Here's what happened today at our indi500 race: There were three
first-timers but some of our regulars didn't make a special Indy car,
so we again wound up with a total of nine. Here they are:
Novice:
Tim Battersby Canada Emily
Muir Lee Harding U.S.A. racer_X
Grant Reeve New Zealand IndyMan
Thomas Rooney U.S.A. goCART
Patrick Tierney Canada Heath3
Expert:
Bill Benedict U.S.A. Rusty
Safai Ma Canada Burns
Jussi Pajala Finland Bubble
Randy Saint U.S.A. Ramdu
(plus two from the novice race)
As in today's real Indy 500, our racing was dominated by crashes.
There were only two finishers in the novice race and three in the
expert race. It would have been heartbreaking for Bubble and Ramdu,
if they had hearts, for both lost the lead in the last third of the
race, after laboriously working their way from the back of the pack.
Bubble was the fastest driver, but only by a small margin. He started
off dead last and took about 20 laps to push through to first place.
Bubble was able to hold the lead, and increase it slowly, for more
than half the race. Finally, however, he tried to pass a slower car
and touched the inside wall. Having already accumulated damage from
various hits, he stayed there. (The leaders had to pass slower cars
many times, and there was occaisonal contact.) Bubble's demise left
Ramdu in the lead, and being the fastest driver had no trouble
holding it. BUT... at about lap 178 he hit the outside wall just
after the 2nd turn. (Just like many of today's real indy cars did!)
I didn't notice if this resulted from passing a slower car, but it
probably did.
The two finishers of the novice race were Emily and racer_X, who then
went on to the expert class. Surprisingly, they took 1st and 2nd in
that race also! Congratulations to Tim Battersby and Muir Lee
Harding for such a fine showing!
results of novice race: (X denotes did not finish)
5 cars for 200 laps. The track was indi500.trk. The drivers were:
Emily, goCART, Heath3, racer_X, and IndyMan.
starting positions:
Emily, racer_X, Heath3, goCART, and IndyMan.
place 1 Emily average speed 220.67 mph 10 points accumulated
place 2 racer_X average speed 210.73 mph 6 points accumulated
place 3 IndyMan X average speed 224.77 mph 4 points accumulated
place 4 Heath3 X average speed 0 mph 3 points accumulated
place 5 goCART X average speed 0 mph 2 points accumulated
results of expert race:
6 cars for 200 laps. The track was indi500.trk. The drivers were:
Rusty, Burns, Bubble, Ramdu, Emily, and racer_X.
starting positions:
Emily, Burns, racer_X, Rusty, Bubble, and Ramdu.
place 1 Emily average speed 220.43 mph 10 points accumulated
place 2 racer_X average speed 210.75 mph 6 points accumulated
place 3 Burns average speed 210.03 mph 4 points accumulated
place 4 Ramdu X average speed 221.6 mph 3 points accumulated
place 5 Bubble X average speed 224.1 mph 2 points accumulated
place 6 Rusty X average speed 0 mph 1 points accumulated
Expert Class Point standings
Jussi Pajala 12 pts (Finland)
Tim Battersby 10 pts (Canada)
Bill Benedict 7 pts (U.S.A.)
Randy Saint 7 pts (U.S.A.)
Safai Ma 7 pts (Canada)
Muir Lee Harding 6 pts (U.S.A.)
Mike Inman 2 pts (U.S.A.)
Novice Class Points:
Patrick Tierney 5 pts (Canada)
Oscar Gustafsson 4 pts (Sweden)
Grant Reeve 4 pts (New Zealand)
Carl Burke 3 pts (U.S.A.)
Thomas Rooney 2 pts (U.S.A.)
Tristrom Cooke 1 pt (Australia)
The source code for these 'bots will be on the ftp site shortly, along
with the modified CARZ.CPP file. Look for the file indybots.zip.
m
