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Scalextric World Championship at WHO Racing
#1

   

The 2014 Scalextric World Championship was the penultimate year of the event and the last that had a proper international feel. There had been races in Australia, the Caribbean, Singapore, Holland, Denmark and across the UK. The final round took place at Worthing HO Racing on Saturday 20 December.

We'd brought our WHO/digital offshoot to the Barn earlier in the year - after a couple of years of Mike thrilling us with his digital rug racing. Mike and me had chatted to Adrian Norman at the UK Slot Car Festival in May and he suggested we host a round of the Scalextric World Championship. We'd provide plenty of local publicity for the brand, we'd get the Platinum set to add to the club's kit and the opportunity to attract lots of potential racers.

For a flavour of what hosting an event involved, here's the guide to the 2015 SWC:

In the couple of months beforehand, around 5,000 fliers and posters were distributed to local venues, shops, cafes, schools, workplaces and all the local libraries in our part of West Sussex. Several press releases were written and sent out - and small articles were printed in all the Worthing and Sussex newspapers. This one from the Worthing Herald...

   

Mike and me did the rounds of local radio stations, including a trip to the BBC Radio Sussex studios in Brighton the day before the event...

   

The Saturday saw a very early start and a great turn-out of WHO helpers...

   

The World Championship track was the standard layout of the Scalextric Digital Platinum set - a small circuit that was the same for every World Championship round, together with the same un-fettled Super-Resistant GT cars. A set of precise rules & regulations came with from Scalextric and we played everything by the book...

   

Alongside the little Platinum layout, Mike designed a big track - based on the nearby Goodwood circuit - to showcase our WHO/digital formats with SSDC race management software, fuel burn and pit stops...

   

After a busy few hours setting up, we were ready... but would anyone turn up?
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#2

Helped by hourly reminders on local radio, there was a queue to get in at 11 o'clock! That meant the World Championship track was packed from the first minute...

   

The Scalextric format and our paperwork helped things along and we quickly got into a rhythm. Mostly, we limited the racing to four drivers at a time - four cars were enough on the small digital track. There was a driver briefing, practice session and then the cars were lined up for the race - the winner of each ten lap race had their race time added to the leader board.

   

From 11am to 4pm the World Championship track was incredibly busy - with over a hundred different people racing in 80 races and a total of 800 laps. We collected names, email addresses and post codes, so we know most people came from across East and West Sussex, but some travelled further - with the intrepid Al making a day trip from Cambridge and taking most of the pictures and video clips for us.

   

Racers could race as many times as they wanted to, but with so many people waiting patiently, no-one really hogged the track. And there was the big SSDC layout and Darren's second-hand Scalextric shop to keep everyone entertained.

   

Had we not called time at 4 o’clock, some people would have gone on all night trying to beat the top time of the day - a brilliant 10 laps in 26.930 seconds by Ann Bird from East Preston. Second, with a superb time of 27.283 seconds, was Henry Fellingham. I was third with 28.618, Mike Dadson fourth with 28.714 and Barry Borret fifth with 28.776 seconds.

   

Not only was Ann our winner on the day, but she also claimed runner-up spot in the World Championship - a wonderful achievement and one that made the news across the south of England. Ann and me were back on BBC Radio Sussex on Monday morning and Ann featured in the regional daily newspaper and here on the BBC website. There was also a brief feature on Sunday evening on the ITV Meridian local news in Kent - which Adrian and the Scalextric team saw and were delighted by.

       

Australian Pete Dimmers was the 2014 world champion with a time of 23.12 seconds.

Like many others, Ann and her daughter Olivia made the most of their day at the Barn by racing on the big SSDC Goodwood layout...

   

The morning saw some fast and frantic GT racing before some more leisurely - but no less competitive - non-mag action in the afternoon.

   

The first non-mag race saw the debut of a new Goodwood Revival class, which is still part of our WHO/digital repertoire.

   


To round off the day on the big track was our usual team race action using the Scalextric Nascars. Ann and Olivia again starred - their team coming home third.

   

At the front there was a tie between the teams of Stephen and Daniel - very fitting given the massive amount of hard work the twins put in to running race control on the big track all day.

   

Looking back, we now know that several dozen of our first-timers that day have returned and raced with us - some occasionally, other for a year or two and half a dozen became WHO regulars - racing digital and HO. It was also a real bonding experience for the club - racers mucking in, taking on responsibility and running races for the first time. Stephen quickly became the WHO race controller, with his brother Daniel stepping into his shoes when Stephen left for university (and became a BSCRA racer).

Here's some video of the event...



It was a truly knackering day, but hugely enjoyable - and we vowed to do it again in 2015...
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#3

       

A year later and a lot had changed at Scalextric. New management had stripped out much of the experience in the Scalextric team - Adrian Norman included - and the staff who set the 2015 Scalextric World Championship in motion were no longer at Margate by the time the autumn came around. Not surprisingly, the Championship was a shadow of its former self, with just a handful of UK events and one in Holland, although no-one is sure that ever took place. A single brand-new member of staff was left with the World Championship as a very low priority on an extremely long list of tasks that probably would have been shared by a team of 5 or 6 people the year before...

However, Sarah was keen to support us and topped up our SWC kit with some new cars and a bunch of prizes for the day. With the experience of 2014 under our belts, we sort of knew what we were doing. The media work was slicker and we managed even more pre-event coverage than before, making the regional daily newspaper's top five shows of the week...

   

It was Mike who did the interviews on local radio this time and he obviously did a great job as three stations gave the event plenty of coverage in the week before and regular mentions on the day...

   

Another early start focused on setting up the big SSDC track...

       

Two of us set up the much smaller World Championship track within an hour...

       

We learned a few things from our first attempt and the format was streamlined to fit more races into each hour. We'd also spread the load of race control on the SWC track. This year we were ready in plenty of time for doors opening at 11am and even had time for a couple of crew-only races to warm the track up...

       

One slight fly-in-the-ointment was that another Scalextric World Championship event was running in Harlow on the same day. The organiser hadn't been easy to track down. With all our press work, we wanted to tell our local media who had won the World Championship within minutes of the events ending. After an uncomfortable conversation on the Friday evening, I wasn't at all hopeful this was going to work. However, by Saturday morning, my focus was on our event and making sure everyone had a fabulous day...
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#4

Happy Days...
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#5

Down on the South Coast, things were busy. In all, just over a hundred people raced during the day - and it was a much younger and more local group of racers than 2014...

   

Racing on the big SSDC track was more organised this year and more people paid their money and took part...

   

The competition for the Scalextric World Championship was fierce, especially between the youngsters!

   

And the younger generation did well on the big track too. We managed to get through two complete non-mag GT series - six races of six, followed by the six winners meeting in a grand final. First time round it was six-year-old Noah - a star from the summer’s events at the Brighton Open Market - who won...

   

The second GT competition saw WHO regular Duncan taking first place and WHO-newbie Callum was top junior. This year I wasn't tied to the World Championship track so much - fellow club members got stuck in to running the races and collecting contact details...

   

Again, dozens visiting the Barn for the first time on this special Saturday have returned over the years for the occasional race. Some - including multiple WHO/digital junior champion Jonathon - have become WHO regulars.

   

A 45 minute Nascar team race took place on the SSDC track in the afternoon - and it was an incredibly close finish with Mike Mc, Neil and Duncan (aka Haven’t Got a Clue) beating the Millennium Falcons (John, Alex and me) by just one lap. That showcased exactly what to expect from our regular WHO/digital events.

   

Meanwhile, things were getting exciting on the Scalextric World Championship layout. The clock was ticking round to the finish time of four o'clock and there were plenty of youngsters who wanted a final shot at the top prize - plus a few grown-ups who wanted to log their first time of the day...

   

We called time at 4pm - and after 64 ten-lap races, local Goring schoolboy Vlad was the winner. Vlad had set the fastest race time of the day - 32.537 seconds - with one of the Maserati Trofeos. He received a medal, T-shirt and a Micro Scalextric set...

   

Following close behind were WHO father and son John and Alex - with times of 33.047 and 33.927 seconds. We'd have to wait to see where exactly those times would fit into the overall World Championship leaderboard.

Over on the big track, we ran a few more GT races - before ending the day with a ten minute, six car Goodwood Revival pairs race...

   

This, the proper debut of our new WHO/digital class, saw Mike D and Duncan pilot the awesome George Turner Ford Galaxie to an impressive win...

   

And that was the end of a brilliant day at the Barn...



It was a great team effort and pretty relaxed too. We knew what we were doing this year!

However, in terms of the media coverage, that was just the start of the fun...
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#6

Despite receiving no reply to a phone call and several texts to Harlow on the Saturday afternoon, we did know that Vlad hadn't won the Scalextric World Championship. There had been a previous event in Harlow over the summer and the fastest race time of 24.493 seconds for a 10-lap race was set by 14-year-old Ted Trim. Remember that name...

By the time we'd packed away and I'd driven home, I'd left a couple more messages for the Harlow organiser - but with no response. It was now three hours after the end of our event and I had a BBC journalist on the phone asking me what had happened and who was World Champion. They were very keen to follow up their earlier story, which had proved very popular. All I could tell them was what had happened in Worthing, but that was it...

The journalist had already dug out a business phone number for Ted Trim's dad and I gave them the phone number of the Harlow organiser to chase mercilessly. An hour later later I had a very short text from the Harlow guy - no-one had beaten Ted's time. I passed that info on to the BBC journalist, who got to work...

Ted and his dad were interviewed at length that night on BBC Radio Five Live - the BBC's national news & sport station. A new BBC website article started to trend - and became one of the top three most-read stories on the BBC News UK website in the following 24 hours. Video clips from the Barn were added, plus quotes from Ted and his dad. The article is still on the BBC site: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35145243

   

At 3.30pm on Sunday, the Harlow organiser re-appeared, posting on a forum thread to say he'd spoken to the BBC and would be sending them some photographs the following day. Of course, the story would no longer be news by then - at least not on the BBC. The Mirror - the UK's second-largest circulation daily newspaper - had picked up the story from the BBC website and phoned me Sunday morning. They put an article on their website and a small write-up appeared in the early editions of the paper on Monday.

   

Parts of the BBC website story were also re-hashed on various news and tech websites around the world - as is the way with news these days. Nearer to home, The Argus - the Sussex regional daily newspaper - ran a story in their Monday edition, using the press release and pictures I'd sent out when I got home Saturday, plus a brief follow-up phone call that evening. The web version is here.

   

BBC Radio Sussex also interviewed me on air Monday morning. And then - apart from a piece in the weekly Worthing Herald over Christmas - it was old news. Or so I thought.

The Scalextric team had followed what happened - they were delighted. A few weeks after Christmas, I heard from Sarah again. She'd had Ted Trim's mum on the phone, extremely annoyed that her son hadn't received the big prize promised by the "Scalextric member of staff" at the Harlow event. Sarah had tried to contact the Harlow organiser, but with no luck. Could I help?

The long and short is that Scalextric made sure Ted and his mum were more than happy. However, the story of the two December events showed how something like the Scalextric World Championship can work well and how it can be a total nightmare. Of course, our expections were high after the 2014 event and I do have experience of working with the media on events like these, so I understand what they need and the tight deadlines journalists work with. With all the best intentions, the Harlow organiser didn't. To be honest he'd wanted to piggy-back on what we'd achieved the year before, but wasn't prepared to discuss his end of the bargain until the night before - and even then the conversation was about how he didn't take any notice of the Scalextric guidelines on track layout, car prep or format... the only aim was to "beat the Aussies at their own game". Ouch!

Because of this sort of attitude - and other hosts pocketing the kit and making little (or no) effort putting on an event - the Scalextric World Championship was on its way out even before the management change. Which is a shame. What we did in Worthing in 2014 and 2015 showed what was possible with the existing format and the support Scalextric offered - even after the savage staff cuts and just one very stretched member of staff as a contact at Margate. It needed the hosts to play ball and to run things in the spirit of a fun worldwide event set up to promote Scalextric to a wider audience...

With more involvement from Scalextric it might have been possible to tap into any public relations skills the hosts had - and share that knowledge with hosts that didn't. At the time, Hornby had no in-house media department.

I guess many factors led to the demise of the championship - and I can't see anything similar starting up any time soon. That said, the Scalextric team have worked hard with promotion in the past couple of years - taking roadshows to numerous big motoring events and various huge shopping centres; supplying organisers of public events with prizes and materials; increasing the quality and quantity of their in-house social media content (which is where most of their potential audience hangs out); and getting the latest kit into the hands of vloggers, bloggers and social media influencers. There has even been a return to TV commercials on children's channels. Marketing is all about seeing return on investment - and the Scalextric World Championship just didn't cut it, despite our best efforts in Worthing.

Our two events in Worthing in 2014 and 15 were incredibly good for the growth of digital racing at WHO, boosting the club in lots of different ways - and we do have those fabulous memories to savour!
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#7

Epilogue - what did we do with our Scalextric World Championship kit?

The 2014 event created plenty of interest in the club - including a stream of emails asking us to put on races elsewhere. We turned down quite a few requests, but of all the groups that had contacted us, the Lions were the most persistent and they had a budget to add a useful sum to the club coffers to expand our digital equipment. We gave the 2014 SWC cars their final hurrah at this inter-club Lion's event in February 2015. The racers had a very competitive and fun night...

   

Occasional WHO racer Pete also successfully persuaded us to run some events - this time four days during the summer of 2015 at the Open Market in Brighton. Our events were part of a programme of activities designed to attract more families to the revamped market and make it a hub for the local community.

         

Using the Scalextric World Championship track and some rejuvenated and replacement cars, we had a lot of fun - and we were very busy with many of the stallholders and shopkeepers having a go, as well as a steady stream of local youngsters...

       

As the summer holidays got underway, the numbers grew and we were getting through nearly a hundred races a day - using the same format as the world championship. That meant there were a few of us who became very well practised in using the Advanced Powerbase LCD tower - a skill that came in handy at the Barn in December. We also made a bit of money for the club and a few people brought their old Scalextric cars down for us to fix! It was great fun and good for both the Open Market and Scalextric.

       

A final outside event in October 2015 - a warm-up for the world championship at the Barn - was a fun day at the Bevy community pub in Brighton...

       

After the 2015 Scalextric World Championship - and confirmation there would be no 2016 events - all our SWC equipment was merged into the WHO/digital kit. The powerbase has been the club powerbase for nearly five years and most of the rest of the track makes an appearance at WHO events...

   

Some of the SWC cars were patched up, fitted with new motors and used in our GT rotation races...

   

When the cars have finally been retired, their chips have found their way into other club cars...

   

Our Scalextric Digital club racing has gone from strength to strength, attracting new racers from outside of the HO club - including 1/32 club racers wanting to try out digital and digital enthusiasts delighted to find a club and our big tracks...

   

Most pleasingly, we still welcome back some of those 2014 and 2015 World Championship racers to join us for digital racing at the Barn.
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