!!! Completely insane the competition we get to see on a weekly basis.
We had a potential battle right off the line as
Charles had a great jump at the light and was side-by-side with
Tyler going into Turn 1, though
Tyler was able to carry the outside momentum and fully clear
Charles by Turn 2. The Top 5 drivers than stayed in order for a couple laps while there was battles non-stop throughout the rest of the field. The action never really let up either through the first half of the race, and with only one cameraman, unfortunately not all of the action could be caught. As grass was getting kicked up and paint was being swapped throughout the field, it was a little more uniformed up front.
Tyler slowly pulled away from
Charles as the first half of the race went out, culminating with a 6.5 sec lead by Lap 14, while
Kyle would stay within 3 secs of
Charles over that same time frame. As
Tyler was maneuvering through some lapped traffic by the end of Lap 14,
Charles and
Kyle took that opportunity to short pit by a lap to try to close the gap on
Tyler. As they were going down pit road, disaster would strike for
Tyler as he lost traction on the exit of Turn 1 and spun it into the inside wall.
Tyler would pit at the end of the lap, but
Charles and
Kyle took advantage of the mistake and both were able to overtake
Tyler as he was exiting pit road. After about 4 laps,
Tyler was able to overtake
Kyle and found himself 7 secs back of
Charles, a gap that was within reach to close over the final 10 laps. However knowing that he had to push to close the gap, disaster would find
Tyler again as the curbs in the Kleine Chicane caused
Tyler's car to hop, skip and go out of control and create contact with the wall.
Tyler would have to pit again to repair his damage, but managed to recover for a 5th place finish. Knowing the championship implications at hand,
Charles and
Kyle paced out the rest of the race, just waiting for the other to make a mistake. Both driver's kept it clean and made no mistakes, which resulted in
Charles claiming his 2nd victory of the Season, and
Kyle claiming his 4th runner-up of the Season.
Vince survived the early onslaught of battles and had a solid rest of the race after that to round out the podium, his 2nd of the Season. Coming home 4th with a great performance in his debut race, was
Mark McCormack (RPG_4Me). Due to all of the overtakes we had in the race, we actually had a 4-way tie for the Hard-Charger for the Race Award.
Drayton Simpson (_Dray_),
Max Lewin (RiteAidKid84),
Mark M. and
Vince all improved 2 spots from their qualifying positions, which should tell just how competitive and exciting this race was. Make sure to check out the video at the bottom of this summary.
The top 10 finishing order was:
1st –
Charles Sumner (Hootius) – 2nd win of the Season and of his career
2nd –
Kyle Spencer (KDawgHonda777) – 5th Podium of the Season
3rd –
Vince Nadal (TSpottr723) – 2nd podium of the Season and of his career
4th –
Mark McCormack (RPG_4Me) – 1st career Top 5 in the PRL in his first race!
5th –
Tyler McIntosh (MacAttack0922) – 3rd Top 5 this Season
6th –
Max Lewin (RiteAidKid84) – 5th Top 10 of the Season and tied for best career finish
7th –
Dallas Johnson (Porq_Chopz) – 5th Top 10 of the Season
8th –
Mark Miller (Mark_LD) – 4th Top 10 of the Season
9th –
Drayton Simpson (_Dray_) – 5th Top 10 of the Season
10th –
Ben Charles (BenCharlesB) – 2nd Top 10 of the Season
In the Driver’s battle, due to
Patricio Campos' (Pitricio) absence,
Charles Sumner (Hootius) wiped out the entire 21 points deficit with his win and currently sits tied for 1st place in points.
Kyle Spencer's (KDawgHonda777) runner-up finish at Zolder has him now 14 points back of the points lead with 3 races to go.
Vince Nadal (TSpottr723) was not able to gain on
Kyle or
Charles and is 30 points back of the lead, but does now have a 19 point lead over 5th place. In rounding out the Top 5,
Dallas Johnson (Porq_Chopz) took advantage of a couple absences and hopped up into that 5th spot.
Dallas though will not have time relax as only 15 points separate 5th thru 11th place!!
In the Team battle,
Cromo Ramrod’s (Patricio and Charles) lead shrank to 66 points to
Attack Racing (Tyler and Kyle S.). With
Patricio missing the next 2 races, it will be very interesting to see how much of that gap
Attack Racing will be able to chip away. Behind
Vince's podium finish,
Vin Rin Racing (Mark M. and Vince) finds themselves a little more comfortably in 3rd place in the Team standings with a 25 point lead over 4th.
Next week is all about high speeds and heavy brakes, as the crew sets their eyes on Germany and the famed Hockenheim GP Circuit.
Very special thank you to
AJ Jobes (GameofJobes) for donating his time to the league and broadcasting for us. You can find
Jobes’ other great broadcasts and racing at
www.twitch.tv/GameofJobes
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/172617718?t=
