| Race report by Ryan Donovan |
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| The fourth round of the xray off-road challenge took place on the 12th June at Swindon nitroâ™s model car club (south west UK). First note, well done and thank you to all race organisers who had done a fantastic job on running the meeting. There were a total of 70 drivers booked in for this event and with this being Swindon nitroâ™s first major event it was due to be a busy day for the race organisers. This was also the clubs first encounter with the new BBK timing system and there to give technical support and help on setting up and running the meeting was rob nelson himself from BBK timing. |
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| The weather forecast was to be dry with rain spells throughout the day, we would just have to wait and see if the rain would keep off. The track was 80% loose shale with 10% grass and 10% clay with a section of triple jumps and two single jumps, this was indeed a multi surface track and proved difficult for tyre choice, the future plans for the track surface is to be 100% clay, which would make a much more consistent track and tyre choice, far from what it would turn out to be. |
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| Booking in took a lot longer than expected and therefore was announced at drivers briefing that there wouldnâ™t be a practise and would proceed straight to the first round of qualifying, as you can imagine this wasnâ™t to be the favourable option and not a good start to the day, qualifying would also be determined by TQ time and not round by round positions. |
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| With no practise and round 1 of qualifying now underway the track looked very loose and dusty and by the time heat 4 was due to be on, bumps had started to appear already, in some cases were cars had either gone wide or left the track, visibility was nil for a second or two due to the dust and therefore led to the race officials watering the track during races to keep the dust down, which definitely helped and hands up to the people involved. Heat 6 and the last of the round, it was time for myself to hit the track and straight away leaving the pit lane I found the grip was nil, I did 1 lap and back to the pits to make some slight adjustments, went back out and all seemed a little better, it was a clean run apart from 1 mistake near the end which cost me a few seconds and TQ for that round. |
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| Round 2 of qualifying and the track was deteriating quite bad, with the race organisers still watering the track, the dust issue had minimized and the grip had improved slightly, after making some more adjustments to the car after round 1, I found the car to be more consistent through the bumps, but to still have 1 mistake and set TQ for that round with Adrian Svensson closely behind in second place, my TQ time in the second round was to beat that set in the first round and was to give me TQ overall. |
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| Round 3 of qualifying and the track was now very bumpy and challenging but the grip was obviously better, to see the first 8 lapper of the day set by Matthew Perry, for round 3 I had made the decision to test some parts that I hadnâ™t tested before on a bumpy track and at the start of the heat I had an engine cut, which I soon realised was the glowplug that had gone, already knowing I had lost a few laps in went a new plug and back out I went to only find that the changes I had made were for the worse and made the car unstable and inconsistent to drive, for the final I would go back to the previous settings had in round 2 but with slight adjustments for the extra bumps. |
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With qualifying now over, the weather still fine and even with the odd occasional hot spell,all was looking good for dry finals.
The A-final consisted of two xray powered RBâ™s, Ryan Donovan and Tom Reynolds and later saw Andrew Priceâ™s xray powered RB finish second in the B-final and move up into the A-final. |
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By the time the A-final was due to start, the track had deteriated so much that it was impossible to find a flat line down the main straight and soon realised it was going to be a tricky and demanding 20 minute final.
So to the start of the A-final and the countdown begun, there seemed to be some confusion within the pit crew and the distance between cars on the grid, which saw second,third (myself) and fourth place very close together indeed, cars down,go, as we approached the first corner first place man Matthew Perry escaped the collision and the rest of us unfortunately collided, which in turn led myself to being at the back of the grid from the first corner. |
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| I soon started to pull the rest of the field in slowly and by lap 5 I saw myself back in third place with Matthew Perry still leading and Adrian Svensson in second place, lap 9 and Matthew Perry seemed to have some trouble which led to him restart from the pit lane this meant Adrian Svensson had now taken the lead with myself now closely following behind in second place, with the track seeming to get worse lap by lap, it looked like mistakes were to be the decider of the race and not necessarily the faster car, lap 14 saw Adrian Svensson make a couple of mistakes and with myself following closely behind I took advantage of that and now moved into the lead. |
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I now decided to slow my pace right down, making sure no mistakes were made and keep a steady lead, especially on the approach to the main straight were the most time seemed to be lost, the 20 minutes was now approaching and on the last lap of the race it was myself still in the lead with Adrian Svensson about 10 seconds behind in second place, with this in mind I made sure this was to be a careful last lap, finish and win this race safely.
This is how the A-final finished:
1. Ryan Donovan XRAY XB8
2. Adrian Svensson
3. John Howells
4. Mark Johnston
5. Tom Reynolds XRAY XB8
6. Brian Burrows
7. Matthew Perry
8. Andrew Price XRAY XB8
9. Sam Taylor
10. Neil Catley
11. Wayne Parker
12. Clayton Collins
Ryan Donovan Set-up sheet. |
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