The weather was ideal for the whole week and Clint McMahan was dominant from the very first test day lap, win the pole and checked out in the race to claim his second well-deserved National Championship at Virginia International Raceway. Clint did prove that he is human, not an alien 😊, when he made a driver error on the first test day, going off and destroying his brand new, one-off nose of his newly designed carbon fiber body (and yes, you can buy one). So now his Scorpion is no longer pink but carbon fiber black. Clint was forced to use a Scorpion sports car nose to replace the broken CF nose along with modifications to make it fit and flow air. Despite the lower performing nose and after 3 days of qualifying, Clint set a new qualifying lap record of 1:57.3 to win the pole while both Calvin Stewart (2nd with 1:58.2) and Eric McRee (3rd with a 1:59.3) were also under the previous lap record. Fourth was David Lapham (2:01) and fifth was Aaron Ellis (2:01.1). These four were close enough to pose a threat to Clint if he made a mistake during the race.
During the race on Friday afternoon, that mistake never happened as Clint was “inch perfect” for most of the race while setting a new race lap record four times down to finally a 1:57.5 as he built up a 30 second lead by the checkered flag. Calvin Stewart (best lap 1:59.1) and Eric McRee (best lap 1:58.8) were nose-to-tail and duking it out for the latter half of the race with Eric momentarily ahead of Calvin near the race end. Calvin finished 2nd, Eric was 3rd (Eric’s report and video are in another post), Aaron Ellis was 4th with an uneventful race and David Lapham was fifth with a 1:59.1 best lap, also under the old record. David lost contact with Eric when he went off, broke something in the chassis and soldiered on with a wounded car and then doing a snap spin (probably from the chassis being broken) allowing Aaron to get past him for 4th.
Here is the race webcast – https://www.scca.com/videos/2037552 Enjoy this on a BIG screen.
Additional race report coverage from SCCA is here –
https://www.scca.com/articles/2012951-mcmahan-inch-perfect-for-formula-500-win
The race points are as follows:
- Clint McMahan 24
- Calvin Stewart 22
- Eric McRee 20
- Aaron Ellis 18
- David Lapham 16
- Jeff DeLong 14
- Jack Walbran 12
The final 2019 Series point standings are as follows:
- Eric McRee 112
- Clint McMahan 64
- Calvin Stewart 56
- Jeff DeLong 54
- Jack Walbran 52
- David Lapham 36
- Dave Brown 24
- Craig Laprade 20
- Aaron Ellis 18
- George Fox 16
We are very thankful for our valued sponsors who have made this series possible:
Metalloid Corporation of Sturgis, Michigan (www.metalloidcorp.com )
Hoosier Racing Tire ( www.hoosiertire.com )
Solo Performance Specialties (SPS) (www.soloperformance.com)
Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies (www.PegasusAutoRacing.com)
Hawk Performance ( www.hawkperformance.com )
Winding Road Racing (www.WindingRoadRacing.com )
Design Engineering, Inc. (http://www.designengineering.com/)
The Formula 600 Challenge Series was developed to help promote an affordable open wheel formula car class to showcase talent without large financial race budgets. There are no paid staffers and one hundred percent of all sponsorship monies and product goes directly to the drivers in our series mostly as a tow fund payment for each race. The Formula 600 open wheel cars use a 600cc motorcycle engine and a six-speed sequential transmission revving up to 15,000 rpm with speeds in excess of 140 mph. The sound of these cars is likened to F1 cars.
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Jim Murphy Fred Edwards Carl Maier
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770-861-2337 260-438-4295 972-897-9763
