[Graham]

So finally I would like to thank the host's who gave up their spare time to stage this series, and of course all the entrants who like me, mostly knew nothing about "Raid" slot car racing but I hope are a little enlightened as a result of participating.

My overall thought are :
It was by luck that after we started the series I was able to purchase a Ninco track which in addition to my SCX set up enabled me to compare both types of track set up's. I really like the NINCO Track as it seems better made and more robust with a nice surface. But I would have to say that the SCX is more testing of the cars ability to work with a bigger range of obstacles and really is more Raid orientated than the NINCO.
So that brings me to point that surely this type of activity is more about testing the cars ability to cope with hazards etc, then just being another fast car track.
And as a result of course the SCX cars with their long drop arms are by far better to cope with Extreme track surfaces then the Ninco's.
However the NINCO have a more extensive range of vehicles, and it was good to see most of them entered in this competition.

The Pro range Class was of course dominated by the Avant Mitsubishi's, initially I had placed my Mittoos chassis I-Pace in with the Scratch build but when I received the other scratch build cars it was clear that this would not be a comparatively fair contest    (Sorry scratch builders), so I opted to include it in with the Pro car class (Avants and Scaleauto's). As you saw this did not do me any favours, but it was at least more of a contest by doing so 

This brings me to the question of "Mitoos" based cars, they are really heavy and cumbersome, but on the other hand run over the obstacles with least effort, I can imagine that on some of the continental European club home made circuits they may be the "must have" types to run. But on the limited home tracks they do not seem to really fulfill their potential.

Then there was the scratch builds. Ummm!
In my mind the Datsun Truck of Kevin Veitch potentially would have won this class outright if it had not been thwarted by technical issues.  Right from the start of the series it lost its ability to control the droparm, and suffered as such all the way through. Ironically this morning it was superb for the first run, I don't know exactly why but it ran around the track really well for the whole 3 minutes. And then next run it was jack knifing again, along with the wires coming out of the guide shoe. By the third run attempt the guide shoe had actually broke    Overall I felt this car could notched up even more laps if it was more robust. Mike's Mitsubishi faired even worse, after a couple of attempts it was clear that the gears were running really roughly, and then the motor came loose in the chassis, so I decided enough was enough.
So that leaves Pip's Fiesta which managed a reasonable number of laps although there was quite a few de-slots. But even more so with Bernies' Panda, it was very fast around the smooth bits, but only once managed a full lap without coming off over the rocks. Every other lap on all 3 runs it deslotted on the obstacles.