Rockingham  18th and 19th February 2023

Eurosport

Wow, these cars are fast round Rockingham! What was a surprise, was that 6 racers chose to run brushless motors. Gavin Wills was top qualifier with a new track record of 2.825s using a conventional brushed strap motor. Martin Ellis took second spot and was not far behind with 2.892s. Will Stemman just missed out on the A-Final with 3.04s as all the A-Finalists managed to lap under 3 seconds.

David Sargent retired early in the C-Final with multiple failures. Initially the pinion spun, but other failures soon became evident. The final cause of retirement was a loose magnet. Peter Kerr also battled through many issues which may have been caused by a tight gear mesh. The pinion spun on the shaft, the motor often needed a push start, the lead wire broke, but still he kept returning and managed to finish the race. Whilst all this was going on, there was a close race between Mike Thomson, Stan Alton and Scott Francis. The lane rotation did not work in Scott’s favour, and he struggled to stay in touch with the other two during the last two lanes. This left Mike to chase down Stan from a slighter better finishing lane. He got within a few parts of taking the lead in the final segment, but Stan held his nerve and Mike fell off with 20 seconds to go! Ian Howard negotiated all the carnage in his first 1/24 ES race to finish 14th overall. A good achievement at his first attempt.

In the B-Final, Keith Gibson managed to get a lane sicker stuck to his braid and this cost him a couple of laps whilst the problem was diagnosed and rectified. Brushless Bob had a pinion spin in segment 3 and a motor shaft move out of position. A few hammer blows later and he was back in the race, but he eventually retired. Will pretty much lead from flag to flag but his motor got slower towards the end, and he was only able to achieve 3.8s laps in the last segment. Richard mack also retired from the B-Final with a slow running brushless motor. Although Will managed to win the B-Final it was worth noting that Ron Kiddell’s second place in the B-Final was good enough for 5th position overall.

With the speed of the Eurosport cars there was not much time to react to accidents and the A-Final started with its fair share. James had a few offs at the start and caused Gavin some minor body issues. This gave Richy a good lead in the early stages. Unfortunately for Richy, it wasn’t going to last long and a crash with Martin caused the body to rip off its mountings and go through the gears. With a lengthy repair and an early start to work in the morning, Richy retired to start the long drive home which he hoped would be incident free. As Martin’s tyres started to wear down, he got faster and faster with his self-designed brushless chassis. He managed to pull out a good lead on Gavin and James which he held till the end. He also broke the race lap record in the process! This was an historic day where a brushless slot car took overall victory in the open class of racing. Will there now be a lot of brushed motors for sale? What is the next step? The open brushless slot cars definitely need to be tamed as the torque is quite violent with the higher KV motors. Will someone decide to program the electronic speed controllers to tame this torque? Maybe we will find out at the next BOC.

Cash prizes were awarded to the top 3 overall along with the top main grade driver and top brushless runner. Interestingly nobody decided to run in the restricted class.

What a great start to the 2023 season and thanks again to everyone for attending and the great fun atmosphere.

James

Production   |   Open Group 12   

1/24 BOC  2023   British Open Championship

Winner Martin Ellis
  2nd Gavin Wills         3rd James Cleave

Martin’s winning car