The Secret Oktober fall racing season roared back to life last weekend as the Banzai Runner V Sports Car Championship advanced to the second stage—Group B. Thirty-two contenders rolled onto the Drag City straightaway under the deep amber light of a late-October sun, engines echoing off the grandstands and the desert hills beyond Wardglenn.
Early on it looked like another Ford-heavy show, but that illusion didn’t last long. The Ferraris came to fight, the Jaguars found their stride, and a few unexpected faces muscled their way into the mix. Cobras and GT-40’s made respectable runs through the first heats, while several mid-engined newcomers from Italy showed startling pace. A pair of British entries bowed out early with mechanical issues, and one unlucky driver—Jude “Sailor” Sandusky in the white MBZ 300SL roadster “Six Shooter” #92—suffered a catastrophic gearbox failure before even hitting Turn 1, a harsh reminder that Banzai Runner never forgives the fragile.
The 32-pack grid looked picture-perfect lined up across the front of the table—polished paintwork flashing like jewelry under the overhead lights as the heats came and went. Three rounds later, the attrition was real and the air in the paddock was thick with fuel vapor and speculation. The balance of power kept shifting: Sleek Euros traded wins with American V8 bruisers, and a fast newcomer, Pierce “Pyro” Powell, showed the crowd just what he and his white Cheetah chop-top “Kraken” are made of by sneaking into the quarter-finals!
By the time the dust settled on the evening session, the scoreboard told only half the story. Fabian “Flood” Foster and “Jolly” Roger Jacoby put on a duel for the ages between the #53 DeTomaso Mangusta “Mystique” and the #54 badass black Corvette Grand Sport clone “Overlord”, crossing the line barely a blink apart. A stunned crowd rose to its feet as another shocker unfolded in the next bracket, where Gino “Glacier” Guiliani’s blue #317 250GTO “Aegean” knocked out one of the early favorites, Warwick “Wolf” Wagner, in “Ragnar,” the ever-fast #11 Porsche 904.
The crowd had already seen some of the closest finishes in the five-year history of Banzai Runner, but the outcome is far from decided! And that’s the bad news, dear readers: your bumble blogger’s insane 4th quarter work schedule is wrecking the fun again, as for the next week I will be occupied with one of the highest profile, highest stress jobs of my career, doing an install on a sprawling city network that I not only built the hardware for, but also engineered from the paper up. No pressure or anything! And so, the two fastest brackets—the “big dogs” of Group B—still have yet to run, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay tuned for the last weekend of the month to see outcome! It’s anyone’s guess which machine will emerge on top once the last green light flashes!
For now, the engines are cooling, the pit crews are packing up, and the anticipation is electric. Stay tuned: the final two heats of the Banzai Runner V Sports Car Challenge are still to come, and the winner remains unknown! So be sure to tune again the weekend of the 27th and catch up with me and all your favorite gentleman racers here at DRAG CITY!
One thought on “V-B: “BANZAI RUNNER V” Continues!”