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BRCA Micro Nationals - Round 3 race report!
Words: Cris Oxley
Photos: Cris Oxley, Dan Osborne, Paul Nuneaton. The 3rd round of the 2009 Micro National series took place at Dudley, a new club to the micro fraternity, and all talk prior to the event was regarding the track layout. Would it be well laid out with plenty of jumps to test the drivers or would it be a flat track with afew sheets of wood thrown into the mix? We were greeted to a great looking track, a near 50/50 mixture of carpet and plenty of polished gym flooring with some interesting obstacles placed upon the track for good measure! It was a nice change to arrive at a track that wasn’t fully carpeted and hopefully the remaining host clubs will take on board some of the ideas that Dudley offered us without them having any prior micro experience! New for the Micro Section was the use of Twitter to provide a live results feed to the general public which seemed to work really well! For those ‘tweeters’ out there check out www.twitter.com/BRCA_Micro and follow us for all the updates from the Micro National scene! 2WD Qualifying Round 3 saw 13 entries for an ever growing 2WD class was warmly received by those trying to push the 2WD class to the masses, with 6 of those 13 cars being standard length 2WD chassis. As with the two previous National rounds Danny Conway dominated 2WD with his modified LRP Shark ST (getting bored yet Danny? You ought to get that Mini-T out for a play!) finishing 1st overall in 3 of the 4 qualifying rounds securing his 2WD pole position. The ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ team of Gavin and Stuart Stephenson turned up with their home-made 2WD Mini-T/EXOTEK/Shark/random hybrid and a set of rear wheels that comprised of two rear wheels glued to each other. Very random, and rest assured that it didn’t seem to work as well as Stuart had hoped! At some point Gavin will let his driving do the talking, but until that point im interested to see what loony creations Stuart has ready for Tamworth! Gavin qualified 2nd behind Danny and set himself up nicely with 99 points for his troubles. Mark Williamson, running an extended Mini-T, qualified in 3rd on a tie-break after a consistent 3 rounds that saw him firmly stamp his authority into the class. With an inboard extended ZT2 in the works Mark is certain to make waves at Tamworth! Cris Oxley qualified as the highest placed ‘standard length’ 2WD chassis in 4th place, running a near stock ZT2 with a slow brushless system and some wheels and tyres borrowed off of his girlfriend. Michael Spindley turned up with an extended 2WD LRP Shark(!) to qualify in 5th, Dan Harding’s EXOTEK, Luke Knight’s ZT2, Dan Osborne’s EXOTEK, Mark Dicks’ ZT2, Simon Osborne’s EXOTEK, Paul Knight’s ZT2, Mat North’s Mini-T and Ashley Roat’s ZT2 rounded up the 2WD. Long may the 2WD class continue to grow!! 1st - Danny Conway - 2pts - 2WD LRP Shark ST 2nd - Gavin Stephenson - 3pts - Prototype 3rd - Mark Williamson - 5pts - EXOTEK Mini-T 4th - Cris Oxley - 5pts - Thunder Tiger ZT2 5th - Michael Spindley - 6pts - Extended LRP Shark 6th - Dan Harding - 10pts - EXOTEK Mini-T 7th - Dan Osborne - 12pts - EXOTEK Mini-T 8th - Luke Knight - 12pts - Thunder Tiger ZT2 9th - Mark Dicks - 14pts - Thunder Tiger ZT2 10th - Simon Osborne - 14pts - EXOTEK Mini-T 4WD Qualifying After some very impressive qualifying rounds at the first two Nationals Matt Drewett put the cat amongst the pigeons by taking TQ in Round 1 in front of Danny Conway and Tony Bishop! Mark Stiles, riding high after winning both previous Nationals, duly responded by setting TQ in the remaining 3 qualifying rounds and reaffirmed his dominance of the class so far. Matt managed to qualify 2nd overall, even more impressive when you realise that Matt is still running his car box standard all bar a very quick Novak Mongoose 8.5 motor! Microtech’s Keith Robertson left it till the very last 2 rounds of qualifying to wipe out his 7th and 48th(!!) with impressive 2nd and 2nd to take 3rd on the A-final grid. Regular A-finalists Danny Conway, Tony Bishop, Steve Davis, Gavin Stephenson, Chris Bottle and Dan Osborne filled out 4th to 9th place on the grid with Tony Price qualifying 10th overall to start in his first ever micro A-Final. 1st - Mark Stiles - 2pts - LRP Shark ST 2nd - Matthew Drewett - 4pts - LRP Shark ST 3rd - Keith Robertson - 4pts - FTX Blaze ST 4th - Tony Bishop - 6pts - LRP Shark ST 5th - Danny Conway - 6pts - LRP Shark ST 6th - Steve Davis - 7pts - FTX Blaze ST 7th - Gavin Stephenson - 9pts - LRP Shark ST 8th - Dan Osborne - 13pts - LRP Shark ST 9th - Chris Bottle - 13pts - FTX Blaze ST 10th - Tony Price - 18 pts - LRP Shark ST 2WD A-Final As per the previous two National Rounds, Danny Conway took control of the A-final from the off and led till the final buzzer. Behind him Michael Spindley found himself a lap down on Danny but also a lap up on 3rd place man Mark Williamson who found himself in 8th place after lap 1 and battled hard for his trophy. 4th place man Luke Knight followed 6 seconds behind Mark with Dan Harding a lap down on Luke. Dan had a close battle with 6th place finisher Mark Dicks whilst behind him Cris Oxley suffered once again at the hands of a popped off steering turnbuckle to finish 7th after holding onto 3rd place for 2 minutes. 1st - Danny Conway - 16laps - 309.55secs 2nd - Michael Spindley - 15laps - 307.46secs 3rd - Mark Williamson - 14laps - 305.25secs 4th - Luke Knight - 14laps - 311.71secs 5th - Dan Harding - 13laps - 310.62secs 6th - Mark Dicks - 13laps - 312.85secs 7th - Cris Oxley - 12laps - 303.82secs 8th - Simon Osborne - 11laps - 318.16secs 9th - Dan Osborne - 3laps - 74.11secs 10th - Gavin Stephenson - 0laps - 0.00secs 4WD B-Final Hereford's Ben Turner drove an impressive and extremely consistent race with his 8.5 Mongoose powered FTX Blaze ST to take his first ever 4WD B-final win, only 1 second in front of Ben Marzec whilst Steve Biscoe rounded out the 4WD B-final podium again only 1 second in front of Dan Murphy. 1st - Ben Turner - 17laps - 313.86secs - FTX Blaze ST 2nd - Ben Marzec - 17laps - 314.35secs - ?? 3rd - Steve Biscoe - 16laps - 302.92secs - LRP Shark ST 4th - Daniel Murphy - 16laps - 303.89secs - ?? 5th - Jamie Conway - 16laps - 307.62secs - LRP Shark ST 6th - Andy Vincent - 16laps - 312.81secs - FTX Blaze ST 7th - Andrew Dean - 16laps - 332.36secs - ?? 8th - Richard Rimmer - 15laps - 300.51secs - ?? 9th - Cris Oxley - 15laps - 317.95secs - LRP Shark ST 10th - Michael Spindley - 15laps - 323.23secs - LRP Shark ST 4WD A-Final A mistake by Mark Stiles dropped him down to 8th place by the end of lap 1 which allowed Keith Robertson to sail off into the distance for an unchallenged and well deserved A-final victory. Meanwhile Matt Drewett showed great skill and composure battling it out with Mark for 2nd place whilst Section Chairman Cris Oxley took to the microphone for some impromptu commentary of the 4WD A-final. Kris Kennedy he is not! But hopefully it was well received by the drivers and viewing public alike! Afew mistakes from each saw neither take an advantage and allowed Keith to clear off into the distance whilst also allowing Tony Bishop to sneek up behind the duelling pair to hold onto a strong 4th place. The last lap of the race saw Mark desperately trying to find a chink in Matts armour but after diving down the inside of Matt on the very last corner of the very last lap Mark clipped an apex and rolled allowing Matt back into a well deserved 2nd place whilst Mark had to settle for 3rd, only 0.08secs in front of Tony! 1st - Keith Robertson - 18laps - 313.14secs 2nd - Matthew Drewett - 17laps - 302.22secs 3rd - Mark Stiles - 17laps - 303.92 secs 4th - Tony Bishop - 17laps - 304.00 secs 5th - Danny Conway - 17laps - 310.60 secs 6th - Chris Bottle - 17laps - 315.65 secs 7th - Steve Davis - 16laps - 304.48 secs 8th - Gavin Stephenson - 16laps - 306.74 secs 9th - Tony Price - 16laps - 311.50 secs 10th - Dan Osborne - 2laps - 37.29 secs Special mention needs to goto birthday boy Jason Ametrine who, on his first ever micro National, after only using a micro afew times before hand won the Concours prize with a wonderfully presented LRP Shark ST shell. Look forwards to seeing you at Tamworth! The BRCA Micro Committee would like to thank: Roy Kirton and all the very nice people at the Dudley club for laying out a great track and for a thoroughly enjoyable day. Wim at Action Model Centre for supplying the AMC shop on the day! All the drivers who have supported the Micro Nationals this season! All the online websites that have promoted the Micro Nationals so far! Round 4 of the Micro Nationals takes place on 3rd January at Tamworths TRRAC club. Entrys close on Christmas Eve so bear in mind that Christmas postage is going to be terrible and get your entrys in now! Check out the BRCA Micro website www.brcamicro.org for details of how to enter, links to the BRCA Micro Twitter page and to the UK-MicroRC forum!
__________________
Previously: BRCA Micro Section Chairman. BRCA Micro National Champion. Currently: JQ fan. Bellend. Forums are better than Facebook groups |
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Gav was running standard width 10th minipins and spikes too, just cut down to a smaller diameter. You can see them in the second pic, second car from the front.
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he he he!!! i wouldn't put it past them to give it a try! |
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