Raid Car de-briefing
Ok guys I know I gave your cars a hard time......a very hard time
, but in my view these vehicles should be tested more so for their capability then their basic sprint speed. If I could have made it even more testing I would have done, so that's a warning for next year
However what really surprised me generally was the fact that with most cars getting stuck on one or more of the trial sections, the final combined times were really very close in most cases. And I had to resort to the secondary measurement quite a few times to determine the eventual placings.
Class R1 Ninco
This was becoming frustrating, having convinced myself that the Ninco's could reasonably carefully negotiate the grass trials based on my own non competing Bowler, car after car got booged down in the grass. And then just after I was loosing faith, along came the Bowler of Mike S. It ran across the grass even better than my test car
I had noted that most cars in this class were sporting the original Ninco tyres, but those who had been more adventurous were rewarded, and Mikes tyres seemed perfectly equipped for the long grass, so well done to him. Even more impressed because this Bowler was a little lower than the other cars, so on initial inspection I had ruled out any immediate excitement, only to a feeling of "eureka" when I ran it. It was great running the AA Recovery Pajero, with the lights on the banner, but all that additional weight in the back of the van slowed its progress a little.
Class R2 SCX
Andy's Thunderflash Sand buggy was the star for me of this class, nothing phased it, give me more trials it was shouting. However when I combined the results I was surprised that James Montero had quietly tied I was surprised, perhaps I had driven the Buggy too cautiously or perhaps the Montero more adventurously, I really don't know, but it was a very near thing. I loved both the Peugeots, and were certainly on a par with the others. Oxo cubes VW Touareg struggled due to the eyelet falling out every few laps, unfortunately the rough surfaces just shook them out.
I have replaced the thin braids with thicker and more coarse ones now which feel tighter in the guide shoe, so hopefully this car can make some progress as the Rounds continue.
Class R3 Pro-car
I had not run the RoadRunners Porsche 959 before, it had always been one of those "shelf cars" too good to run. But as the entry details became apparent, I felt I could not just run another Avant Mitsubishi Lancer, since there was already 3 entered. So I brushed off the dust from the box, gave it a quick service, bunged some weight in and thought to myself " I bet it's going to be last". I did not even give it a sneaky run it whilst setting up the track, and it had never seen the trial sections. So I am absolutely delighted that it it just....manged to pip the Lancers to first place, at least on this round.
The Hummer was a total disaster, I thought being so wide it was bound to have an advantage, but it fell off everywhere even on the normal sections. I persevered to the bitter end, but after 4 minutes a lane, I really should have given it the DNF.
Class 4 Open
Similar to my Porsche 959, the Odyssey had not even glimpsed he track before running it for real. I had proudly decorated it with much more time than I gave to the Mitoos chassis which I just carried over from the Jaguar I pace of last year. But with the new Odyssey body it was in its element, great , ran the fastest of any vehicle and had the perfect one lane run without any "offs" at all. The 2nd lane I got over over confident, trying to break the previous new lap record. But it backfired abit and suffered like many others at the SCX bridge trial section. I was convinced that the Mitsubishi Pajero of Savage GT was going to be the one to beat with that NSR motor and Scaleauto Chassis, right up to the point that I added up the timings from both lanes. Then I quite unexpectedly found that the rather cumbersome Transit van had sneaked into 2nd position by virtue of the faster lap over the Pajero. Very surprised, it did not feel that fast when running it and with so much weight that it felt like a ship at sea.......a little like the real thing I guess
And with full lights fitted as well
The Citroen of Qman was quite stable across the stone based track surface, even manged the severe bridge climbs well, and even more so the grass which others had got bogged down in, but after the SCX dunes and ramp jump, the SCX bridge was a bridge too far
If only Qman had fitted those longer motor wires, it may have been a different story. The Datsun truck seemed to struggle more this year in general, on one lane ran a reasonable time but the 2nd Lane was a nightmare and by this time it was getting very late in the day, as the time approached 4 minutes with only 7 laps ran, I gave up and gave it a DNF. The good news was that the shorter drop guide arm seemed less prone to lifting, but I feel something has been lost in the process. Sorry Kev
So that's my very, very long initial briefing, but it reflects my enthusiasm for trying to make the event work
![[+]](https://slotracer.online/community/images/bootbb/collapse_collapsed.png)