The Gaydon event gave us the first INTRO 32 championship and the clubman saloon championship which has previously been part of the overall Nationals Saloon championships held on Mayday.  This was run as part of the UK Slot Car Festival.

For those who haven’t been there, the Festival is the largest slot meeting covering all types slot car including home sets, HO, rallys, 1/43, retro cars, specialist hard body suppliers .... pretty much any sort of slot car!  BSCRA has exhibited there before, this time we had a much larger presences and ran championship races for the first time. Our thanks to the Festival organisers for giving us such generous space at this great event.

Friday was set up day, a we must thank the small team that transported and assembled the track on Friday.

Saturday was mainly devoted to public running with 1/24 house cars.  The racing was all held on Sunday 15th May.

The INTRO 32 event started with 1 minute qualifying runs. Top spot went to Bill Jenner with a lap of 6.394 seconds, just 15 milliseconds short of the Falcon powered JK production record set by Nick Clements last year.  The 21 racers were divided into 3 groups of 7.

The early C Final leader was John Clements, ahead of the Howard team, with Ian second ahead of Alice. Although they were pretty close, that order stayed much the same to the end with John winning by less than a lap from Ian, with Alice third a couple of laps back followed by Dick Stevenson in 4th.

Dave Stevenson was a lap ahead of Steve Rhodes and David Hackforth in the first segment.  Dave then increased his lead and Simon Francis was up to second after 3 segments, by the end Dave had extended his lead to over 6 laps from Simon who was followed by Steve with David 4th in this race, slotting in between John and Ian from the previous race.

At the start of the A final Mick Metcalfe tok a narrow lead from Mark Witham and Alex Fear.  While Mick and Mark have many years of racing experience, Alex only started club racing a few weeks ago.  Mick extended his lead while Mark dropped behind Alex.  In the middle part of the race Alex took the lead with Mark second having had his runs on white and red lanes, while Mick dropped to third on the outside lanes.  Mick retook the lead once he was on the middle lanes, while Alex had the pleasure of white and red and Mark was coping with the other outside pair of lanes.

Mark passed Mick for the lead seconds before the end of the 7th segment, and finished on a middle lane to win with Mick second finishing on red and Alex not far behind.   Bill was 4th in the A, but just failed to match Dave’s winning B final time.






1/32   Nationals   2016

INTRO 32 and Clubman Saloon Championships

UK Slot Car Festival at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon

1/32   Nationals   2016

INTRO 32


Clubman Saloon


Qual

Final

Total




Qual

Final

Total

1

Mark Witham

6.498

A

137.71


1

Mick Metcalfe

6.124

A

140.05

2

Mick Metcalfe

6.507

A

136.11


2

Dave Stevenson

6.285

A

136.17

3

Alex Fear

6.792

A

135.85


3

Pete McKendrick

6.143

A

135.14

4

Dave Stevenson

6.868

B

132.61


4

Mark Witham

6.204

A

132.66

5

Bill Jenner

6.394

A

132.58


5

Ian Howard

6.895

B

129.31

6

Pete McKendrick

6.627

A

126.62


6

Steve Rhodes

6.606

A

129.21

7

Simon Francis

6.909

B

125.89


7

Cliff Bicknell

6.722

B

127.53

8

Marc Lyons

6.764

A

125.41


8

Simon Bullen

6.658

A

127.49

9

Steve Rhodes

7.103

B

123.84


9

Alice Howard

6.743

B

124.25

10

John Clements


C

122.87


10

Marc Lyons

6.811

B

119.63

11

David Hackforth

6.964

B

122.19


11

Josh Howley

6.627

A

116.83

12

Ian Howard

7.277

C

122.04


12

Harry Shepherd

6.389

A

116.57

13

Alice Howard

7.610

C

120.05


13

Dick Stevenson

7.438

B

114.9

14

Harry Shepherd

6.564

A

119.88


14

Ray George

7.497

B

112.26

15

Cliff Bicknell

7.040

B

116.37


15

 David Hackforth

7.026

B

111.55

16

Dick Stevenson

7.454

C

116.36


16

Mac Miles 

8.513

B

86.1

17

Ray George

7.033

B

109.79


17

John Clements

6.555

A

85.25

18

Mac Miles 

8.330

C

106.71


18

Alistair Dent

7.448

B

66

19

Alistair Dent

7.329

C

103.40







20

Simon Bullen

7.490

C

100.70







21

Josh Howley

7.026

B

80.35







The Clubman Saloon event was run to the same  1 minute qualifying followed by 8x2min segmented race.  Mick Metcalfe qualified top on 6.124 sec, almost 3 tenths quicker than he managed at Corby a couple of weeks earlier followed by Pete McKendrick who’d improved by around half a second since Corby.  


This time there were only 18 entries so the finals were two groups of 9.

Ian Howard led from the start of the B, followed by Marc Lyons.   The middle sections of 9 person races can be a little difficult to follow as some drivers have their sit outs earlier. For example Cliff Bicknell was apparently in the lead, but Ian had an extra segment in hand and was less than a segment behind. Ian was the clear winner from Cliff with Alice Howard taking 3rd ahead of Marc.

Top qualifier Mick Metcalfe finished his A final runs one segment before everybody else, he appeared to have led all the way but then had to wait to see if the other 8 could beat his time.  In fact he had been quicker than everybody else, and won by nearly 4 laps from Dave Stevenson with Pete McKendrick third a further lap in arrears.  Mark witham took 4th with Ian Howard’s B final run taking 5th overall


Thanks to everyone for making the meeting such a success - particular thanks to Nigel on race control.

See you all for the Club Team Championship and Production Challenge in July!

Chris



INTRO 32 top 3 cars


Alex 3rd

Winner Mark


Mick 2nd

Saloon

2nd               winner                     3rd

Mick’s winning VIP chassis

© Copyright British Slot Car Racing Association , 2016 Photo copyright C.Frost  2016  All rights reserved