Last Task & Prize Giving

The third and last day of this competition started out with a blue sky in the front of take off (south-southwest) and some early cumulus forming to the east-northeast; then around noon we had some nice looking clouds filling up the sky to the south, but also some high cirrus, which I thought would shut off the lift for the rest of the day...
The window opened for the Sport Class and, as usual nobody wanted to go; 15 minutes later it opened for the Open Class and only Pedro felt like going. Slowly some more Sport Class pilots took off and then, also as it usually happens, everybody wanted to go! It looked difficult to stay up at the beginning, but the cirrus moved soon after and the thermals started kicking off in their usual "Peñón Style" soon after and they were all gone!


The last task for the Sport Class was a 55.7km route over 4 turnpoints and goal at the "Peñitas" LZ. After two days training and 2 days of competition flying, we wanted to give them a good challenge for that last day and they responded very well! Seven pilots 
completed the task; two of them had GPS problems and the scoring program did not award them "GOAL". Nevertheless their flights were fantastic and nobody will take that away from them! A great surprise was "El Chino", one of the local rookies, who flew 45.2km on a WW FALCON and came in 7th for the day! Day winners: Alfredo Grey 1st - José Luís "Clutch" Jaramillo 2nd & Alberto "Cuna" Jaramillo 3rd!


The Open Class had a 100.5km task also coming back to the "Peñitas" LZ; it was quite a difficult task and only 4 pilots made it in, Peter Neuenschwander (SUI) being the fastest, followed by Rudy, Attila (HUN) and Balazs (HUN)! Some other pilots landed at
the field, but they were just in-between turpoints. Also in this class we have 2 pilots who are not getting the points for their flights: one never brought his GPS, so he gets min. dist. and with the other pilot, I could not download a track for his flight because the GPS never turned on again, after the flight; moreover he did not copy his flight to an SD card and did not have a back up.... What a pity! Day winners: Peter Neuenschwander 1st - Rudy Gotés 2nd & Attila Bertok 3rd!

After having everyone reportback safely and downloading most instruments at goal, we went to the "Soleado" restaurant in town where the prize giving was going to take place, and worked on the final scores.

The Sport Class final results changed dramatically when Mark Vanderwerf who was leading the comp, did not make it to goal, Alfredo Grey won the task and Jeff Bohl came in fourth. It was very exciting because until the last moment they were not sure how the final outcome looked like and, honestly, I kept the information for the very last minute, just to make their anticipation and curiosity last as long as possible! Not to be mean, but it was so nice to see them all wondering and almost biting their nails!

SPORT CLASS WINNERS : 

3rd Place - Mark Vanderwerf (USA) / 1721pts

2nd Place - Alfredo Grey (MEX) / 1811pts

1st Place - Jeff Bohl (USA) / 1953pts

Alfredo (left) / Jeff (center) / Mark (right)

On the Open Class we also had a last day surprise when Fredy Bircher (SUI), who was on the 3rd place overall after task 2, did not make it to goal on this last day instead, Balasz did complete the task and jumped one place forward!

OPEN CLASS WINNERS : 

3rd Place - Balazs Ujhelyi (HUN) / 2414pts

2nd Place - Rudy Gotés (MEX) / 2810pts

1st Place - Attila Bertok (USA) / 1953pts

 

Balazs (left) / Attila (center) / Rudy (right) / Spectarios (around)

(Thanks to Jorge Vásquez Sr. and Jr. for these prize giving pictures!)

Despite having a "small" field in the Open Class, the WPRS point estimate (done by José Manuel) is pretty high, almost twice as much for any other "3-day-21-pilots" competition. The approximate points will be (place - points): 1 - 52.5 / 2 - 48.3 / 3 - 44.2 / 4 - 40.3 / 5 - 36.5 / 6 - 32.9 / 7 - 29.4 / 8 - 26.1 / 9 - 23.0 / 10 - 20.0 / 11 - 17.3 / 12 - 14.7 / 13 - 12.2 / 14 - 10.0 /  15 - 7.9 / 16 - 6.1 /17 - 4.4 /18 - 3.0 /19 - 1.8 /20 - 0.9 /21 - 0.3
Jose Manuel also mentioned posting a bunch of nice pictures from T2 on his FB page!

So, this is how the Peñón Classic Race 2015 came to an end...
I would like to thank everyone who attended, Manuel Ruíz for the shirts and for "getting this party started, VueloLibre Mexico for the support and helping with cleaning up the Piano LZ, Rudy & Pedro for the excellent job with the Sport Class pilots and task setting, together with Zac, José Manuel del Caso for pictures and his WPRS estimates; BIG thanks to Majo and Efrén for all their help in so many different things and the restaurants at Plaza Valle for the Day Prizes!

And to finish this post, an album with random pictures of the last day:

Good bye and maybe see you next year...