[woodcote]

I can’t quite believe that it’s five and a half months since we last raced... Lockdown restrictions continue to be lifted, albeit very gradually – and we’re very fortunate to have low infection rates here in Sussex. However, there is no good news about when we might return to the Barn.

There are two main hurdles...

• The church are making plans to re-open the Barn during the autumn, but it is not an ideal situation for them and might not be sustainable.
  
• With the precarious nature of the pandemic and extensive restrictions, we cannot ensure our race meetings would be safe and fun.
  

For those of us in the highest risk groups, safely attending a race night at the Barn could still be a long way off. And that is another important factor for the club. Many people have expressed the desire for us to return only when it is safe for all of us to do so. I also don’t want to ask WHO volunteers to take on unfamiliar and stressful tasks when I can’t be there. Setting up and running a WHO event is hard work at the best of times – with the dozens of extra Covid-safe things to think about and implement, it is too much.

   

I have now cancelled all our events in September and October – and the two Saturdays in November and December. A full day of racing is likely to be off the cards until next summer. With that in mind, I am working out a calendar for 2021 that will be flexible – almost entirely Wednesday evenings – with one HO night and one WHO/digital event each month. The dates will be in the diary and hopefully we will be able to use most of them. The HO events will stick to the normal three-class calendar, but we can be flexible with the digital classes we run each time.

Flexibility is key at the moment. A useful measure might be the official Coronavirus Alert Level. When that drops down to Level 2, we could look at getting the club out of mothballs, plan some cleaning and maintenance, hold a session to test out whatever restrictions we’ll still have to work with and – only then – decide whether we open up for our regular WHO events. The alert level is currently at Level 3 – with all the unpredictability of the autumn and winter still to come into play.

It is impossible to predict exactly when we might be back. The most important thing is that we don’t put anyone at the club - or in the wider community -  at any unnecessary risk. The club remains perfectly safe in hibernation.

Although not the same as meeting up at the Barn, the socially-distant and Covid-safe HO drag racing events have helped fill a void on Wednesday evenings - there will be a second 5-race Winter Series running from November to March. Plus there are the daily Facebook and Twitter posts keeping us connected - there's plenty of news and fabulous archive content to share. And we also have the WHO Racing subforum to use here at SlotRacer Online.