Hello and welcome to this qualifying round for the Sand Marble Rally
33 familiar competitors in the starting blocks, as you can see
many of whom have run in these sorts of races before these sorts of races before
These top 33, mixed up to where they've started in the past, and they're off
And it looks like Blue Smoke leading the way so far
Several marbles, listen to all of the impacts from all of these jostling for position
Even though it's a fairly straight part of the course
there's so many subtle differences in the track
But it's really making a difference for the early front runners
And that is Blue Smoke out in front
Looks like Marbly McMarbleface is up into third place, he started up there near the front as well
That might be Mocha Madness challenging for second
And Marbly gets right by him into P2 and is now nose to tail with Blue Smoke, challenging him
Look at this field streaming through, that's a great sight
Now into the slaloms, back and forth
But it's Blue Smoke still holding the lead out in front
Obstacles in the way and it actually catches several marbles up
But just the sheer number of them, look at that!
Just pushing them on through, willing them to get past these obstacles
It's a lot of marbles
And now up front, it looks like it was a brief challenge possibly from Pollo Loco
who is that kind of off yellow color
Several marbles taking that joker's chute as you saw to the right there
But it's still Blue Smoke leading out in front
Marbly McMarbleface has lost out on second place
possibly to Pollo Loco
And we see him trying to catch up ever so slightly
But mostly that second place marble is looking up ahead to Blue Smoke
All these marbles going back and forth through here
I'm really surprised at how easy it looks
that they could just jump the side and get caught up on the sand
Underneath that stick, which is not quite the Dunlop Bridge at Le Mans
Now look at how deeply carved this area is, but it's still Blue Smoke out in front
really slowing down, and that's a light colored marble now in second, that might be H2 Blue
Oh! And there went a red marble off to the side there, that might have been Blazing Fireball
That was one of the red marbles at least
I'm not sure he'll be able to get going again
That was far enough off course that I think that's gonna be really difficult
A couple marbles again getting briefly hung up
Oh, and there's one, there's two off!
And Race Control tells us that is Reflektor and White Widow it looked like
It was just very brief, but you could see them veering off to the right, jumping out of the course
And again, those are another couple that are not gonna be able to make it down to the finish line
And I think that's not the last that we've seen of these
There are probably several more that are not going to make the bottom of this qualifying round
And there's been a change up front!
And H2 Blue has taken the lead over Blue Smoke for the first time
And Blue Smoke fights right back into that chicane
Hermann Tilke would have loved that move
Blue Smoke's trying to stay out in front as best he can
The course staying relatively straight here
We're getting toward the end of it, and look at the lead that he's stretching!
Blue Smoke is gonna win this qualifying round and it looks like H2 Blue is gonna come in second
And, oh, that was El Capitan in third
Well done to those top three
The last couple coming across
There you have 17 finishers
And I think I saw at the bottom there that these top seven will start on the front row for the race
