AMA Slow Rat Race winners (L to R), Chuck Barnes Sr. and Chuck Barnes Jr. – bronze, Bob Oge – silver, Bill Bischoff and Mike Greb – gold.
By Paul Gibeault
Welcome back Control Line Racing fans. This morning started out in perfect weather with AMA event 312 Slow Rat racing. We had four teams this year which made for two heats. In the first heat was the team of Bill Bischoff and Mike Greb with an excellent first run of 3:19:31. They ran against the Barnes Jr. /Barnes Sr. team, who suffered a myriad of tank feeding issues, for a 4:04. Both teams failed to improve on their second heat.
In the second heat, It was Barnes Jr/ Barnes Sr. with a 4:01 and Oge/Bischoff with a 3:50. In their second heat, Oge/Bischoff improved greatly to post a 3:20:77 to win over Barnes Jr./Sr. who improved with a 3:46. Standing on their heat times it was Bischoff/Greb (3:19:31) winning gold, Oge/Bischoff (3:20:77) with the silver, Barnes Jr. (3:46) earned bronze, and Barnes Sr. (4:04) was in fourth place. Of note, all models were of the Mockingbird design as kitted by Pat King LLC. Bill Bischoff used a GO.25 modified car engine to win, just narrowly beating Bob Oge's OPS 25 powered entry.
AMA Scale Racing (Goodyear) started out in excellent weather with four teams. In the first heat, it was Greb/Bischoff experiencing trouble with a 5:19 versus Oge/Tuponov with a nice 3:28.
In the second heat Greb/ Bischoff improved immensely to a 3:17:58 while Oge/Tuponov retired after 35 laps. In the third heat, Lee/Bischoff posted a lean 3:43 vs. Barnes Jr./Sr team with a troubled 4:51. In their last heat, both teams experienced much trouble, with Lee/Bischoff retiring at 34 laps and the Barnes team retiring at 12 laps with a shut off failure. Standing on their heat times, resulted in Greb/Bischoff (3:17) winning gold, Oge/Tuponov (3:28) taking silver and Lee/Bischoff (3:43) for the bronze medal.
Super Sport Goodyear is a new Nats racing event being tried for the first time. In light that new Rossi and Nelson engines are no longer commercially available, it was thought that allowing a commercially available equivalent engine (that being the O.S. 18TZ converted car engine), might attract some more interest. Unfortunately, the hoped for interest did not materialize this year.
This Nats drew two teams. One was the older, experienced team of Bischoff/Greb, and the new team of Tuponov/Oge, who used a slower DMAA model but flown on 60-foot lines. Note that this event was flown alongside the AMA Goodyear racers, but was scored separately.
The first heat was Bischoff/Greb team, who posted a good 3:38 time versus Tuponov/Oge who posted a smooth, but slower 4:08:74. In the next heat, the fast Bischoff/Greb team retired at 39 laps with a blown glow plug, leaving Tuponov/Oge to win with an almost identical 4:08:45 heat time.
Standing on their heat times, it was Bill Bischoff/Mike Greb (3:38) winning the gold, with runner up AlexseyTuponov/Bob Oge winning the Silver. As an aside, pit man Bob Oge was awarded the "Fast Plug Change Award," when he noticed a blown plug while on the 30 second countdown...yet he still managed to get it changed and off on the start signal. Well done, Bob!
