ENDURANCE  RACES

BSCRA ENDURANCE CUP- 23rd July 2022 - BSCRA NATIONAL CENTRE CORBY

The 3 Open Group 12 cars used by the UK group were prepared by James Cleave

The event was run in 8 segments of 45 minutes, giving a total of 6 hours running time.  There were two groups of teams:-  

  
The club teams were racing for the Endurance Cup which Andy Smith had generously donated.

The UK group of 3 teams shared 10 of the top 1/24 drivers in the country.  They were primarily running to try out different ideas to see what might work best in a 24 hour race.   This group’s drivers were James Cleave, Ross Grogan, Will Stemman, Josh Bryant, Martin Ellis, Gavin Wills, Graham Woodward, Keith Gibson, Ben Woodward and Richy Kettleson.

Rules for the event

Copyright ©  2022 British Slot Car Racing Association   Photos  copyright C.Frost , M.Witham, A  and S.Smith  All rights reserved

Leicester Electric’s car.
The chassis was as bargain from Slot Car Jumble!

The team drivers were David Ensor, Chris Anderson, Andy and Sam Smith

David and Chris took 15 minute stints on the middle 4 lanes while the much more experienced Andy and Sam took the outside lanes.

They started with 0.9mm ground clearance and got through on two sets of the hand out Red Fox tyres

A fun alternative to the usual  qualifying method was used - one driver from each team gets 3 goes at doing a lap and braking to a stop from full speed as close as possible to the goop bottle without actually hitting it.     The winner gets first choice of starting lane etc.     Here’s the Leicester Electric car about to start its lap

The rules allowed teams to use two motors, but as these had to be changed during race time teams were reluctant to change motors unless they really had to.   The rules allowed teams to use a second chassis but as there was a 100 lap penalty for changing chassis, and none of the chassis sustained major damage,  none of the teams took that option.

Both club teams had trouble with motors loosing performance by the middle of the race.  The UK team made a motor last longer, knowledge on how to do that will surely be useful in a 24 hour race.  James Cleave said that “Across the three UK Test teams we used 6 setups and 9 armatures. This wasn’t a necessity for speed, we just wanted to give each armature a good heat cycle.”

From the start the 3 UK teams were lapping quicker than the club teams.  The full results below show the ups and downs of each team, there are some quite low totals on some lanes which are due to the length of time spent in the pits.

Leicester’s motor went slow in segment 4 so they swapped to their second motor. They also had to replace missing pin tube which consumed yet more time in the pits.  They could then service the used motor without time pressure as the car was back on track with the second motor.

Netley’s motor ran out of brushes later in in segment 4, rather than change the motor  they elected to change worn motor brushes with the motor still in the car.   This required quite a long pit stop, it was a lot better with new brushes but didn’t restore the motor to full performance.

 

Netley’s motor was getting slower through the night section so they changed to their second motor.   The pit stop ,  extended into the start of segment 7, the good news was the improved performance.

Leicester’s second motor went off during segment 7 so they changed back to their first motor which had already been serviced. They also had the good news of improved performance.

Chris Frost

Photo by Mark Witham

The Netley Team  - Pete Crane, Mark Witham, Ant Hawkes, Chris Frost

Photo by Sam Smith

Racing in the dark

Segments 5 and 6 were run in the dark.   The cars were fitted with lights, all the teams used battery powered LEDs fitted to a spare body which was fitted for the dark segments.  All but one team changed back to a body without lights immediately after the dark session. The lap display monitors in front of the drivers and marshal’s torch in the middle marshalling postion were turned off because they were too bright for the drivers to see the cars properly.   Having done that, the lights on the cars were plenty bright enough for  driving. The drivers quickly adapted to the dark, although some found a full 45 mins in the dark was tough.  

More of a problem was marshalling, without a torch the cars all looked the same and you couldn’t see the lane stickers.

Video by Sam Smith

A final word from Andy Smith  
“Given the team Leicester Electric had put out and our budget, I think we can feel justifiably proud of what we achieved.  It was a real shame there weren’t more UK clubs involved as they missed out on a hugely enjoyable race.  At the end of it, me and Sam were both absolutely knackered.  Would we do it again?  You betcha!  Huge fun!  Thanks to my team mates as well as other competitors present for a great day’s racing and well done Netley!

Photo by Andy Smith