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Sadly, our second WHO Mod round of 2020 won't be taking place on Wednesday. However, we can still get in the WHO Mod mood over the next few days... why not show us the cars you'd be racing or development projects for future Mod races?

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A bit of WHO history - WHO Mod

When we were making plans for the club back in 2009, Robin and me chose two classes - a standard F1 class based on the EAHORC rules and our own WHO Modified class. The essentials of WHO Mod were a mass-produced 'toy' chassis, stock motor parts, any traction magnets, any gearing and the option of using a lexan body. Although we have added the Viper V1 chassis in recent years, the basics have remained pretty much the same.

The class didn't come out of nowhere - it is similar to the Derby HO Racing Club 'Tomy Open Wheel' (GroupC) class and certainly inspired by US Super Stock racing. However, having both raced at the Roedale BSCRA club in Brighton, we wanted something that linked our new club with traditional UK slot car club racing - super-fast, lexan bodies and scope for tuning and experimentation.

The 2010 season saw mostly club cars being run - in Mod these were BSRT G3 chassis with Tomy Super-G+ components and hard bodies. By the autumn, Robin was running his own hard-bodied Super-G+, I raced a short-wheelbase Mega-G in September and won - then Ashley raced a lexan-clad Super-G+ in November that his granddad (Dave) had prepared and thrashed us all. That was the first lexan car and lexan win - and the true beginning of WHO Mod.

       
       

2011 saw more experimentation. Robin's ultimate Life Like T was ahead of its time and blew the class apart. John had Martin Hill build him a couple of Marchon MR-1s which dominated the class for three seasons. I plugged away with quick, but fragile Mega-G creations. Most people focused on getting stronger and stronger traction magnets into Super-Gs. There were a lot of hot - and sometimes smoking - armatures!

In 1994, we introduced a second class to Mod nights - WHO Tuners. This was for hard-bodied cars with all standard components apart from gearing. Gareth won that first championship, while his younger brother Jon cruised to an impressive win in the overall WHO Mod Championship. In July of that year, we welcomed racers from the Derby and Chesterfield clubs to our WHO Mod night. Although our cars had similar origins, the WHO Mod cars had evolved to be much quicker than their DHORC-spec GC cousins...

       

Since Jon W ended John F's WHO Mod dominance, the class has been ultra-competitive. Our champions since 2014 have been Tony, Mike, John (again), Gareth and myself. The Viper V1 was included in WHO Mod from 2015 and has given us a much more level playing field. The Vipers are based on the Tomy Super-G+ and most of the parts are interchangeable. The Viper is a quality chassis and we've seen some sensational racing on Simon's wonderful Mod tracks. Interestingly, it was Mike D who scored the first Viper win on 1 April 2015 - exactly five years ago. Let's hope we're back racing again before too long.

       

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Here are some of Simon's fabulous tracks that he's designed for our WHO Mod races in 2019 and 2020. I'm sure the April one would have been great!

   

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This is what I would have been racing tonight - my Viper V1 with the Front Row Motorsport Wendell Scott throwback livery. It goes very nicely with my Truspeed MT1 controller - even though I prefer a good old Parma Eco resistor controller with all my other HO cars.

I've no idea who would have made the A final this time, but after January's race, I'd like to think I would have been in there with a shout

I suspect Gareth might have done okay in WHO Tuners... like he should have done last time.

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No racing last night, of course... but here's some action from last April's WHO Mod race