I've had responses to the evidence queries, CapitanAceR's entry will have to come as a late addition, so lets bring you some results! The last 26 hours or so of the race were fairly busy, and have seen a bit of a shake up on the scoreboards...
Starting with Free For All, a couple of veteran commanders turned up determined to show that the race course doesn't have to be purely a place for small ships. Cmdr Crotalus brought his Beluga Liner
Cetus which, despite a bit of toasting on the way round, ends the race propping up the bottom of the leaderboard. A couple of minutes ahead is Cmdr Perseus Tacitus in the Anaconda
Festina Lente, this wealthy participant having generously donated a fair-sized bit of work to one or two of the repair shops on the way round.
Moving into the top ten, in ninth place we welcome Cmdr Markzx59, finally making it to the track in the Diamondback Explorer
Hellfire, with a time of just over 33 minutes after reporting a bit of trouble with Belugas on the way round. Within sight ahead, Cmdr Stern Winter improved his time in the Asp Explorer
Polar Express by just over a minute, enabling him to keep in front of Markzx59 and continue keeping the DBX contingent honest.
Cmdr Maro-Val in
Turrita II also improved his time, by just enough to get past Alec Turner and take fifth position.
And now to the podium, where less than twenty seconds separated the top three, all Diamondback Explorers. Cmdr Bruski managed to hang on to third with his time of 28:54. Cmdr Aken B. in
Bucket of Bolts pushed his ship hard, improving his previous time by more than a minute and a half to get ahead of Bruski with a time of 28:43. However that still wasn't quite enough, as Cmdr Cookiehole arrived in his normal style. With one or two close calls (hull down to 5% at one point...), Cookiehole's
RATtlesnake squeezed through to take the win by a margin of eight seconds, completing the course in 28 minutes and 34 seconds.
The Adders have been equally out in force. Cmdr Ray Mobula returned for a second outing in
Wumpus - The Hunter, successfully pushing past the one hour mark despite needing to evade multiple interdiction attempts, but unfortunately limited by a penalty for a missing screenshot. A few minutes ahead, another newcomer in the form of Cmdr Pajk of
Turboskoczek completed the course in a steady time of just under 56 minutes.
Into the top ten again, and Cmdr Maro-Val switched to set a time in the Adder as well,
Adder-o-vgaltis's time of just over 48 minutes putting him in 9th place. Newcomer Cmdr NWade's unnamed Adder recorded a couple of attempts with a good improvement between the two, setting a good final time of 46:32 to take 7th.
Onto the podium, where it's all change, with Cmdr Polly unfortunately pushed down to fourth. First-time Buckyballer Cmdr Arnul returned for an improved attempt in
Dyskoteka w Remizie to set an impressive time of 43:36 and take third place. Cmdr Aken B. also improved his previous time in
Happy-Go-Bucky, with fuel management techniques enabling him to gain nearly three minutes. With a time of 42:50, Aken B. might have thought he was safe, and might now be cursing that mid-race phone call.
Outdoing Cookiehole at his own game, though, is Cmdr furrycat (or maybe that should be Cmdr futrzanykot, following through the linguistic theme of his ship name and bobbleheads). With a lot of preparation work enabling some extensive fuel management, and despite clipping several station exits, furrycat's ship
Zupa z żmija jeszcze lepsza blazed through to take first place with a time of 42:37.
Well done to all (especially Cookiehole and furrycat), and thank you for taking part, we hope you had fun.
Special mention has to go to Cmdr Polly, who set the early benchmarks in both classes with some fabulous times, but in the final day's racing was pushed off the podium in both.
A note on next races: Currently the next race is scheduled for 2-10 December, keep an eye out in this section of the forums for the race thread. Next one after that is likely to be 6-14 January. The schedule is updated on the website at www.buckyballracing.org.uk; we'll let you know about new races when they start through our Discord channel; and if you would like to keep a closer track of our race planning (or have an idea for hosting one yourself) you may wish to keep an eye on our thread in the Groups section of these forums.
