Saloon

1/32 Nationals 2025

Betta & Classic 2025 Saloon Championship

There were 47 drivers in Saturday’s saloon class racing. It was good to see the largest entry since 2016 - just two short of the 49 maximum allowed by the rules.

In this class there’s a free choice of chassis, but motors are restricted to group 12. This class usually has the widest variety of bodies. The Betta Mustang proved by far the most popular, there were also quite a lot of Betta DTM Aston Martins.
It was an early start for Saturday practice, this was followed by best presented body judging and 1 minute qualifying runs. Thanks to our sponsor Ian Fitzpatrick who also judged best presented. The winner was Mick Metcalfe’s Mustang - the third year running Mick has won best presented

James Cleave was top qualifier with a 5.906 second lap, setting a new record for this class 21 milliseconds faster than the record he set last year. Second qualifier Will Stemman was also under last year’s record. The 47 entries were seeded into 6 heats, one with 7 drivers and 8 in the top five groups.

Main Grade Final
With clubman champion Elliot 0’Gorman making the overall final, Dave Stevenson was top qualifier for the main grade final in 9th overall. Mick Metcalfe led most of the first part of the race, Dave had a relatively slow start but was quick in the second half win by just a very small margin. Chris Aldridge took third ahead of Mark Steventon.

Mark Steventon Dave Stevenson Richard Beamish Mark Witham Pat Skene Mick Metcalfe Chris Aldridge Ant Hawkes

How’s this for a close race ?

First Dave 272.86

Second Mick 272.82

Dave’s winning car

Overall Final

By the end of the first segment James Cleave led by half a lap from Will Stemman and a lap from Josh Bryant. For the rest of the race the top 3 stayed the same, James was champion for the 4th year running, with Will a lap and a half back in second, then over 13 laps to Josh in third.

Gavin Wills was 4th in the early running. Mark and Greg Harwood eventually took 4th and 5th Elliot 0’Gorman showing impressive speed in his first Nationals was 6th having run as high as 4th after 5 segments. Various car troubles led to the retirements of Ben Woodward and Gavin.

James set a new 8x 4 minute record with Will also going faster than last year’s record.

Elliot, Josh, Ben, Gavin, James, Mark, Will , Greg