Very few online entries, slow arrivals through the gate and dark clouds hanging over the track ; that’s how gloomy our race meeting started.  Fortunately the day turned out much better in every way. As the early morning progressed, more and more drivers rocked up and even the sun decided to play along. 

Allow me a little gossip; the Wight family are – shall we call it ‘very sensitive’ for gloomy weather? We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw Tiny’s car coming in through the gate.  I know they are reading this and they will forgive me this little gossip. Haha.

Sometimes the 200mm (10^th scale) class is enormous in comparison with the GT (8^th scale) class, but on this day it was quite the opposite.  We only had Jason and Stephen racing 10^th scale.  The rest were all GT drivers.

Best presented RC body award:

Charmaine Wright, boasting her husband Tiny’s paint job.

Congratulations!

 

200mm nitro:

Round 1

Jason Landsberg’s best lap  – 17.15 Average  - 18.50s

Stephen Smith’s best lap     – 17.13  Average – 18.62

Round 2

Long flameout for Jason and DNS for Stephen

Round 3

An early retirement for Jason, probably due to a flameout, but not before he bettered his performance by completing a quick 16.97s lap.

Stephen won this round and he also improved on his previous best lap. – 17.04s

 Final 30 minute race:

Phew…! This was a nail biting half hour race… Let us look at it closely:

Stephen was put in a bad spot when he lost 60.58 seconds of racing within the first 10 minutes into this race. One minute does not seem like much, but taking into account that it also means the loss of at least six laps, it is a HUGE mishap. And it obviously impacted badly on the final results…

After Stephen’s one minute absence, the gap between him and Jason was 4 laps. Stephen then caught up steadily. Then it was Jason’s turn to meet with Bad Luck.  A belt came off and it was him who lost 58.14 valuable seconds.  A couple of more minor hiccups were hampering Stephen, but that just contributed to making this race extremely exciting. The gap between them became less and less as they came closer to the end of the race. The last few laps were equal and it the winner was determined by the driver with the least car trouble. Jason won the race with an average of  .08 of a second!

 

8^th scale Nitro  (GT class) :

8 drivers  - Like in Snowhite and the 7 dwarfs  ..Except that Charmaine, being the only (very petite) lady driver, in this case can be described as the dwarf amongst the 7 men.

A very competitive race, with only 3 seconds gap between the winner and the last person to cross the line throughout the day. The three qualifiers as well as the Final race were won by a different person every time.

Round 1 – Johan Korff

Round 2 – André Steenekamp

Round 3 – Jacques Brits

The Final  - Wayne Smith

The quickest lap for the whole day in this class was 17.86s by Wayne Smith, followed by 17.87s by Jacques Brits. Well done, the both of you!

 

 Final results:

1. Wayne Smith
2. Jacques Brits
3. Jakkie Landsberg