[BAracer]

Day 1 completed! 

5hrs of quality off-road slotting in the company of experts, all willing to share their knowledge with me. And just being able to touch and feel the fast cars is fantastic learning...Lesson 1 - a fast car is either very heavy,  or it contains some trick Spanish parts in it. Or both!

Difficult to photograph cars in action when you are competing, so here are some snaps from the day.

   

   

   

   

   

Custom.surface texture is a big feature of all the tracks. So twigs, stones, gravel and what looked like mini plastic pallets all proved trickier than all the usual humps, dunes and bridges. And what I learnt about tuning a drop arm to get over all these features was worth the entry fee alone!

Lots of playing around with track voltage and controller sensitivity to try and find the optimum trigger balance to suit each track.

And tyre grip is massively important (when isn't it!). I thought I had fitted soft tyres to my cars, but part of tomorrow will be spent investigating how some of the cars in our group stick like glue whilst mine look like they are running on ice.

[Kevan]

WOW! 

[Graham]

What a fantastic array of tracks, feeling very jealous.

Your doing a really great job in relaying the atmosphere there 

[BAracer]

Sunday Breakfast at base camp!

   


Weather...overcast

   

[BAracer]

Saturday was three laps per circuit, Sunday was two laps so that the event finished by lunchtime and everyone had the afternoon to head back home.

Saturday was about learning about the tracks and how to get my entries round them in one piece. Sunday was attack day...so double expresso coffee with my breakfast pattisaire, up the voltage on each track compared to Saturdsy, and turn the sensitivity knob to 11 on my Truspeed!

So on with the racing...the organiser Francois Favre and Martine watching over nine busy tracks
   

[BAracer]

Some of the inspired texturing of the tracks...

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

[BAracer]

Some interesting features...

A dip turned into a bridge
   

A fun section...note the positioning of the jump, just incase you were feeling cocky about attacking the dip!
   

An interesting combination (which I got through to the cheers of my colleagues!)
   

If one flexible bridge wasn't enough, try three!
   

[BAracer]

Some of the opposition...

I was lucky enough to to be in the group that contained the 1st and 2nd placed cars...here's the overall winner
   

And here is the Peugeot that came second (next to a large, wide and very fast quad bike)
   

A beautiful Toyota
   

And a very fast something...(landcruiser?)
   

And this truck from the Spanish entrant came 5th overall
   

And just found this link to the car that won the judges prize for Best in Show!

An old Citroen

And the wonderful thing about being there is that I know what is under each of those bodies!

[BAracer]

And a few souvenir photos...

Proof I was there! 
   

The prize-giving, handed out by Diane Thierry-Mieg, the ex-wife of the Paris Dakar rally founder  Thierry Sabine
   

A display on the man himself...
   

My raffle prize (and project for FDD5!)
   

And the results (that I need to study in a bit more depth, 5 different classes in there)
   

Briare has a famous aquaduct that takes a canal over the Loire 
   

   

[BAracer]

And that's it from me! 

A fantastic, meticulously organised event that was fun to compete in and priceless in terms of learning and honing my off-road driving skills. 
Hopefully I will be able to make use of them for the forthcoming rally season, and return to FDD5 in the Autumn of 2025 in Perpignan!

Merci Francois!