[woodcote]

Race Report - Qualifying Heats

With 31 racers booked in by 7 o'clock, it was going to be a busy evening - and it was a second-string race control team, Ash was unwell and wisely stayed at home...

   

We welcomed Steve, Dawn and Russell for their first visits to the club, plus Ray and Dexter who were making their HO debuts, having raced at the Scalextric digital event three weeks ago. On top of that, it was an almost full house of HO regulars - making it the equal seventh highest attendance since the club's opening night fourteen years ago. And to top it all, Ozzy had brought along almost enough doughnuts to feed everyone!

There'd be no hanging about in order to get through 32 heats and ten finals - even if things went perfectly, a finish a fair bit later than the advertised 9.30pm was on the cards. Most of the HO debutants were in action early on - all of them hit the ground running with solid scores above 20 laps. Russell was the star rookie during the first run, the white lane club car hitting the heady heights of 29.50 laps and beating Gen6 contender Kev. That was a very good Gen6 score - Kev would eventually get into the mid-thirties, as would both Keith and Deborah...

   

The fastest five Super-G+ cars topped the list at the halfway point. Although no-one had cracked the 40 lap mark, we did have 39+ scores for Terry, Oliver and Andy. As for the under-16s, Ollie led Dylan, Dexter, Isaac and Ethan - Ethan suffering car failure in his second heat... so that would be his dropped score. This is how the top of the pile looked after sixteen heats - everyone having completed two...

   

Race Coordinator mixed up the driver groups for the second pair of heats, some racers finishing their quota early, others having to be patient. With such a big turnout, there were plenty of close battles throughout the field - juniors, debutants, inter-family rivalry and potential championship battles. Ozzy had to leave us with one of his heats still to go, but still enough to score some points and qualify just above fellow class of 2023 member Kevin...

   

Keith got the better of Deborah in the Gen6 battle - although it promised to be very close in the finals. Kev wasn't far behind, but would need to win his final and step up to challenge the top two. Ollie managed to shake off his under-16 challengers - the closest turned out to be Dexter, with a superb debut drive. At the top, Oliver was first to finish, but didn't have quite enough to top the charts. Terry put himself top with another 39 lap score, but Andy grabbed pole four heats later. Ryan had the chance to beat Oliver to the third automatic A Final spot in the very last heat, but it all went rather pear-shaped for the youngster. He had to make do with fifth, just behind Gareth...

   

And here are all the stats from the qualifying heats, just click the image to make it bigger...

   

*One error is that Tracy was driving a Gen6 Mega-G+ car to put her an excellent fourth in class. If you spot any other mistakes, let us know.

Next is the mammoth task of reporting on ten exciting finals! Expect them in two parts, sometime on Friday. Or watch the video to find out who won.