1/32   Nationals   2014

Club Team Championship & Production Challenge   20 – 21 Sep 2014

This was the first event on the superb new “X Track” Nationals circuit.

It was held at the Inn On The Prom, Lytham St.Annes.

Racing commenced on Saturday with Super Production /  Production.  James Cleave was top in the one minute qualifying runs with a 5.687 sec lap, followed by the man who built the track - Lee Parsons on 5.717, with Paul Shepherd on 5.775 taking third spot only 3 milliseconds ahead of young Christopher Aldridge.

The  racing was to the 8 x 3 minute segmented format.  The first race on the new track was the E final won by Mick Metcalfe by under a lap from Brendan Bremner.  Next up the D final was won by Nick Thrower on 209 laps ahead of Mick Thomson on 203.  Vince Lee took the overall lead with 224 in the C with Stan Alton next up on 214.   Greg Harwood turned in 232 laps in the B  final, to take the overall lead with Vince still second.  Surely the A finalists would be quicker than that - or would they?   James Cleave won with 236 to retain his title by 4 laps from 2011/12 champion Greg.  Gordon Dickson took third with 227.

                                                                                                                                                                     Chris

F2

Saturday’s second class was F2 - Falcon powered F1 cars.  

The 8 x 2 minute segmented racing were seeded from the results of the previous class.   That left those who’d had car troubles  in Super production running in the early finals. None more so than  Gavin Wills who won the first final with 141 laps, a substantial way ahead of Sam Thrower and Keith Charles both on 126.  Young Nick Clements won the C final with 132, with Steve Taylor making it a Rockingham 1-2-3 so far.  Come the B final, Martin Ellis moved into second on 136 ahead of Chris Clements on 135.    
In the A final Paul Shepherd and Greg Harwood were running at about Gavin’s pace, as was James Cleave  till an early pit stop put him out of contention for a win.  In the end Paul won with 143, which left Gavin second ahead of Greg on 140 with Martin in 4th a few feet ahead of Gordon Dickson’s A final run.

Congratulations to Shep on winning the F2 event for the third year running..... with the same car!  James Cleave achieved a similar hat trick a few weeks earlier by winning  his third 1/24 Saloon title in a row with the same car.

© Copyright British Slot Car Racing Association 2014, photos copyright c.Frost 2014  All rights reserved

The A Final start line

The winning chassis

The top 3 - Gordon, James and Greg

THE F2 car!
The one Shep has used to win this event 3 times years in  a row.

Chris Clements - F2 top main grade and top junior

The top 3 - Gavin, Paul and Greg

Club Team Championship

Ian Howard’s video of the race

The club team championship is open to club teams. The race is also open to teams of 4 drivers who do not all come from the same club, although these are not eligible for the National Club Team Champions title.  The race duration is 3 hours for each team, each of their 4 drivers has two segments of 22½ minutes.

The start of the race saw VIP take an early lead with Luton, Rockingham and Leicester.  VIP were a “super team” not eligible for Club Team title, but the top 3 eligible teams were covered by 2½ laps after the first segment.   Rockingham then started going quicker, as did Fylde and Blackpool, while the VIP and Luton didn’t maintain their starting pace and Leicester had a long pit stop. Rockingham and VIP continued to put in the quick runs, particularly impressive were VIP’s Ian Barker with fastest time of the day at 234 on orange and James Cleave’s 231 for Rockingham on the difficult red lane.  While these 2 teams kept up the 210 + lap  segments, just about everybody else were having segments under 180.  In the end Rockingham took victory by 33 laps from VIP.  Second of the club teams was the club that did so much work to organise this event - Fylde who were just a tiny margin ahead of near neighbours Blackpool SCC.  Below are the full details, no doubt some will want to work out what might have been if only ........

Congratulations to Rockingham.

Thanks to all those who made the meeting such a success, particular thanks to Kev our race controller.

Chris

Club Team Champions

The Rockingham A team

James Cleave, Chris Clements. Mick Thomson,  Gavin Wills

The second place Fylde club team

Steve Sargent, Norman Fawcett, Pete Clarkson, David Sargent

Third place Blackpool SCC - team members Paul Shepherd, Stephen Siddall and Gordon Dickson with BSCRA Chairman Keith Gibson