What a surprise it had been, waking up to a hundred percent overcast sky..! No rain or even quick Gauteng thunder storms were forecasted, that’s why we were caught off guard..

 

 

Hey readers, this looked seriously like a rainy day ahead of us.  But as you may know, RC drivers aren’t afraid of a “possible” rain shower, so we just went on with our racing business.  It almost became really cold, around 9’o clock..  And guess what happened next? The (very thick) clouds subsided and it turned out a warm day.  Actually a HOT day, when I look at Henry’s red, sun burnt forehead. 

I assume that a lot of 2018 drivers are still hesitating…checking out their finances, before they make a final decision whether they can still afford RC racing this year. We are totally aware of the current financial challenges and we will wait patiently for them…

The race:

Henry took out the beautiful RC body that Nico van Vuuren customize –painted many, many years ago. It is the one that he entered for a concours de‘elegance that we hosted. (May I say: after the race, it is no more in a show condition? ) Photo on top. 

Andre Steenekamp also showed up with a freshly painted pink Porche. He has won the award for Best Presented RC body of the Day.

 

Qualifiers:

André won the 1^st round, with Henry in 2^nd position and Esmarie in 3^rd place. It needs to be mentioned here that Piet encountered problems with his PT, because the timing system did not pick up at least 3 of his laps. He then rather started using the club transponders for the rest of the day.

Esmarie won round 2, with Henry in 2^nd and Rolan Ferreira in 3^rd place.

Andre won again in round 3, this time he was followed by Piet du Toit and Henry in 3^rd.

Round 4 was won by Rolan Ferreira, who was only now completely done with all the maintenance on his car that he was supposed to do at home, before the weekend… He nevertheless won in style, boasting a nice 17.8 sec lap, equaling Andre’s 17.8 in the 1^st round.

The 30 minute Final :

André, being the top qualifier, kicked off well, but after 20 laps he lost a minute or two due to a flameout or something. But after another two laps, that pink Porche had a runaway, almost into the neighbor’s plot.. and broke some parts on the way, as well as bending the new body. So sorry about that.

That left the field open for Piet and Rolan to fight off one another for the 1^st place on the podium for January 2019.

The rest of the race was a nail biting experience. Those two names, Piet and Rolan, continuously replaced each other on the computer screen. One moment it was Piet in the lead, just to change to Rolan, the next moment.

Congratulations with your frequent 17 second laps, Rolan, Piet and André.  Quickest lap – 17.37s.

Up to the last 30 seconds it was anybody’s guess to who the winner was going to be.

When the siren went off to announce the end of the race, Rolan crossed the line to bring his total laps to 91. And when Piet crossed the line, his tally was 92 laps.

Henry came in on 3^rd position. During the race he encountered a flameout or two and drove with a rear diff that wasn’t functioning properly, but he and his HongNor still managed to complete the race. 73 laps.

Esmarie completed a total of 50 laps, with a GT that didn’t co-operate that well…

Francois Geyser entered for the race, but his GT just refused to start in the morning and there was not enough time to establish exactly what the problem was… Next time you show them, Francois!