Report by Norman Fawcett

Following the hottest day of the year I was a little concerned that the club room would become impossibly hot, however some cloud cover and opening all the available windows made the race conditions more than bearable for the 21 racers that attended. Following on from the Newcastle round where I was pleased to see an increase in new young faces, I “bit the bullet” and decided it was time to give junior the opportunity to race a slot car. However, even after a few evenings practice down at the track I was still unsure on race day whether Katy would manage very well against the usual opposition.

Following the usual seeding of entries into the relevant classes racing duly started.

1/32nd Heats

The first heat of the Novice Falcon class was won by Katy Fawcett with 25.80, a result she would have struggled to achieve on the track on her own. If nothing else this shows there is no better way to learn the sport than to compete in races. Heat 2 found Mike Ogden continuing his recent form by posting an excellent 29.74 on the difficult Black lane.

Heat 3 saw an ever improving Mark Croston taking the win with 29.58 leaving Mike O topping the Novice scores for the first round.

The full compliment of Open Falcon racers contested Heat 4, the first three being separated by only 30 feet at the end. Victory in this one going to Mike Harrison. Heats 5 & 6 were contested by the Super Production class. The first won by myself with a result beaten by Mike H, and the second by Stuart Tennant who top qualified after the first round on his first visit to the club.

The second round of heats saw Trevor Tennant improve to head the Novice class with 30.79, Mike H improved his score again to 32.13 in the Open Falcon class, and the man everyone wants to beat, Paul Shepherd came good on Red lane to post 34.10 with Steve Sargent also improving with 33.92 to retain his second spot.

The last round of Novice heats saw Trevor improve steadily again to score 31.64. By now he was obviously getting to learn the circuit.

The final heat for the Open Falcon contestants saw a three man race, David Sargent failing to make 1 lap on the counters whilst the other three all failed to make any improvement on their earlier scores. The Super Production class saw only improvements for Martin Ellis with 29.24 and myself with 32.94 (perhaps I was getting to know the circuit as well, or was it that I discovered in the warm up that I had switched the brakes to full by mistake!)

1/32^nd Finals

With the customary Pirelli lunch out of the way the Finals got underway.

The F Final followed the qualifying order with a win for Sam Griffin, as did the E Final with a win for Stephen Siddall.

The D Final consisted of drivers with qualifying scores covered by only 9ft so it was likely to be close. In the end it was victory for Martin with an identical score to Stephen in the previous final.

The C final saw Chris Thomas recovering from an unusually low qualifying to take the victory nearly 3 laps clear of Mike O posting 53.55 laps.

The B Final saw both the top Novice and Open Falcon drivers, however track knowledge finally showed through for Pat Skene and Graham Thomas who managed to improve to beat Trevor, however Mike H was in full control and came in to win with 53.89 laps.

The A Final looked a real contest between Paul and Steve on the fancied middle lanes, however I think they tangled early on, which left me in the lead for a short time until I caused my own accident. What pressure? This let Paul through to the lead, which he continued to extend quite easily. Well I was trying 110%, and he still left me. In the end I was surprised the difference was only 56 ft. Steve managed to bring it home third with Stuart finding how hard it is to run on Black.

Team Race

Due to minimal time being lost during the morning the team race got under way with 15minute segments. This was little concerning for me as Katy, who was my team mate, had never even practiced more than 10 minutes at a time and our car wasn’t fitted with tyres to last more than 40minutes.

With 21 drivers present Mike Harrison elected to drive all four segments and not count towards the championship. (I wish I’d thought of that at Newcastle, never mind.) The 1^st segment saw me take victory on Red lane from Ebee Geebees. The 2^nd segment saw Trevor wall the car heavily due to a broken return spring in his hand throttle after only 15 laps. With a return to the track on two occasions after some serious attention to the gears the car was removed for the remainder of the segment to sort the chassis properly. Area 2 took over 2^nd spot until the 3^rd segment when Paul blasted round on red lane to post fastest time of the day with 177.81. The 2^nd round saw me take the second outside lane to ease the way for Katy and as a result put Pirelli into top spot, with SCD Roadhogs dropping back to second place only ˝ lap up on Area 2. The 3^rd round saw a change again with Pirelli falling back to fourth spot as SCD Roadhogs took the lead from Area 2 and Ebee Geebees, and SDS only 6 laps behind. The 4^th round saw the inevitable tyre change for Pirelli, however Katy raised her game to new heights to minimise the lost time, and drew a small crowd at the esses watching with amazement as she belted the car through as if it was a straight line. At the other end of the track she tormented Mike H as he tried to overtake, resulting in some finely timed nurfing into the barrier. Honest to God I didn’t teach her that although I must take her to task about grinning about the manoeuvre. The resultant loss saw us drop again, however Area 2 continued to push and beat an ever-improving SDS to second place.

So a double for that man Shep and a fitting result for Chas who still struggles for full health. My thanks again to Chris and Mark for assistance on race control, Paul and Martin for Scrutineering and Graham for keeping me right with the race sheets. Oh and everyone who volunteered to fill the vacant marshalling positions, its amazing how it seems to be the same small group every year. I would also thank everyone for their support and encouragement shown to Katy at her first event, long may it continue, I think!

SCD Roadhogs Winning Car

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