Season 6, Week 5 recap and analysis

redlinederby Saturday, 9/24/2011
Site manager

A big weekend of racing sees the Top 10 largely unchanged but there was some good racing going on and at least one bracket threw us all for a loop.

Ferrari 512M showed up to play in this one. It was a favorite going in and its only real competition appeared to be its Ferrari brothers and maybe the GT Racer. The GT Racer had its own plans and pushed its way through to the final round. Given the class of cars racing, we saw more Ferraris racing here than any other and 3 out of 4 cars in the final four were Italian Stallions. Where the horses fell short weren't very surprising except in the case of the Audi R8, which narrowly out-raced the Ferrari 575. The big "news" from this bracket was the discovery that the Porsche Carrera was too wide to make it down the track without getting stuck or ejected from the track, so the Ferrari 288 got a bye...but if all things were fair, I'm not sure the Ferrari would have stood a chance against the fat Porsche. The Ferrari 512M put on quite a display in the last race against the GT Racer, coming from behind in both heats. The GT Racer got the drop on the silver streak but the Ferrari turned it on at the transition to take the gold.

Diecast Cars, Hot Wheels, Matchbox
Who woulda thought?

Callaway which had a 50/50 record going into the tournament and was more or less an unknown. It's performance on the track was impressive and very smooth...it's victory over the Mustang was impressive. There was also another bye in this bracket as the Superbird FTE just broke down on the track. Wheel troubles and loose axles made it an unfair fight against the Chevy Stocker, so it got a pass into round two where it was promptly beaten by the other non-FTE Superbird. The Ford GT LM continued its hard racing and narrowly out-paced the Cunningham and then flying by the F Racer, which was kind of a surprise if you ask me. But the talk of the tournament was the Challenger Drift car which just went more or less unmatched round to round. This car is very smooth and showed again that you can't ignore the cars that "look" unimpressive standing still. It went bumper-to-bumper with the Callaway however and the Ford put up a good fight in the last round but just couldn't make it happen. Some great, close racing all around this one...even if your bracket did feel the pain.

Firebird 400 topping the classic Sweet 16 in the first round. If you had a match that ruined everything, this was probably one of them. And once the Firebird got the job done there, it didn't look back as it FINALLY sees gold. Much like the Ford truck, the Firebird has been to the prom a lot but never got to be king. I'm not sure there is any other car in the league right now that has earned this win more than the Firebird. However, lets not overlook the VW 181 performance as it was more or less showing off from start to finish. The Thing wasn't a push over in the championship either, but if I didn't know any better, I'd say it let the Firebird win out of respect and not due to lack of ability.

All-stars: VW 181 FTE, Ford GT LM, GT Racer
Top prospects: Callaway C6, Toyota FTE, Baja Bug

Don't forget next weekend's tournaments are on the big 50-foot track hosted by Austin Diecast Drags. Pick wisely and use the 7/24 tournament from Season 5 as a guide. Good luck!


Discussion

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Jobe 9/24/11

Great recaps Brian, for sure some real upsets these races. I'm really hit or miss this season, with alot more misses than hits!
Good to see some newer names at the top of the leader board...

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WorpeX 9/24/11

Woo! Most of my more bold picks seemed to have paid off for me! I had the firebird going all the way to the finals, although I predicted twin mill 3 taking the win. : / I had a perfect right side of the bracket though in road to ruin! woo! If I had gone with my original prediction in Roman Holiday I would have been pretty close to a perfect bracket... for some reason though, i though the Fact 4 would perform better at the last minute.

Not sure why anyone would have chose the stockar over the fastback... they had raced before with the fastback winning. Wasn't really a surprising result if you had done some research! The rest of 'Around the world' blew my mind though.

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