Varacins wins by 31 seonds!

[jgaither]

Freakin' amazing.

[carnut169]

...and the race for 2nd was entertaining, to say the least!

[formulasuper]

Varacins wins in his own homebuilt FV & Steven Davis comes from 16th to 5th in his homebuilt car! These are REAL racers!

[bryancohnracing]

I don't think there has been a margin of victory in FV like that since Road Atlanta in the late 80's. I cannot think of the guys name to save my life today, but he did drove away and won by a huge margin.

Anyone? Anyone? Time for a trip in the Wayback Machine!

[Matt King]

31 seconds and it ended under double-yellow for the last lap and a half for a big incident in Canada Corner. Can you say utter domination?

[Bill Bonow]

Can you say utter domination?

Matt,

More like "Can you say Monster-Manies?" Mike thanked Brian Harding in the post race interview.

[dc]

I don't think there has been a margin of victory in FV like that since Road Atlanta in the late 80's. I cannot think of the guys name to save my life today, but he did drove away and won by a huge margin.

Anyone? Anyone? Time for a trip in the Wayback Machine!

Early 70s... <cough>Dave W</cough>







Helluva race. Wish I could have watched it.

[glenn cooper]

THAT was some damn good dicin' right there.
Evidently those things are quite robust as well: tossed in the air on the start, slam back down sideways, fire it up and rejoin - Nice goin' Womer!
GC

[Brandon Dixon]

I don't think there has been a margin of victory in FV like that since Road Atlanta in the late 80's. I cannot think of the guys name to save my life today, but he did drove away and won by a huge margin.

Anyone? Anyone? Time for a trip in the Wayback Machine!

I watched Steve Davis win by that kind of margin in the early 90s at Road Atlanta. Like Varacins drive today, Steve's win at Atlanta was an awsome drive.

[VDF1]

The only other person I've seen do that was George Fizell from Florida (I don't remember the year) at Road Atlanta. He was awarded the President's Cup. Phenomenal driver!
Speaking of phenomenal, hat's off to Michael Varacins for that perfect run, as well as all the other drivers who drove a great race. Every lap was action packed!

[cjahn]

I know he has worked long and hard for it...
Corky!

[smsazzy]

Matt,

More like "Can you say Monster-Manies?" Mike thanked Brian Harding in the post race interview.

Bill,
Did you look at the other cars in the field? I noted at least 12 that I believe had them, including a few other of the top 5 starters who were running them.

I think that had very little to do with it.

Remember, Mike's car was essentially designed for this track. The aero is likely the best in the field, and Mike has shown he is among the top couple drivers in the country with 3 2nd place finishes in 3 years prior to this.

Just a dominating performance for a great driver on essentially his home track.

[Bill Bonow]

Just a dominating performance for a great driver on essentially his home track.

Stephen,

No doubt that Mike had the complete package and is 100% deserving of his win. Al and Mike earned that win with over a decade of hard work on the AM 5. I'd just note that the aero has change little in recent years. At the last RA National, Mike had a tough time with Livermore (see the ApexSpeed image on the top of this page). Bruce didn't seem to be much of a problem for Mike just a month later.

[smsazzy]

Mike beat Bruce by 12 seconds at the Sprints. What is the point of this argument? Maybe Bruce had a bad day, not sure what to tell you, except that an awful lot of people had monster manies, and Mike still dominated the field.

Great job Mike! Couldn't be happier.

[VDF1]

Monster-manies??? I guess I've been away too long... Manifolds?

[Bill Bonow]

Tom,

Brian Harding is building FV intake manifolds under the name "monster-manies".

Stephen,

No arguments here, as I said in my post, Mike and Al did their homework and justly came out with a perfect season wrapped up with a deserved Runoffs win. My only point was that in his speedcast post race interview, he specifically thanked Brian Harding.

[mblanc]

Great drive, and you were absolutely on the limit especially lap 1, but all the early laps too, using every inch T6-8 where we were watching.

Well deserved. We were hoping when we heard the field started dicing 2nd through Xplace at T12, that you'd get away. I think they all knew they'd be racing for 2nd.

CONGRATS AGAIN, There isn't a nicer guy that puts in more effort, with consistent and dominant performances for the last 3 years.


WELL DONE

[VDF1]

Perseverance pays off! Mike and Al have been working for years to get things just right. To win like that requires an incredible amount of dedication, attention to detail, R&D, and just plain hard work. You can't buy a win like that!!!

[bryancohnracing]

Ding Ding Ding We have a winner!

George Fizell was the FV driver who's name I could not recall. Brilliant drive Mike!

[Amon]

Congrats to Mike on a dominating win!


Pole, fastest lap and win! Trifecta.........


Mark

[Bruce Livermore]

As everyone has said, Mike and Al earned this one with lots of hard work over a number of years, both on the car and on his driving. I have wished them my heartfelt congratulations a number of times since the event.

I doubt anyone else has quite the appreciation of Mike's error-free driving that I do, having followed him for lap after lap many times at RA over the years. He is at least a second plus faster than I am on a clear track. Only the draft gives me a chance and even then the margin is slim as his car is quite slippery compared to most. He's also very smart in qualifying traffic and gets that extra draft that can make a good lap great.

Still I can't get over the might have beens... Had I been right behind him coming out of five on that first lap, who knows. (But that's what everyone else wanted as well and so we battled.) Instead, I had been overwhelmed by the field with my poor start (no excuses...) and then the draft and was in about 6th place by 5. It was actually quite amazing that Mike got all the way through 5 without being passed. That is almost unheard of in FV at RA. That was the key to his easy victory. Coming out of 5 on lap one, I was congratulating Mike on his well earned first National Championship. I was not looking forward to the rest of the race for me.

The battle for second was extraordinary in it's intensity and flux. I varied from 2nd to 7th and back a few times with many of those not showing up on the lap chart. We simply had no chance of staying close to Mike as long as we went two, three and four wide down every straight and into every corner. Our lap times were often 3 - 4 seconds slow. This of course brought more and more people to the front as they got sucked along by the torrent of moving air we dragged behind us. There was no staying out front in that pack without blocking and that was done by essentially all of us at one time or another.

I was passed on the grass going down towards one mid-race and as I made room for driver "re-entry", I remarked to myself that having tires rotating at 105 mph within an inch of my own on both sides at the same time was not real comforting... On my last lap (12) I got pushed off to the left onto the grass heading down to 12, just before the wreck that took me out along with Rick and Dennis. Frankly it's remarkable that we made it that far without incident.

Hey where did that previous banner go? I liked that one!

[TrackBrat]

It was a fantastic race. Great Job, Mike you earned it. The swarm racing for second was amazing. Working turn 12 I kept having to make sure my mouth was closed after every time you guys went by. As for the incident at 12 nice job to all the drivers, you obeyed the flags and behaved perfectly at the corner.

I hear that was incar video of the incident anyone able to post it or any other videos from RunOffs?