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The HO-UK Club Challenge has been running since 2015. It is a fun way to link the various HO clubs in the UK without organising any extra events or requiring club members to travel around the country. There are several events each year that bring HO racers together - the highlight being the HO Le Mans in Derby in November - but the Club Challenge is a month-by-month competition based on each club's regular calendar..

The five clubs currently signed-up for 2020 are:

• Derby HO Racing Club (DHORC) Facebook page here
  
• Four Lane Black Top HO (FLBT-HO) Website here
  
• HO South East (HOSE) Facebook page here
  
• The HO Racing League (THORL) Website here
  
• Worthing HO Racing (WHO) website here
  

HO clubs in the UK have a wide variety of classes, rules and formats. One thing we that we do have in common is a heats and finals format. The HO-UK Club Challenge ranks racers on success in their finals, irrespective of which final they end up in after qualifying heats. Based on performance in their first final of the race, racers get four points for first, three points for second, two for third and one for fourth place.

Because each club has a different number of events counting towards the Club Challenge, Doug (TopDown) has fine-tuned an algorithm that keeps the table as competitive as possible. Over the five previous years, we've had five different winners from five different clubs. Here's the 2020 table after all the January races...

       

HOSE and THORL are still to start their seasons.

The full Club Challenge spreadsheet is available on the HO-UK website: www.ho-uk.org.uk/ho-uk-club-challenge

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Four clubs have now kicked off their 2020 Challenge, with THORL holding their first double-header meeting last Sunday. We now have DHORC, FLBT-HO, THORL and WHO club members contesting places over the rest of 2020...

       

Everyone's best wishes go to DHORC, who have been badly hit by the recent storms - their traditional Rockingham weekend being cancelled and all the March club nights postponed to allow the roofing on their club room to be repaired. We'll have to wait and see what that does to their calendar and algorithm - but Nick and all at DHORC are determined to complete their usual 20 rounds.