| GWI Racing Season Results |
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| With Christmas just around the corner, SCPRC has reached the end of its second season of racing for 2002. Champions have been declared in all three series: Sunday Night Nascar (SNN); Tuesday Night Thunder (TNT); and, Wednesday Night Racing (WNR). GWI Racing has posted some great results in all series, including one championship. The results of the three series are outlined in the following recap, with emphasis on the finishing positions of GWI drivers. SNN second series action brought out some of the largest fields seen in SCPRC competition, this year. At the beginning of the season, it was not uncommon to see 25 entries for a race. Occasionally, this brought its own problems, with excessive cautions interrupting the flow of the racing. Eventually, the fields thinned out, somewhat, leaving the series regulars to fight it out for the top spot. This season's SNN champion is Tom Maslyk (aka Opus), who is no stranger to the "tall trophy". If memory serves, this is Tom's third championship in SCPRC competition. Congratulations, Tom -- a very convincing first-place!! Tom is a member of WallScrapers Racing, a friendly rival of GWI Racing. Second place points were claimed by our own John Hilsman, who finished over 200 points behind Tom. Great finish, John! This is John's first full season in SCPRC's Cup division; last season, John was a front-runner in Grand National competition, which was discontinued for the second season. Benny Osment (aka Luv2xLr8), maximum leader of MugShot Racing and an administrator in the Hendrick Online Racing League (HORL), finished third in points. Benny is a consistent leader in the sim racing community, always a threat to win. GWI team members also claimed fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth places in the standings. Denny Dodd, Scott MacBeth, Rick Brownhill and Kim Meyer (respectively) took those positions, giving GWI Racing five out of the top ten places in the standings. A very satisfying result for GWI's first season together! Kris Stump and Byron Hopkins, our other two team-mates, did not compete in the first series. Kris entered just four events, winning one race and sitting on the poll twice. Pretty good results, Kris! Byron, unfortunately, had connection difficulties throughout the season, only competing in two races and finishing one. TNT is the superspeedway series in SCPRC league competition. Races were run at Talladega Superspeedway and the day and night versions of Daytona International Raceway, for durations of 35 to 50 percent of the full event distance. SCPRC president and TNT Administrator, Eddie Pettit, took championship honours, winning three races and finishing in the top five for 14 out of 19 events. Eddie is a repeat champion in this series, always close to the action with his hard-charging brand of racing. Second in the TNT standings, GWI's Scott MacBeth, entered the final race of the season in third place, 4 points behind team-mate John Hilsman; John was unable to keep Scott behind him in the race and standings, dropping out of the Talladega finale with a burnt piston. Scott finished 20 points ahead of John, 130 points behind Eddie and won four races while starting from the pole 7 times. GWI team-mate Rick Brownhill was fifth in points and Kim Meyer posted a seventh place finish in the standings. Denny Dodd entered five races in TNT competition and posted 3 top five finishes, Kris Stump did not enter TNT competition, this season, and Byron Hopkins entered only one race, which he was unable to complete. GWI's biggest success came in the WNR series. From the beginning of the season, it was clear that Kris Stump was the man to beat; as each race was contested, the picture only got bigger and brighter for Kris. Out of 19 races, he started on the pole 11 times and won 8 events; he never finished outside of the top ten and failed to complete only one race -- the season finale at Miami-Homestead Speedway. In fairness to Kris, he was leading that race when confusion about the pit access road got him a pit safety violation, which held him on pit road for thirty seconds and put him almost a lap behind. With a flu bug impairing his enjoyment of the race, Kris opted to drop out; his championship had been clinched by leading some laps and there was nothing more to be gained by staying. Incredibly, Kris ran 1949 laps of competition in WNR's second season and led 983 of them. Congratulations, Kris -- GWI Racing salutes your success in WNR competition!! John Hilsman collected his third SCPRC trophy of the second season, by finishing third in WNR points. He won three races and started from the pole once, with eleven top five finishes. Fifth in points went to Rick Brownhill, who finished in the top five, eight times, while taking the league-maximum two provisionals and missing one race entirely. Kim Meyer finished in eighth place, with sixteen top ten finishes. Denny Dodd only entered four races in WNR, this season, winning two of them, and finished outside the top ten in points. Again, Byron was having connection woes, only joining two races. Scott MacBeth opted not to compete on Wednesday nights, spending time with his family, instead. In its first full season as a team, GWI Racing accumulated a pretty impressive assortment of hardware. Five new series trophies will go on display at the GWI Racing garage, three of them John's. In the fifty-odd races run in SCPRC competition for the second season, our team combined for twenty-one wins -- a great accomplishment. As for team goals, helping each other to finish well.... that was a big success, too. With SCPRC competition coming to an end for 2002, it's time to put racing aside for a couple of weeks and enjoy the Christmas break with family and friends. On behalf of all of us at Gone With It Racing Team, I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and every success in 2003. Be safe in your celebrating and please use a designated driver. |
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