2010 Area 5 Championship - Round 2 Leicester 14 February

Doors opened at 8 o’clock on Sunday morning for what turned out to be an excellent and fiercely competitive area round. Fifteen drivers arrived, only Dave Homer was missing from those that competed at Dudley - apparently somewhere in South Africa and couldn’t get a flight at short notice. Bad planning Dave !!

Saloon
After a couple of hours practice Saloon qualifying kicked off at 10.30 prompt. The usual format of best three runs from the four lanes had Woody out in front, nearly 2 laps up on Bob Budge and Chris Thomas and another lap on Trev Tennant in 4th spot. These 4 would comprise the “A” final a bit later on. The first final was between Ralph Parker, Brian Bradley and Luke Jackson. Brian took the win in this by 20 parts from Ralph with Luke a couple of laps back. This settled 13th - 15th places and the next, “C” final would see 9th - 12th places settled. Ben Woodward took the honours in this, beating Martin Jackson by 1 ½ laps followed home by Chris Aston and Sandy Parker. Kev Gray took the win in the “B” chased all the way by Christopher Aldridge half a lap back and he was 70 parts ahead of Dad, Chris, with Graham Thomas a couple of laps down on Chris. So Kev took 5th, Christopher 6th, Chris 7th and Graham 8th. The “A” finalists were up next and Woody was out in front all the way, recording the fastest total so far with 37.34, nearly a lap up on Bob Budge in 2nd and 2 ½ laps on Trev in 3rd. Chris Thomas had a poor run for him and took 4th spot.

Formula 1
Similar qualifying format to Saloon, but only best 2 to count. Once again Woody seemed to be in a class of his own, breaking White and Blue lane records on his way to top qualify with a total of 73.04 laps, another record for the 2 lane total. This was nearly 3 laps ahead of second placed Ben, these two would await the results from the first 6 finals to see who would challenge them in the “A” final. With 7 finals in all this would be a fairly long wait. Perhaps the highlight of the first 6 finals was Trev Tennant’s progress from 10th qualifier moving up through 3 finals to make the “B”. Chris Thomas, usually supreme in F1 wasn’t having a good day only qualifying 5th to make the “C”. This he won though and along with Trev they joined Kev Gray and Bob Budge in the “B”. Trev’s good run came to an end here with Chris and Bob joining Woody and Ben for the “A” final, Kev taking 5th and Trev 6th. The “A” final seemed a foregone conclusion from lap 1, Woody pulling away all the time from Ben and Chris who were having a good battle for 2nd, eventually Chris took 2nd from Ben by just 17parts. Bob didn’t have a great run and settled for 4th place, interestingly with a brand new experimental chassis designed and built himself, and when it’s sorted looks like a potential winner. So, Woody took his second win of the day with a total of 37.11, just .01 short of his new White lane record.

Sports
On to the last class of the day and with the grip really good now we were looking forward to more record runs. Format for Sports is best single run from 2 runs, either on Red/Yellow lanes or White/Blue assigned randomly into segmented finals, and you can win from any final. Woody didn’t have it all his own way this time, although his very impressive 37.92 on Blue lane made sure of his third “TQ”. Three other drivers recorded 37+ laps, Trev 37.87, Kev 37.35 and Martin Jackson also with 37.35 but took 4th with a slower second run to Kev’s. Four segmented finals followed with Luke, Ralph and Brian started off with the “D”. Luke made the running in this finally coming to terms with his first encounter with the track. And lead all the way to take the win and eventual 11th place with a total of 131.31. Ralph and Brian were neck and neck going in to their last segment but Brian’s car failed and Ralph ran out in 2nd place, 4 laps behind Luke. Chris Aldridge, Sandy Parker, Graham Thomas and Chris Aston were up in the “C” final and with Chris Aldridge pulling out early in segment 2 this left the other 3 to battle it out. At the end of the 3rd segment Chris Aston and Graham were together on a total of 104 laps, Sandy had a bad run and dropped out of the running. In segment 4 Graham recorded a 36 to Chris’s 35 and so took the win and eventual 9th overall. On to the “B” final and this had Bob Budge, Christopher Aldridge, Ben Woodward and (surprisingly) Chris Thomas contesting it. The pace was fast from the outset with Chris, Ben and Bob all posting 37s in the first segment. Segment 2 saw Chris post a 40 on the counters and he pulled out a 2 lap lead over Bob and 4 laps over Ben and Christopher. Segment 3 had Chris and Ben both recording 37s but Chris had a 4 lap lead over both Ben and Bob. It looked very likely that Chris would set a new 4 lane Sports record barring disasters, and this he duly did - just ! His final total of 151.35 was 23 parts better than Chis Aldridge’s old one. Ben took 2nd spot, 4 laps back and Bob was a further lap down to finish 3rd. So the stage was set for the last race of the day - the “A” final. Could Woody improve further on the new record to record a clean sweep for the day? Well he meant business from the outset by recording a big 38 on yellow, Trev wasn’t far behind with a 37 on Red, Martin and Kev posted slowish 35s on White and Blue respectively. Two more 38s on Blue and White had him level with Chris’s total after 3 segments and going into the last he needed another 38 to have a chance of passing Chris. This, of course, he did. With just a few seconds to go he passed Chris and went on to record a 38.90 on Red and a nother new record of 152.90 to beat Chris by 1.55 laps. Meanwhile Kev pulled away from Martin and Trev to record a total of 148.52 and took overall 3rd spot, Trev took 6th overall and Martin 8th. Fair play to Chris Thomas though - with about 10 seconds of the race left, Kev was just in front of Woody on the track and came off at the ‘elbow’ but lightning reactions saw Chris (who happened to be marshalling that corner) ‘whip’ Kev’s car out of the way - just in the nick of time. Very well done Chris, a lesser person may well have delayed a split second to secure the win for himself !

So, a really good, competitive day’s racing with records galore, and those that were new to the track got progressively better as the racing went on. Congratulations to Woody on a “clean sweep” which sees him take over the lead in this year’s Area 5 Championship from Chris Thomas second, Graham Thomas 3rd, Kev Gray 4th and Ben Woodward 5th.
Many thanks to Bob Budge and Chris Aldridge for helping out on race control and see you at Oaklands next, on March 14th.

Kev Gray 

More on the Leicester web site

2010 Area 5 Championship - Round 1 Dudley 10 January

Doors opened at 8.30 am for the first round of the Area 5 championship 2010 held at the Dudley Slot Car Club. Sixteen racers ventured out in the snow and competed for the 3 classes, all Falcon powered.  Racing got under way at about 10:30 am after a few problems with the electricity.

Saloon

Chris Thomas used his home track knowledge; top qualifies with best 3 from 4 of 86.37 followed by dad Graham Thomas (82.18), Martin Jackson (79.95) and Woody (78.74), just piping Chris Aston in the final heat to take 4^th spot.  In the final Chris continued his good form to win from Graham, after a close battle with Martin for about 1 min 30 where Martin dropped into the wrong lane and retired on 14 laps. Woody was happy to finish 3^rd.  Trevor won the B Final; Chris A was second with Ben and Chris, 7^th and 8^th respectively.  Luke won the C Final using his home track knowledge, to record 27.34 which would have put him second in the A to beat Sandy, Bob, who tied with 25.51 and Dave who struggled on red lane with a driver now in his car! Kev by over a lap won the D final in front of Ralph, Brian and Christopher.

Formula 1

Martin top qualified this time with his best 2 from 4 of 54.85 from Chris Thomas on 54.61, Using the ‘move up’ finals system Woody and Graham battled their way into the A final and was a tight race with everyone leading at one point. Eventually it was a win for Chris Thomas 1^st 27 laps, Woody 2^nd Graham 3^rd and Martin 4^th, all on 26.  Kev moved up from the D final to finish 5^th Chris Aston 6^th and Dave 7^th using Chris Aston’s spare car with meshing gears! Brian had his best result of the day finishing 8^th.

Sports

Once again Chris Thomas pulled out all the stops to top qualify with the fastest time of the day so far of 29.52, Woody some way back with 27.81 with Luke and Chris A making up the top group, the only other 27’s.  

With a ‘win from any final’ format Dave set the pace in the D Final by setting 101.93 to give him 10th overall, with Chris (11^th) and Brian and Christopher 15^th and 16^th respectively. The C final was won by Martin (7^th overall) after a poor qualifying. Kev finished 2^nd to give him 8^th overall, but Ralph and Trevor failed to beat Dave and Chris’s score from the first group.  Sandy, who won sports in 2007, matched Kevin’s score to finish joint 8^th, while Graham set the pace for the A finalists by winning the ‘B’ with a 107.06 total with Ben exactly one lap down.  In the ‘A’ it was clear early on that this would provide the winner, barring any mishaps, with all 4 drivers consistently faster than the B. Woody went into the last segment with a 1.5 lap lead over Chris T, Chris A and Luke and never looked like losing it. Although Woody’s winning total of 110.72 was 4 laps down on Chris Thomas’s four saloon heats from the Morning. Chris Thomas was best of the rest beating Chris A by 13 foot with Luke a further lap down for his best result of the day, and making the Jackson ’s journey home that bit more silent!

Championship

With his two win’s and 2nd place, Chris Thomas won the day taking 147 points, Woody second with 142 points, Last years Champion Graham finished up 3rd with 133 points, next came Martin joint with Chris Aston, some way back, on 123 points.

 All in all a good days racing, Thanks to Dave for the food at dinner time and Martin and Luke for help on Race control. Also thanks to Trevor for the use of his long extension lead, to get the track running while we tried to fix the electricity.

Look forward to racing at Leicester in February.  

Chris Thomas

Full results http://www.lslots.co.uk/index.html?ifrm_1=arearounds.html

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