Rally Report: WHO Winter Stages
As in keeping with the winter theme, there was plenty of chaos on the stages for our 2025 WHO Winter Stages. Firstly, Chalkpit Lane was stranded in Chichester - a very late call, but just in time for Jupp's Farm to be thrown in the back of the car for a short trip from Ferring. That gave us four stages, three winter-themed and the other maybe hiding some black ice?
Set-up was smooth, with all four stages running very nicely by the time the hordes descended around 6pm, eager for their first hit of rally action since October...
Twenty-six people came along and that meant a whopping 67 cars on the entry list - beating the previous record of 58 at the inaugural event last May...
Rally HQ was busy, but fairly calmly & efficiently, getting everyone allocated to four groups, which were all on the stages by 7 o'clock...
Stage One: Friston Forest
Winner:
Stage Cancelled
The latest incarnation of Jeremy's Classic / SCX layout was looking fabulous and running faultlessly. Those old track pieces are not the easiest to put together for a temporary stage and to deliver good power delivery. However, with a lot of time and hard work Jeremy had nailed it with Friston Forest...
Which made it completely gutting when what seems to be a glitchy controller blew up the power supply after just a handful of drivers from the first group had completed the stage. Jeremy and Mike spent a good half hour trying to fix things, but ended up taking out all Jeremy's wiring and trying to run it from a single power straight - in hindsight, it was never going to work sufficiently. Without Jeremy's power distribution, the experience deteriorated to the point that the stage was not passable...
The difficult decision was made to cancel the stage and remove any completed times from the spreadsheet. Cancelling stages is not unusual in a real rally, but it was sad to do it at the Barn. However, the two groups who did spend time on Friston Forest enjoyed themselves, especially over the humpback bridge...
Fingers-crossed Friston Forest will be back in action for April's WHO Spring Stages.
Stage Two: Jupp's Farm
Winner: Mike Dadson, SRC Porsche 914/6 GT
In as a last-gasp replacement for Chalkpit Lane, the original layout of Jupp's Farm made an unexpected appearance. Loved by some, hated by others - this bone-shaker of a ride over Ninco off-road sections also featured the retail version of the Johnny's Workshop rally timer. Once we'd figured out the best position for the proximity sensor to work, it proved to be a very handing timer.
A lot of seconds can be won or lost on this stage. Two cars completed the three double laps in less than 40 seconds - Mike's stage-winning SRC Porsche 914/6 in 39.39 and Andy's Ninco Subaru Impreza in 39.61. Terry was third with his Ferrari 308 GTB with a time of 43.92, followed by Nick's SRC Capri which stopped the clock at 44.03.
We have a lot of standard SCX and Scalextric cars in the field at WHO and these will compete for two manufacturers' championships in 2025. Making the early running in their respective competitions were Andy's SCX Fiat 124 and Scott's vintage Scalextric Porsche 959. Ollie took first blood in the junior championship with an impressive sixth place overall for his Ninco Impreza. James B put in a stellar effort, grabbing 29th spot with the SCX Seat Ibiza club car - it loves the bumpy stuff.
Which is more than can be said for the McCann SCX Panda, but the Dakar livery did look in its element on the off-road track...
All the results for Stage Two are in this table...
Click on the image to get a full-size version you can zoom in to read or download to your device.
Jupp's Farm will return in April with a different, end-to-end configuration.
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