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| This yearsâ™ 2007 South Island On Road Electric and Gas Championships were held at without a doubt NZâ™s Premier On Road track, Ruapuna, located in Christchurch, New Zealand. |
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Kevin Davey with XRAY NT1
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Entries this year were record high, with three Electric classes and three Gas classes running it promised full days and long gaps in between races for guys only racing one class. The 1/10 4wd Saloon Class by far had the most entries, 31, which is a record for the club and perhaps NZ too. Included in this field of 31 were current NZ champs, defending South Island champs, and anyone of a dozen or so drivers were in with a chance to get a podium, which shows how competitive and close this class is in New Zealand.
Practice was set down for Thursday and Friday. I only managed to get out there Thursday for a few tanks, as I was busy working that day. As most competitors arrived Friday, the priority was to set about setting cars up. Most drivers were going good, and the grip in the track was coming up nicely.
The format for this event was four Qualifying rounds of 5min heats on Saturday and then one more round of qualifying on Sunday before the ABC Finals.
Qualifying rounds 1 and 2 were run around lunchtime and there was a Strong gale like wind at the time. This caused the cars to become very upset on all parts of track and made driving very unpredictable. Round 3 and 4 the wind died down and we got to see who had genuine pace and was near the top of the pack.
After 4 rounds Saturday I managed to take overnight TQ by around 0.6secs. |
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Finals:
After a quick check of cars and charged batteries we were into the Finals.
First up was the C Final, only 15mins followed by the 20 minute B final, In this race Kevin Davey had a good start, was in 2nd for a while then passed into 1st and got into the lead and never looked back, winning by around 10secs in the end, so even before we had started the A final we already had 1 finals win for the NT1. Well Done Kevin.
The A final was next and to be honest I donâ™t remember much. I got a good start from grid 3, was in 2nd by the first corner then into 1st position by the 2nd corner. I then led for a lap or so but unfortunately clipped the inside grass of a corner at a fast section and flipped the car at high speed, which let the field go past. While back in the pack I put down a few quick lap times and slowly started catching up and after a few laps I was back into 3rd and catching 2nd place. Then we had some pit stops, and it was evident then that my engine was set a bit rich, as after refuelling it would bog down and blow a lot of smoke for a few corners and lose a lot of time and speed to other cars. But once tank dropped away it got slightly better. There was some good racing during this Final, and very good sportsmanship shown too. There were also some great battles which must have been good for the spectators to watch. |
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Tim McKay with XRAY NT1
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After the 30min race the finishing positions for the top 3 were the same as qualifying order, and in 4th place was the NT1 of Mark Harling, while Craig Lamb got his NT1 into 6th place.
To have 3 NT1â™s in the top 6 and a win in the B final was a good effort. All NT1â™s in the A final seemed to have pretty clean runs and no failures or engine flameouts so that was good to hear about afterwards.
Final finishing order:
1st Scott Robinson
2nd Daniel Burrows
3rd Tim Mckay XRAY NI1
4th Mark Harling XRAY NT1
5th Andy Ando
6th Craig Lamb NT1
7th Karl Meyer
8th Andrew Webber
9th Brett Waudby
10th Sam Mears |
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Overall a great weekend with great competition and close racing, Of the above 4 mentioned NT1â™s between the four of us we only broke one part, which was a 2nd gear Spur during practice, so its great to have reliability and very good car speed too.
We must also thank Team Xray for their help, plus Zoom Resources the local distributor for Xray for their help during the weekend.
Tim Mckay |
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