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The Florida On-Road Gas State Series

2003-2004 Season

The season is off to a start as there was chaos everywhere! There was a very large turn out of people to arrive at this event. Although the weather was not being very nice to us with Tropical Storm Henri heading right for the West Coast of Florida. We were very lucky to scave the blunt of the storm with mostly cloudy skies and little rain.
At first, Saturday morning we thought for sure that the race would be canceled due to the misty rain's that Henri was bringing us, finally out pops the sun and dries up all the rain!! Racing was now underway!

People started flocking in from what seemed everywhere as the track was opened for controlled practice. This is where I think the chaos started. Controlled practice gives the racers exactly 5 minutes to run his car. However, with some rules such as "no fuel bottles aloud in the pits". This gives everyone there equal amount of time to run. These "so called" practice run's are set for a total of 15 minutes, which is fine but when you have a turn out of 60+ sedan drivers you have to make that time just a little longer. But this was not the case and rules were left to be broken. First being only 5 minutes of racing and second being no fuel bottles in the pits. Give no explanation to why we had to wait almost the 15 minutes for one guy to turn in his frequency clip? Does he have some magic gas tank that holds that much gas? This was the case for a lot of people. This happened both Saturday and Sunday.

The way the heat were set up was a little unfair to the faster more experienced drivers. They based the heat on who pre-registered for the event. This is not how it should have been. Heats should of been set up by the performance of the driver from past events.

Paying attention, you would think that adult men could follow rules & directions. But this is not the case! During races..... "No-one is to stand in front of the pit tables" This means "Don't stand in front of the tables"!! That also goes for standing and blocking the walkway between the tables so that people who follow directions has to push their way threw. (picture above shows and example) this was repeated and repeated several times over the loud speaker both Saturday and Sunday!!

Then comes the exciting job of teching the cars. This is not a fun job. No-one wants to do it. But the job was vote upon and one person got that job! Now that you got that job my only thought on that is to do your job! Or don't tech cars. What I don't understand is that there are rules on teching a car for both Sedan and Outlaw cars. Why is it that only the Sedan car's are put threw this massive tech job? I watched Cars be DQ for the wing and roof of the car not being level. (Ever think the table itself was not level?) I personally had to come to the defense of the Tech guy in one situation where clearly the wing and roof were out of whack. But in this same breath I watched a driver bump up from main to main with an illegal wing! (How does that work) Tech one main skip the next and so on? The E mains were never teched but the F and D were???? In that case only tech the A mains.

Then there is the thought of rough driving. Who call's the shots here? There are rules on this but I guess they are swept under the carpet as well as the teching of cars. What gives a person the right to DQ one for rough driving but not the next? Favoritism.. possibly?? Beats me!

In conclusion, this was the first race of the series. A little room should be given for mistakes. Hopefully the next race people can get their heads together and pay attention and race good together!!

In all reality this is still a toy!

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