Round 16 - Australia (Adelaide)

Qualifying

 1. Rene Smit           Omega Fusion            1m 07.993s
 2. Grant Reeve         Omega Fusion            1m 08.393s
 3. Robert Schaftlein   SpeedBird               1m 08.417s
 4. Rob Buis            The Flying Dutchmen     1m 08.523s
 5. Oliver Roberts      Team Analogistix        1m 08.918s
 6. David Pennington    Penlight Renault        1m 09.508s
 7. Claudio Di Martino  DiMa Bros               1m 09.614s
 8. Mathias Kegelmann   SpeedBird               1m 09.798s
 9. Mark Wendt          Itchy & Scratchy        1m 09.856s
10. Axel Bruns          SpeedGroup              1m 11.069s
11. Daniele Di Martino  DiMa Bros               1m 11.252s

Race - 81 Laps

 1. Oliver Roberts      Team Analogistix        1h 40m56.997s     20
 2. Mark Wendt          Itchy and Scratchy      1h 41m25.533s     16
 3. Rob Buis            The Flying Dutchmen     1h 41m53.289s     12
 4. Robert Schaftlein   SpeedBird               1h 41m55.300s     10
 5. Rene Smit           Omega Fusion            1h 43m23.438s	   8+1
 6. David Pennington    Penlight Renault        1h 43m47.618s      6
 7. Daniele Di Martino  DiMa Bros               1h 45m30.286s      4
 8. Axel Bruns          SpeedGroup              1h 44m07.706s      3
 9. Mathias Kegelmann   SpeedBird                  43 laps         2
10. Claudio Di Martino  DiMa Bros                  30 laps         1

11. Grant Reeve		Omega Fusion		  10 laps
After a long burst of effort from Oliver Roberts, he has managed to claw his way up the championship table to clinch second place from Rene Smit in the final round. A good strategy of Cs and changing to Ds on lap 60 saw Oliver fly round the Adelaide circuit almost a minute faster than the new Amiga Internet F1GP Champion, Rob Buis. Rene's aim was to have a clean race and make sure of a finish. Opting for a set of As from the start Rene had the misfortune to damage his front wing in the infamous first chicane on lap 17 and had to limp round a whole lap to the pits. Taking it easy and patiently waiting for the right points on the circuit to overtake seemed the best course of action, but the risks that must've been taken by the top 4 finishers paid off and saw them finish 1m30 clear of the rest of the field. Axel Bruns was another top three contender, but a bad race setup saw his hopes fade and even with the fresh tyres afforded by two pit stops, he could only manage a fastest lap just over a second slower that Oliver's fastest of 1m11.115.

So there we have it. Rob Buis has cruised to victory in Australia and finished the season with a cool 300 points. No-one ever came close and those that did couldn't stay consistent enough to challenge him. Well done to him for annihilating the opposition and well done to the other top finishers, for having the dedication to keep racing even when the real race was all over.

Thanks must immediately go to Oliver for helping with F1GP-Ed, writing the championship datafile, and maintaining the excellent web page that has created more interest in the championship that anything else so far. Thanks also to Mathias who does the summaries and Jim Harmon for offering to help with the easy championship that never was. Oh yeah... and thanks to anyone else I can't remember just at the moment. Sorry things got a bit delayed earlier on in the season and the race summaries had to be ommitted to catch up, but it was all caused by the workload here. I just didn't really have the time available to make a better job of it. As the workload will probably be greater next term I expect that I'll have even less time to give the championship the attention it deserves. So, therefore, if anyone wants to have a go at running it they're welcome to take over. If no-one comes forward I'll be happy to run the next season, but I'm sure that someone else will be able to do better. I might loose my net access in a few days time, so I might not be able to reply to anyone for a while. Hopefully I should be ok, but if things don't go as planned I'll see you guys again in October. 

-- 
James Smith
esudb@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~esudb/