Hinckley RCCC 4WD Regional - 5th June 2011

[Ben Cosgrove]

Hi Guys

Hinckley RCCC are hosting the first regional at the new venue this weekend.

The new location for the track is Hinckley Rugby Club, Leicester Road, Hinckley, Leicestershire, LE10 3DR. Please use the Rugby Club entrance not the football club entrance (football club entrance nearest the roundabout). There will be a sign pointing you in from the main road.

We have a nice new container/rostrum for this year. It is a 40ft container with the rostrum on top. Plenty of room and great visibility of the whole track!! Major improvment and no hill to get up and down

Please obey the speed limit on site. Once you enter the Rugby club you will see the clubhouse on your right. Follow the road to the right until you see tennis courts on your left and then turn left following the road round. You will then see another 'unused' clubhouse and rugby pitch in front of you and the cricket pitch to your right. Follow the road to the right and you will then see the track.

Please park in allocated ' rows' on the grass. Gazebos will be pitched closest to the track with cars being parked further away. So please unload and setup your gazebo and then move the car to the allocated space.

Generators are allowed but must be in the allocated generator zones, please bring a long extension lead with you just in case.

We only have access to the area of grass we will be pitting and racing on. Please stay off all other areas with the exception of the road to get back to the clubhouse.

Food and toilets are located in the clubhouse and should be available all day.

Camping is available Saturday night for £5 a tent which follows on from our club meeting we hold 12pm-6pm on the Saturday. We will have a completely different track layout for the regional and the jumps will not be left out over night. There will be no practice allowed after the meeting on Saturday.

If there is enough interest then we may have a BBQ Saturday night at the venue.

Please arrive around 7.30AM onwards on Sunday. We aim to be getting practice going around 8.30/8.45AM I believe with drivers briefing and everything else done for a 9.45AM start. Booking in from 8AM.

We have Dan from www.pitside.co.uk on site to help out with your spares and tyres needs, if you need anything please ask him to bring it just in case

The track is grass with some man made jumps and some other features.

Tyres allowed are Schumacher Mini Spike, Ballistics and DBoots.

We have pre ordered nice weather so hopefully they have some in stock

See you all Sunday

Ben

[RogerM]

Looks like you did good with the weather order

[Ben Cosgrove]

Just been speaking to the weather suppliers

Looks like they only have 1 nice day available so they will send us 2 days of heatwave for the weekend as a goodwill gesture!

I hope UPS can deliver now

[Jamie B4]

Never mind the weather or rostrum, just make the track awesome!!!!

[Ben Cosgrove]

All in hand my friend

What would people define as awesome though?

[HarlowS]

BIG jumps and none of those tiny pointless ramps

[Jonesy]

Please please please do not use those finger ripple things from previous years.......

Other than that it's old school grass so you can't do wrong really

[ben]

Thinking of coming along, will there be a non-regional heat?

[Ben Cosgrove]

Originally Posted by Jonesy

Please please please do not use those finger ripple things from previous years.......

Other than that it's old school grass so you can't do wrong really

you mean the world famous HRCCC Rumble strip!

Hmm may need to rethink that bit then.....

[matdodd]

I'm with jonesy on the finger ripple things!

[Big G]

Originally Posted by matdodd

I'm with jonesy on the finger ripple things!

+1 (or is that 2)

[Ben Cosgrove]

ok i get the feeling some may not find the rumble strip great LOL

well we will definately have some proper off road sections as the ground can be quite bumpy in places.

should be a great weekend!!

[RogerM]

Originally Posted by Ben Cosgrove

ok i get the feeling some may not find the rumble strip great LOL

well we will definately have some proper off road sections as the ground can be quite bumpy in places.

should be a great weekend!!

+another for the dodgy fingers thing

IMHO bumps = offroad so keep it bump, holes are a different story (wheel rippers) but bumps are great.

I'd much rather race on a track with loads of features that are bumps / gradients etc than sill nasty man mad jumps .... that is why Kidderminster is STILL my fav track after all these years

[Jamie B4]

Agreed with Roger about Kiddy - cool track. Just make it fast and flowing and let the racing take care of the good and bad without having factors that cause people to fall down the pecking order through no fault of their own. Although Yardy still wins

Looking forward to a good day's racing

[neiloliver]

How did the meeting go?

[Ben Cosgrove]

It went well in general

Track did go rutted relatively badly for the finals but it didn't slow people down too much

It was a Schumacher 1-2-3, Moss, Mcgee, Jones with Mcgee TQ

Big thanks to all HRCCC members who helped out during the day, we had a large team helping cover marshalling, scrutineering and all the other bits people dont see.

[Big G]

I really liked it, but then again it was just like Ludlow, but with a rostrum and features lol

Weather was spot on. I seem to be a bit red on my face and arms today though

My only grip was the long walk to the loo, but everything else was spot on

[RogerM]

Well Neil the meeting was run with the ruthless efficiency we have come to expect from Stuart.

The track was off-road for sure unlike the bowling green at the other venue and it did rut and wear in the traction zones but hey it's a grass off road track, they do that.
The track surface could do with a roller session just to compress it and stop it rutting up so much as it wears but otherwise shows great promise.

The rostrum is good (only complaint I heard was the stairs aren't wide enough to pass on so had to wait for everybody to get off before we could get on reducing "warm up" time). Site facilities were good on the whole and show promise.
Track layout was a little compactwith lots of switchback type corners that caught many out but if you could get into a groove then it flowed well enough and wasn't bad to drive.
Only issue was it was nearly impossible to pass anybody in qualifying and if you looked at the time sheets there were lots of people who suddenly went 2-3s a lap slower for 3 or 4 laps until the person they were following binned it (or they did).
That said it wasn't too bad so long as people worked with each other.

So was it all good ..... erm no.

The jumps are awful, simply awful. They didn't have any flexibilty at the bottom and the ground in front of them all quickly worn to the point there were gaps at the foot of the ramp = unpredictable take off and thus random landings.
The table top was square edged, no hint of a curve at the joints so if you dropped the back edge of your chassis on them over you went ... nothing you could do about it. Again this was ok so long as you could pick your own line / speed but soon as you got into traffic it was anybodys guess what would happen.

I can honestly say I can't remember seeing the top 2 heats marshalled as much at a regional!

So in summary

Venue as is 7/10 (potential to be a 9 or maybe better)
Rostrum 8/10
Track 7/10 (will get better once they have chance to work with it for a few more months)
Jumps 0/10

Awaiting the flames

[Ben Cosgrove]

Thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming

Venue as is 7/10 (potential to be a 9 or maybe better)

We will have full use of the club house building that is currently derelict at the minute soon including mains power

Rostrum 8/10

Stairs are only designed as up and down, they are std issue for containers for building sites. We have talked about the option of more stairs and disabled access ramp going forwards.

Track 7/10 (will get better once they have chance to work with it for a few more months)

completely agree on that one, we have yet to do any ground work apart from mowing, we were surprised at the surface underneath the grass as it was better than we thought it may have been....long term we have big plans

Jumps 0/10

again i agree, we have had them for a few years now and they have weathered and warped making the take offs terrible. The table top is ok IMO (we normally clear it, buit this time had a down slope into hairpin) and the corner table top is ok but the other jump was bad!

We will be working on fixing them before the 2wd regional for sure

Please keep the feedback coming guys, we want to hear it all

Ben

[RogerM]

Ben, glad you took it as I meant it!

Sounds like you guys have a winner on your hands then, as with everything it takes time and effort to get things perfect.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with (club house sounds like a good thing to aim at but that building needs a few ££££s spending I would say if your to use it.)