Race 2

An anniversary race in the proper manner

THR's Anniversary Special Event is held once each year around the date on which the organisation was founded, and its second race offered a particularly fitting celebration of close American stock-car competition. The Daytona Tri-Oval was the natural arena for it: a tri-oval stage upon which the draft draws competitors together and asks them to live, lap after lap, in one another's slipstream. In NASCAR racing that closeness is inherent, every driver seeking the tow, and the 51-lap contest duly became a long exercise in nerve, judgement and position.

Twenty starters were classified. Nineteen ran the Stock Car 90 Oval THR, while margar17's Trans Am Pace Car completed five laps and was listed twentieth. There was only one racing class, but scarcely a single quiet moment within the principal Stock Car field. No fewer than 24 changes of the lead marked the afternoon's shifting order. Nat Stevenson, Mika Hakala, Flashor and willkb2012 all featured at the head in the earlier running, before the race acquired an even broader and more persistent collective character.

A field compressed into one argument

From lap 24 to lap 48, seventeen drivers remained bound in the same five-second group: pitman, Stevenson, Hakala, Rolf Biber, Flashor, Roess, Samuli Seppänen, Andi Stangl, Alex, Narwhal, Natan Veksler, Silber Wolf, SimonOfTheDesert, HappyKojot, van der Meer, willkb2012 and Jensen Hasler. At its tightest, the group was covered by only 0.114 seconds. It was an astonishingly dense concentration of machinery and intent, the order in continual motion and no man comfortably detached from the affairs behind him.

Several private contests endured within that larger press. Stevenson and Narwhal exchanged their relative places on laps 11, 41 and 46, remaining close company throughout. Stangl and Hasler likewise changed order on laps 20, 45 and 47, and Biber's long contest with SimonOfTheDesert turned again on laps 35, 42 and 49. Roess and HappyKojot traded places on laps 20, 34 and 40. Such was the rhythm of the race: no decisive separation, merely the continuing ebb and return of rivals held together by the oval's demand for proximity.

Van der Meer supplied the outright quickest lap, a 44.906-second effort, only 0.033 seconds quicker than Alex. Yet he was required to fight for every part of his eventual podium, with willkb2012 changing places with him on laps 41, 46 and, finally, 51. Their duel was settled in willkb2012's favour, second place going to the latter by 1.993 seconds over the Dutchman.

Roess rises from the depths

The winner's course was the most remarkable thread in the entire affair. Roess started 29th, but had reached fifth by the end of the opening lap. That was only the first turn in a race of considerable fluctuation. By the conclusion of lap 27 he stood 16th, still immersed in the large pack and with a formidable task before him. He did not disappear from the argument. Instead, as the final phase developed, the Stock Car 90 Oval THR of Roess returned steadily to the front of the reckoning.

There was pressure enough at the end. willkb2012 remained within reach of Roess during the closing fifth of the race, and the pair were separated by only 0.002 seconds on their last shared passage before the flag. Roess nevertheless took the verdict after 51 laps, 1.772 seconds ahead of willkb2012, with van der Meer completing the podium. It was a win gained from deep in the order, and it carried an additional distinction: Roess had secured his first recorded THR race victory.

Behind the first three, Biber completed a strong fourth place, with Hasler fifth and Stangl sixth after their extended contest. Stevenson finished seventh, Narwhal ninth and HappyKojot twelfth, their prolonged proximity having been a recurrent feature of the race. Alex came home tenth, Hakala eleventh and Flashor fifteenth, all three having played visible parts in the earlier changing leadership. Silber Wolf was eighth, while SimonOfTheDesert placed fourteenth. Samuli Seppänen was thirteenth, the final driver just one lap down.

The classified order

pitman finished sixteenth after 49 laps, followed by Natan Veksler on 48. Beeter was eighteenth after 23 laps, and Tomi Koivisto nineteenth after five. The result therefore had its natural attrition at the foot of the order, but the principal story was the extraordinary continuity of the front-running struggle: seventeen Stock Cars held together deep into the race, a leader's order that refused to settle, and a winner who had twice been forced to rebuild his position.

For Roess, it was more than a fine recovery and a handsome victory. On the annual occasion that commemorates THR's beginning, his first recorded success arrived in a race that demanded precisely the virtues Daytona stock-car racing has always prized: patience amid traffic, the willingness to remain in the pack, and the composure to be present when the order finally mattered.