[woodcote]

Hour Four+

There would be slightly more than a final hour, it was an extra 15 minutes last year. The sixteen lap lead for AIM-9 wasn't going to be chased down on pace alone, but a car issue for the Aston could see both Gearzilla and Shift Happens! back in contention for the win and - for Gearzilla - the championship. Oliver was into his fourth and final stint, Kev was driving for ASTCOM-One, but otherwise the other four three-driver teams were back to their racing-opening schedule: Ollie, Dean, Ash and John...

   

There were a mix of Hard, Soft and Intermediate tyres on the cars. The track was still damp, but only just. The Hard tyres were good enough and lasted the longest. By the end of the first twenty minutes, Ollie had added another three laps to the lead and Dean had closed the gap to Oliver right down to one lap. Ash had kept the Porsche ahead of John's Escargot Aston. The driver change saw Mike on for AIM-9, Isaac for Gearzilla and Jeremy for Shift Happens! A long stop for Gearzilla put Jeremy up to second, but any hope of car troubles for AIM-9 looked slim. Mike kept the Aston right on the pace and the lead edged out to over twenty laps for the first time. There were just 125 laps to run.

Stephen took the twelfth stint for AIM-9, although it looked now we'd have another ten minutes to run. Pit stops would be vital now for the chasing teams. Shift Happens! had about enough fuel in the tank to last them to the end of the race, but were running Soft tyres. Gearzilla would need another fuel stop, but had longer-lasting Hard tyres on. As the leaders hit 45 laps to go and pitted for a final set of Softs, the four hour standings look like this...

AIM-9 955 laps
Shift Happens! 933 (-22)
Gearzilla 932 (-23)
Laps in Concentration 903 (-52)
Écurie Escargot 896 (-59)
ASTCOM-One 854 (-101)

Ollie came back on to see out the final 45 laps for the leaders. Dean took over from Daniel in the first of the Mercedes and Isaac stayed on for Gearzilla - as did Terry in fourth-placed Porsche. John and Simon swapped in for the Escargots and ASTCOM-One...

   

And there were no late race dramas, no-one running out of fuel or tyres - although a couple of teams ran things a bit fine. Ollie took the AIM-9 Aston across the line for the thousandth time and the race was over...

   

Here's the official result and some interesting stats...

   
You'll want to click on the image to make it bigger.

Huge congratulations to Mike, Ollie and Stephen for a near-perfect race and beating last year's race time by five minutes.

         

         

         

Thank you to Slot Car Magazine for the prizes!

These are the stint stats...

   

The double points haul also gave AIM-9 victory in the championship...

   

Congratulations to Mike, Ollie and Stephen - and to regular team member Steve, who was unable to make this one...

   

That's it for our GT racing for another year - although GT cars may well feature at the Birkett Six-Hour Relay in October.

A big thank you to everyone who made this year's championship so enjoyable - to Mike and Simon for the track designs, the set-up and race control teams, everyone who stayed behind to pack away and to all the racers across all four races.