Rolling Thunder  Race Report

On Saturday, January 25th,  16 Outlaw racers made their way to Ron Des Roches Rolling Thunder Raceway in Cumberland, RI for the sixth race of the season.  After practice for the Indy, Super Stock and Magnatraction class with Sports Prototype bodies, the drivers meeting was conducted by Dave Lockwood.  Greg gave the treasurer’s report and upcoming events were announced and it was time for racing.

Rolling Thunder Raceway

Ron DeRoche built and hand routed the track himself.  Bring horsepower!!!!!   Long straights and flowing curves make it fast and lap times on the 77 ft track were in the 9 second range for super stock and Paul Ryer was consistently in the 7s for the magnatraction race!  Everyone knows now to up the spring tension on the pickup shoes.

Indy race

Flash ran off and hid winning the race by three laps over Dave Lockwood and Greg Wisniewski.  Hal Pierce’s Indy car program has really made great strides and he took a well deserved 4th.  Joe Escalante has also got his Indy car program going and took 5th.  Paul Ryer, Steve Nilsen, Jimmy Colligan and Rob Hayes all had 53 laps with sections determining the finish positions rounding out the top half of the field

Super Stock

Dave Lockwood took first with 78 laps by two laps over Flash and Rob Hayes took the final step on the podium with 73 laps.  Paul Ryer, Steve Nilsen, Cody Pare, Greg Wisniewski and Hal Pierce completed the top half of the field.

Magnatraction with Sports Prototype Bodies  (Corvettes aren’t SP but Ford GTs are!)

The feature race of the day was the Magnatraction class.  With a heavy dose of Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s, it was the early 70s all over again.  Paul Ryer had by far the most dominant performance in the MT class in recent years taking the win by 6 laps on a long track!   We’ll all be looking for Adrian Newey to redesign our chassis and the Mercedes Silver Arrows team to build our motors.  It’s either that or we get Jim Macartney to rewire all the tracks on the calendar so we can secretly dial back the voltage on Paul’s lane on future MT races . Flash and Greg Wisniewski took 2nd and third while Jimmy Colligan, Ricky Hubert, Dave Lockwood, Rob Hayes and John Schoenfield rounded out the top half of the field. (Nice job John)

We had a great day of racing and thanks to Ron for being the great host as always!

Next race is February 9th at Ryan Archambault’s where we will be running Indy, Super Stock, and an IROC race.