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Race Report Part One - Qualifying Heats

29 racers started the evening's qualifying heats, although that dropped to 28 when Brian had to head home. The St Petersburg street circuit was as tricky as predicted - the inner red and blue lanes both a good drive, but the gutters needed a huge amount of respect...

   

When it came to the finals, little progression would be possible - so like any street circuit race, qualifying would be absolutely vital. Two good scores in red and blue, plus hooking things up in either white or yellow was the ideal scenario, only the best three scores counting...

   

The heats threw up some excellent line-ups, including three McCanns (above) and three women drivers...

   

Deborah battled for top spot with Keith - their Mega-G+ cars absolutely loving this layout. No-one got close. In the end, a disaster for Keith on white lane didn't matter as he'd wrapped up pole with three 20+ scores, including 23.75 laps in red - the best of the heats. Deborah was less than half a lap behind, but the gap to Pete in third was over three laps. But then is was extremely close - and qualifying position would matter in this race more than ever...

   

Darren was making a very rare F1 appearance and with his machinery dated back to a pre-Mega-G+ era, he chopped and changed between his original Mega-G and his Nascar Super-G+ chassis. It was with the Super-G he set a big 22.65 score in red to grab fourth place and top pick in the B Final. From Andy in fifth down to Daniel in eighteenth, drivers were separated by exactly eight laps. In that midfield pack, Kev qualified ahead of Ryan only on having a better top score. Ollie was top junior, just missing out on an automatic B Final by 0.15 of a lap. However, Isaac wasn't far behind and would still have a chance of challenging for the junior medal...

   

Lined-up from fifteenth to eighteenth were the four McCanns - Stephen just beating Mike for family bragging rights. The bottom half of the qualifying table included some big scores on red lane - most notably Nathan's 19.35 - but it was inconsistency on the other lanes that left those drivers staring at a mediocre points score at the end of the night... the street circuit offering little hope for redemption.

Here are all the qualifying scores, updated with fastest laps...

   

A very big thanks to Ash for his meticulous pen & paper record-taking on a very busy evening - otherwise we wouldn't have any results this morning.

The report of the finals will follow this evening...