For a holiday weekend, there sure wasn’t a shortage of racers available. Team Johnson showed up first and got in a bunch of laps before Team Maddox arrived to heat things even more.
Mostly hotlapping and practice with Madeline Johnson having the most laps in practice. As expected, the practice and hotlapping got a little boring and many wanted to do some actual racing. So we setup a race with all six drivers, full rotation, no fueling, and 20-lap heats.
With juniors and adults in this one, it was going to be a team race between Team Johnson and Team Maddox. Racing with juniors is always interesting, especially with this bunch. Team Johnson had two junior drivers, Team Maddox had two junior drivers. So, one adult driver and two junior drivers for each team.
To make it fairer, we set the max lane voltage to 12v instead of 15v. The juniors could decide what voltage they wanted to run. The younger juniors settled on 9 or 10v. It was an IROC race using Jag Hobbies Augoran TR-3 cars, only slightly modified cars but fast and stuck.
With only one marshal to support the whole track, we had quite a few yellow flag situations but it worked out pretty well and everybody finished!
Superstar Junior driver, Abe Maddox bursted into the lead early on, leading the race for the first two heats with Jared Johnson a very close second. In the third of six heats, Jared took over the lead in the race and kept it from then on. In the fifth heat, Abe seemed to have trouble and would lose six laps to Jared. After the first two heats it looked like the boys were going to dominate things with Abe, Jared, and Mathew Johnson comfortably in the top three spots.
Shaylin Maddox was having none of that and fought hard to get into third place through heats 3 and 5 and looked like she was certain to hang on to the final podium spot. In an amazing performance, Madeline Johnson would win the fifth and the final sixth heat, catapulting her ahead of Shaylin and bagging the final podium spot in a very hard-fought and chaotic race.
Wow! A very impressive performance by everyone. Very cool to see the junior drivers focus so well and take advantage of opportunities to improve their results.
In the end, even though he would finish the race with the hardest car and one of the hardest lanes (red), Jared remained focused on the task at hand and held onto his solid lead, taking the checkered flag ahead of hard-charging junior, Abe Maddox. Shaylin Maddox narrowly missed the podium by just one lap and one point.
| Place | Name | Laps | Points | Total Time |
| 1 | Jared Johnson | 115 | 85 | 1038.928 |
| 2 | Abe Maddox | 110 | 72 | 1049.459 |
| 3 | Madeline Johnson | 93 | 60 | 1055.91 |
| 4 | Shaylin Maddox | 92 | 59 | 1060.096 |
| 5 | Matthew Johnson | 61 | 38 | 1144.309 |
| 6 | Grace Maddox | 69 | 34 | 1073.986 |
Awesome track day! Thank you all for supporting Stewart Raceway, especially on a holiday weekend!
Next Saturday is round 4 of the 2023 50/50 Xtreme Series. Right now I don’t have enough confirmed RSVPs for round 5, so round 4 could be the finale, we’ll see what happens.
Okay, shut up and drive!
Round 2 of the series started with another qualifying session that would not only seed the subsequent races but also decide the selection order for the latest MegaG+ 1.7 “paper” bodies from Hammerschlagen Fabrications. The fastest Sportsman driver, Jerry Pearson, clicked off a very nice 5-lap average time and got the first pick of the newly minted “paper” bodies for our new MG+ Modified class.
Wow, these cars were interesting. MegaG+ speed and power but with a very high and top-heavy van hardbody. This race was pretty much a battle between Home Cook’n and our newest club driver, Aaron Castro. Though Jerry Pearson was knocking on Aaron’s door quite a bit throughout the race. In the end, Aaron would win the Sportsman class and Jerry Pearson would bag second with just two points over Eric Lane. Very close racing and way fun cars! 
This one was probably a poor choice by the Race Director. Lots of crashes and mayhem as all drivers struggled with the incredible power of the V-SPEC motor box and almost zero downforce. These cars are loose but very fast. This one was a battle between Home Cook’n and Aaron Castro most of the way. But that didn’t deter Jerry Pearson, who fought hard all the way to the end, finishing third overall with outstanding driving performance with this very difficult-to-driver cars. Webster Motorsports would abandon the race in frustration after just 5-laps into the third segment. Some guys just don’t like loose cars. 
This is our newest class, which is a slightly different spin on HOPRA’s SPEC STOCK rules, which allows a Lexan body instead of the hard OEM plastic or resin bodies using a body clip.
Well, we didn’t have all of the usual suspects in the paddock but we clicked off three action packed races, all with the MegaG+ 1.7 platform.
