First class up was track owners choice. This put the cat amongst the pigeons and models from Ninco and SCX dominated. I ran my scratchbuilt McRae Nissan Ute with some success. Even though the SCX cars were short in the leg department they had all the ability on the rest of the track. Before the first heat I would have put money on a Schlesser to win but skilful driving gave victory to a Ninco Mitsubishi.
First heat saw marshalls scrambling while people got their act together but eventually drivers calmed down and the surprisingly well behaved raid models settled in for the duration. The inaugural heat was taken out by Paul and his Pajero while Chris followed up with a borrowed Schlesser. I won my first heat with the SCX RX41 powered Nissan but I have to admit it was a ‘soft’ heat with no real hard work to do!! Sorry guys! But later on Greig managed to spoil my winning record with a borrowed car!!
Kev Peter Eggy and Justin drove a hard fought heat eleven and at any one time there was not much more than a lap between first and last, but eventually Kev just took points from Eggy and Justin beating Peter S to the finish. Eggy decided to lay it on Jordan in thirteen but as we see so many times, the Egg cracked under pressure and made a complete omelette of the rest of the heat!! Leaving Jordan to enjoy one of his oh-so-rare home track wins!! With the heats soon over we soon knew where we stood as far as the Rally Raid class was concerned.
Race 1 Rally Raid open 80 Laps Position Gp B. Driver race time 1. Paul 8’ 12†2. Justin 8’ 30†3. Kev 8’ 39†4. Norm 5. Eggy 6. 1. Peter S 7. Chris 8. 2. Jordan 9. Phil 10. 3. Greig 11. 4. Peter J 12. Alan 13. 5. Ken 14. 6. Bob 15. 7. Rhys.
Next event was the pre running of the next trophy class. Classic Mustangs! A good choice of models available from Revell to Carrera and Scalextric to Pioneer. And all present on the track. Once again another unknown quantity and tuning was going to have to take place between heats for some out there! I managed my first heat win with the Wixwacing Mustang but it was going to be harder fro here on
Jordan came well prepared and set for disaster. It wasn’t long into his first heat that his model was emitting a sound rather reminiscent of a dentist drill! More excitement followed when Norm, Greig and Justin gave us a driving spectacular with all three crossing the line only seconds apart. Another first a couple of heats later when a Carrera car won the heat in spite of not being the fastest car on the track. The unpredictability of the class was highlighted when Peter J took a heat win. Probably only his third this decade!!
Off track highlight of the event was Big John the Eggman taking an inordinate amount of heckling, especially from the non racing fraternity. John verbally defended himself masterfully but must have felt extremely deflated when another Sunshine boy robbed him of line honours while fending off bogus marshalling. ‘How much sharper than a serpents tooth is an ungrateful team mate!’ Fortunately, the senior ‘Sunshine boy’ was not present to witness this. No doubt word will get back.
Race v2 Classic Mustangs 100 laps 1. Kev 9’ 41†2. Norm 9’ 48†3. 1. Peter S 9’ 59†4. 2. Greig 5. Paul 6. Phil 7. Chris 8. Eggy 9. Justin 10. 3. Peter J 11. Alan 12. 4. Ken 13. 5. Jordan 14. 6. Bob 15. 7. Rhys
About this time the signal was to chow down and we retired to Jordan and Therese’s entertainment area for snags and steak of the finest quality, though not home made this time!! Washed down with all sorts of local product it wasn’t too long before some of us were chomping at another kind of bit and in good time we returned to the track for the last race of the Unmarked Supercar series.
This has been another unknown quantity again with a healthy diversity of models on the track. A couple of AUTOarts, some Nincos and even a couple of Mercedes McLarens!! Heat one saw all the big names in this class stacked against each other. With the track well rubbered we were in for some good racing. Greig took off into the lead with his well balanced Bugatti Veyron and Chris with his NC1 Ninco GT1 Porsche wasn’t prepared to leave it at that. I tagged along behind with a remarkable SCX LOIS Porsche in street livery. Eventually Greig tripped over something and Chris swooped on first place. A few laps later and another driving error let me past Greig and we stayed in that order to the lights.
Heat four saw Paul drive his Ford GT to a very convincing win and it should have set him up for a good result down the track. AUTOart make a nice model but they are cursed with a Carrera style polarity switch which you have to be careful where you (or other people!) touch your model. On this occasion there were two on the grid. The lights ran down and went out……and one Lambo shot backwards at a rate of reversing knots!!!??? Was this a driver error?? Was there foul play afoot? We will never know!
I had a generous turn of luck when in one of the later heats my SCX Porsche looked to be the underdog, but the other dogs spent most of their time arguing with each other leaving my humble RX41 to take out the heat win and give me valuable points for this round! Eventually it was all over and the sixth round was run. Love em or hate em, these were the results.
Round 6 Unmarked Supercars 100 laps 1. Norm 9’ 00†2. Paul 9’ 03†3. Alan 9’ 07†4. Justin 5. Chris 6. Phil 7. Kev 8. 1. Peter S 9. 2. Greig 10. Eggy 11. 3. Bob 12. 4. Ken 13. 5. Peter J 14. 6. Jordan 15. 7. Rhys
See you all next meeting. Night Night! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!