2WD Photos

4WD Photos

The final round of the 2009 BRCA 1/10th off road national championship came to the brand new RobinHood Raceway track - a revitalised and reinvented astroturf track. Both 2WD and 4WD championship titles were up for grabs, with Ellis Stafford and Phil Sleigh battling it out for 2WD and Neil Cragg, Lee Martin and Tom Yardy able to win the 4WD - it was sure to be an exciting weekend.

First Impressions As this is the first major event at the renovated venue, we asked a number of drivers to describe the track in 3 words. Trish from Trishbits: inspirational, yummy, green. Richad Lowe: Stilton, Windy, Awesome. Wayne Collinson (Maid Marion): Technical, slippy, good. Andrew Jones: Sandy, quick, awesome. Gaz Stanton: enjoyable, no quad, windy. Chris Doughty (via text): SoOper DoOper Dialled. Track history. The venue used to be a shooting ground, which ran for about 10 years until the council shut it down for noise pollution and all the buildings/cafe etc had to be demolished, apart from the toilet block. The old Worksop club formerly run by John and Linda Allcroft took on the venue to renovate for 10th off-road model car racing in about 1990; they moved from their previous site in a field that was part of a cemetry near Worksop. The venue was improved over the next 10 years, including features such as the carrot corner, until the Allcrofts other commitments meant they and others couldnt put as much time and effort in, and the club and venue went into partial use. We held many nationals, regionals, and end of season finals, the last one was in 2003 - which was the junior finals. In 2006 a new local shop asked to use the venue for 8th racing, they ran at Blyth for about a year but left the track very rutted and in need of total renovation. Beep.

The abandoned Worksop track at Blyth - the basis for the RobinHood Raceway.

Track build. Around October 2008 the York club had been searching for a permenant outdoor venue for about 6 months, and through some of the York guys helping out at the worksop indoor meetings, it was mentioned to James (local farmer, land owner and all round hero) and he suggested renovating the track at Blyth for York club use. The track had been used by a local 1/8th rallycross club, and the track was in a very sorry state. Following assessment by members of the York club it was decided that the track was salvageable with some hardcore grafting, and so in October the work parties began.

The originial plan was to level half of the track and salvage the other half using the existing features. During the first work party weekend, involving Coatsey, Northy, James, Little Ben, Vermin, JimDix, the plans altered slightly when James got carried away with the digger and gouged 9 tonnes of dirt from the centre of the track to create the bomb hole, and built a 26-foot high dirt and potato banking. Around 50 tones of soil was brought in, along with lots of astro, a new race control, mains water was trenched in and main power.

The track build took a lot of work - here it's at the half way point, with no astroturf laid but most of the features constructed.

The final track - a superbly finished '3D' track.

Robin Hood history
He wore green tights and robbed rich fellows, he did not race toy cars however.

Tales of Robin Hood have been told for 700 years. Our fascination with this world-famous outlaw continues into the 21st century. He was a master bowman, and also well known for his masterful use of his own personal sword.
Robin Hood is famous for robbing from the rich, and giving his ill-gotten gains to the poor, the modern day equivalent would be robbing the Queen's TV and giving it to the chavs and gypos. He is reported to have lived in Sherwood Forest, along with his Merry men (which apparently doesn't mean they were gay). Many films have featured Robin Hood, although the best portrayal by far was the weakling Robin in Maid Marian and her Merry Men! Like Jesus, Robin Hood lived his life by strict moral code, and everything he did, he did it for you.
Today it is Michael Jackson's Birthday, and knowing how he was so in touch with his inner child, the oOple team think he would have really enjoyed todays events! We also think Michael would have wholly supported a smooth criminal such as Robin Hood, and wouldn't have thought he was BAD lad, and if he'd looked at the man in the mirror he may have seen the green leotarded (Dribble dribble!-Jimmy) and legginged one looking back at him. But thats just being silly.

Robin Hood in Sherwood stood
hooded & hated and hosed and shod.
Four and twenty arrows he bore in his hands.

Oh - you can't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
I can't help it - there's nothin' I want more
I would fight for you - I'd lie for you
Walk the wire for you - ya I'd die for you

Current rumours that Robin Schumacher is the real Robin Hood are yet to be confirmed.

After a wind swept drivers briefing, racing got underway on schedule. A large marquee had been erected to provide a place for the drivers to pit and was a good way to bring the drivers together in the final national meeting of the year - thank you to Rob Fox for the kind loan of the marquee.

Marquee pitting tent

....LOADS of room for all the racers

Coco the robinhood Doggy! yay

Euros A Finalists had to stand and be applauded!

Not Ellis Stafford - old Losi team prototype mid car

'Radical' Richard Lowe - Awooga!

Qualifying Round One
Tom Cockerill pulled all the stops out - almost breaking the 12 lap barrier in the process to take TQ in round one. Neil Cragg was a whopping 4 seconds back in second with championship contender Ellis Stafford third. Richard Coates was worthy of a mention with a highly respectable 10th in round to make up for all his hard work putting the track together.

Round 1 Qualifying

Dramatic cloud action

Tom Cockerill looked pleased with his provisional TQ

Danny McGee took 4th in round - driving on the EDGE!

Qualifying Round Two
Tom Cockerill again wowed the crowds, proving his sheepy-hair isn't a drawback. Tom couldn't quite eclipse his previous time but wasn't far off, with 11 laps in 301.00 - his closest competitor was almost four seconds further back in the form of reigning champion Ellis Stafford. Lee Martin was a couple of seconds further back in third.

Tom went provisional TQ with two round wins from two - anyone could still steal TQ if they won the final rounds with a faster time than Toms fastest - but Tom at least had the satisfaction he'd be guarenteed a place on the front row in the A.

Round 2 Qualifying

Qualifying Round Three
Tom Cockerill was going OFF - totally dominating qualifying to far - again putting in the fastest time to confirm his first ever National TQ. Barely over a second seperated all his three round-winning times showing amazing consistency which absoluately no one could match.

Neil Cragg put in the fastest time of anyone not-called Tom Cockerill so far but was over a second off Toms pace to take second in round. Ellis 'Championship hunter' Stafford took third in round.

Round 3 Qualifying

Fabien 'Fabs' Simonini - Kyosho RB5 Mid Custom Special Fabien with his RB5 Mid Custom Special Fabien Simonini had his very-awesome new car at RobinHood National - the car was only finished the previous evening after just under three months of design and concept. The car is based on the Kyosho RB5 and as you can see moves the motor to a mid-mounted configuation similar to the XFactory X6 - but for Kyosho fans! The main chasis is made from three parts - a flat alloy plate is turned into a semi-tub by the addition of raised alloy 'side pods'. All the metal is water jet cut for a nice clean finish - with minimal machining afterwards. The side pods screw down to the main plate much like the new Team Durango 4WD buggy. Fabien has done a lot of work on the rear end to create a really professional mid-motor setup. The gearbox is cnc machined from reinforced nylon and contains 4 gears - two idler gears like the XFactory X6 squared. The carbon parts were designed by Fabien and machined by Fibrelyte.

The jet-cut alloy looks ACE	Familiar Kyosho profile - but wider!

The front plate mounts to the chassis	rear end

Motor access is tight at the moment - should improve

	Rear gearbox and shock tower / front brace

Second idler isn't installed yet on this gearbox but you can see how it works

Fabien wants to finish the car off with a body shell of his own creation but for now he's using a borrowed XFactory shell. Fabs might soon have a conversion kit for sale if interest if high enough to justify production - a second identical car is almost finished with the possibility of a National A finalist on the cards to test it out. One of if not the best homebrew cars we've seen.

Qualifying Round Four
4 runs all within 1.5 seconds of each other - Tom Cockerill was on dominant form to complete his ownership of the qualifying by taking the final round. Neil Cragg put in an identical time to round three - 11/302.62 which was again enough to claim second - with Lee Martin a couple of seconds further back in third.

Round 4 Qualifying

A Final Leg 1
In terms of action on the track, leg one was extremely disappointing, but for Tom Cockerill and his crowd of enthusiastic fans, it was anything but. Tom lead from the off, with all drivers making a clean start and maintaining grid order for the first lap at least, and laid five minutes worth of perfect lap times.

Neil Cragg kept close to Toms backdoor for the first two laps and looked like he might be 'setting something up' in the usual Cragg style - until an error coming up to the end of lap 2 dropped him back a couple of seconds - Tom was GONE!.

Cragg made an error which saw Ellis close up

Tom Cockerill was in a class of his own - back, Ellis Stafford, Neil Cragg and Lee Martin battle over the scraps

A slight error from Neil coming onto the long one saw Ellis Stafford take up second place but by this point Tom was pulling off the length of the straight ahead of the 2nd and 3rd place.

Cragg errors again - allowing Ellis his chance	Cockerill was on top form - no, even better than that.

A Final Leg 1

A Final Leg 2
Another clean start from the grid for these a finalists, pole-man Tom Cockerill lead his peers over the loop in start order.
Ellis Stafford grip rolled on the corner coming into the middle section on lap 2, resulting in a light kiss with the track marking, before ragging it over instead of waiting to be marshalled, to rejoin the passing traffic. In the meantime however Lee Martin had climbed to 3rd place and was pushing to give Neil Cragg a run for his money.
Dan Greenwood meanwhile, having started in 8th place had casually dropped back to 10th, and didn't seem too concerned about this, as commentator Brian Harris suggested, he was just 'pleased to be here'.
Neil Cragg rolled in front of the rostrum, requiring some high-pressure marshalling by lil Connor Cocker (super star top under-13 driver) as on-coming traffic dancedaround his ankles. Neil lost 4 places in this incident.
Lee Martin and Ellis Stafford in 2nd and 3rd place stepped up the chase on leader Tom Cockerill, but Lee was pushing too hard and rolled his B4 at the end of the straight, seeing an eager Ellis slip through like a warm knife into butter, taking up 2nd place.

Tom Cockerill leads from Cragg	....And Cragg stayed close for the first few laps

Cragg stuffs it over the double - Connor to the rescue	Lee Martin briefly leads the chase on Tom

Danny McGee now in 3rd place was hot on Ellis' tail, and tried to pull a sneaky manoevure coming through the middle section, but Ellis was already on his way. Danny McGee was pushing too hard and this only resulted in errors and loss of valuable places.
Lee Martin was back in 3rd place, with Bradders hot on his tail, but with less than two minutes to go, Lee rolled and watched helplessly as Bradders and Danny McGee sailed past.
From further back in the field Phil Sleigh watched on as his team mate and rival Ellis Stafford held his place up near the front, slowly dashing Phils chances of national championship success.

Danny goes for a roll	Ellis caught Tom and gently applied man-pressure

With one minute to go, long-time leader and TQ man TomCock made an error coming through the centre section, and soon his team-budy but race-rival was moving in on his rear end like an unwanted predator.
The pressure was mounting on the young students backdoor, and with less than 20 seconds to go as the courting pair danced through the middle section, the young sheepy haired student suddenly and unexpectedly flipped spectacularly into the air, landing on his lid, and despite some impressive marshalling Daddy Ellis was through. Tom knew his winning streak was over, but regained his previously unflawed composure and navigated his TQ machine neatly through the final lap to take 2nd place, behind a grinning Ellis Stafford who had won the leg and whipped the championship title from under Phil Sleighs nose.

A Final Leg 2

A Final Leg 3
Ellis Stafford chose to wear his yellow wing for the third and final leg of this 2wd event, knowing that he had already won the Championship title, and was in with a decent chance of taking the win at RobinHoodraceway.
The wing was not foolproof though, and by the end of lap one Ellis had already lost one place to fellow southern warrior Lee Martin. Another flip from Ellis saw him move down into 8th place, whilst a 'more than happy to be here' Dan Greenwood proved his worth by moving up into the 3rd spot.

Tom Cockerill led Neil Cragg and Lee Martin around the track, when one minute into the race Lee nudged Neils backdoor as they simeltaneously landed off the tabletop jump, resulting in a topple from Cragg, ever the gentleman though Lee waited for Cragg to get back on his wheels and they both maintained their positions. This gave TomCock the breathing space he needed though, and he was soon leading by the length of the straight.
The crowd gasped though as just seconds later, Tom rolled coming through the centre section, and Neil Cragg slipped through cleanly. Lee Martin would also have slid past the sheepy haired student, had he not made the exact same mistake moments later.
Tom slammed the hammmer down on Neil though (not literally, that would have hurt, and probably result in some sort of disqualification, not to mention some fisticuffs with daddy Cragg), looking for a way past, when coming around the hairpin before the straight, Cragg rode it on two wheels, and Tom Cockerill whipped past.
Neil kept close to the studenty one though, and chased through the next lap hot on his tail, but lost control coming into the bomb-hole and required marshalling, Cragg had lost his momentum now, and despite not losing his position at the bomb-hole incident, he caught the track marker coming through the middle section which preceeded a series of errors that saw Neil demoted from 2nd to 10th place in the space of one lap.
TomCock was OFF, flying around the track well ahead of the rest of the field, whilst an unfortunate error from Richard Lowe over the double jump saw him fractured and out of the race.
Meanwhile Paul Bradby had worked his way up the order and was in 2nd place - 5 seconds behind TQTom.
TomCock wasn't concerned though, and smoooooothly drove the last two laps with no hassle from fellow drivers, to take the national win.

A Final Leg 3

Overall results - A Final

Tom Cockerill was using the XFactory X6squared with trishbits brass weights under the ESC and behind the servo. Two stacks of four brass weights each made up 120g behind the servo! Tom uses the Novak 'Slydr' brushless controller to power his Novak 6.5 motor. Oh, and one of those magical little MRT Personal Transponders.

Tom does also sometimes use batteries in his car, just not in this photo.

Lots of brass screw-in weights from Trishbits	Alloy GPM solid crank does away with the floppy AE servo saver

Trishbits screw-in brass weights, mmmm, lovely.

The deciding round of the 4wd championship would see Lee Martin, Tom Yardy and Neil Cragg battle it out for the title.

In order for either Tom Yardy or Neil Cragg to win the championship, they would have to TQ and win at this event. If anyone else was to take TQ, then the championship win would automatically go to Lee Martin, such was the points situation as Lee lead in the series.

After a successful day in 2wd, Cockerill begins tyre preparation to 'do the double'

Put your right foot in... after a hard days racing the track builders do a little dancing before making changes to the layout for 4wd.

The day had started off with bright sun and higher temperatures than the previous day, grip levels had risen during qualifying and the first round saw a few more spikes removed to keep the cars from grip rolling.

Qualifying Round One
Ben Jemison put in a great run to go provisional TQ, a roll put pay to his chances of acheiving 12 laps but it was still a good time. James Helliwell managed to eclipse Bens time to overtake him on the leader board but it was super star Neil Cragg that was top of the pile and doing what needed to be done if he wants to win this years 4WD title.

Round 1 Qualifying

Qualifying Round Two
After his poor result in round one (72nd in round) Lee Martin changed his motor and flew round to take 10th in round 2. Richard Lowe had a bad time in round 2, breaking his BJ4 on the warm up lap and eradicating him from this round of competing. Neil Cragg just edged out Paul Bradby to take the provisional TQ.

Round 2 Qualifying

Trish from Trishbits.com - Always has something interesting. Trish has his hands on the CAT SX now and already has a few innovative bits to add strength and performance. The first is this rather large brass plate which is drilled to allow it to be moved fore and aft - to adjust balance and keep the weight as low as possible.

The brass plate is covered

Trish also designed some new front blocks - or MEGA BLOX as we like to call them. These are designed to replace the originals without the need for any seperate braces and use 4mm bolts to add even more strength.

	Trishbits MEGA BLOX!

The last modification Trish has made is the relocation of the rear forward pivot blocks - these have been raised around 3mm by drilling a new hole in the lower gearbox casing. Combined with some swapping around of washers the inner hinge pin is effectively raised up - which we're told is similar to lowering the differential and will help the car ride bumps better. Several drivers were running this new mod by Trishbits and others were on the waiting list.

The front (left hand side in this picture) is raised around 3mm

Qualifying Round Three
To put a quick end to Neils chances of winning the championship series, Lee Martin had to win the final two rounds of qualifying and with a faster time than Neils - Neil had already gone out in his heat so Lee knew what he had to do but couldn't quite manage it, missing out on the round win to Neil by 1.58 seconds. Neil was on target but would still have to work for the win.

Grant Williams changed setup by adding the Trishbits rear end mod which raises the inner hinge pin height - and subsequently went three seconds quicker than his previous time to finish third.

Round 3 Qualifying

Qualifying Round Four
Neil Cragg once again was the class of the field - the TQ was already cemented so now it was all about the finals. Even so - Neil didn't hold anything back and managed to go even faster despite spots of rain starting to make an appearance. Neil did what Tom Cockerill had done in the 2WD class and dominated qualifying - untoucable.

Paul Bradby came in second and Tom Yardy third with his newly big-bored Yokomo BMax.

Round 4 Qualifying

A Final Leg One
The drivers had all swiftly changed from Schumacher tyres to Ballistic Spikes as the rain slowly continued to moisten the track. Cragg lead them off in leg one as the buzzer sounded - Paul Bradby was caught napping as Grant Williams rocketed past to tuck in behind Cragg going into the first corner. Grant rolled giving Bradby back the 2spot as they came across the timing loop in front of race control for the first time - Cragg had a small buffer as the rest bunched up and extended it just a little more as Bradby crashed back to last a couple of corners later.

Grant Williams kicks up some juice	Ben Jemison in his first National A final

Grant Williams had his eyes on the prize but Cragg was already a couple of corners ahead in the infield - a mistake on lap three saw Tom Cockerill ease past Grant for second and Neil was now even further in the distance, more than the length of the straight in fact.

Lowe getting chased down by Lee Martin	Grant drove well but couldn't keep up with Cragg

Grant leads the chasing pack but Cragg is nowhere to be seen	Neil put on a show in leg one

In the latter stages of the race there was no chance of anyone even seeing Cragg - unless he was coming round to lap them. The interesting stuff was the fight for second between Grant Williams, Tom Cockerill and Championship leader (just) Lee Martin. The three battled it out nose-to-tail for several laps - on the final lap Lee Martin saw his chance back in 4th to improve a position and jumped large over one of the small bumps in front of the drivers stand - landing alongside Tom Cockerill and barging him out of the way to take 3rd. Tom didn't like this and as the pair squared up for the tabletop-to-bomb hole jump Tom nailed into the back of Lees car, sending him sailing at a crazy angle - Lee recovered in the air and the pair landed well with positions unchanged. They raced to the line but Tom couldn't get it back - Cragg had already finished and things were looking very positive for his championship hopes.

A Final Leg 1

RobinHood Raceway is all about racing, but ROBINHOOD was all about kicking peoples teeth in and robbing them blind so as to facilitate a medieval welfare state of sorts - robbing the rich and giving to the poor. We decided to re-enact the legend of RobinHood via the medium of cosplay and real-live honest-to-goodness theivery of a real land owners potato.... The legend lives on.

Our oOpleHoods stalk out some prey

A wee potato - this rich land owner doesn't need it!

Our brave girls seek out a poor gypsy

A job well done

A Final Leg Two
The cars moved cleanly away from the grid in start order, and navigated sensibly around the track with minimal errors on the first lap, Yardy mounted the track marking coming in front of the rostrum and ended up at the back of the pack.
To make this a really boring final to report on, the top four drivers held their respective places for the first few laps, altering only slightly on lap 4 when Richard Lowe man-wrestled his way past TomCock into 4th place.

Lee Martin saw his two year 4WD title ownership come to an end - he wasn't happy.

Further back Lee had dropped down to 10th place and was driving like a lunatic as he saw his chance of the 4WD championship title ebb away, whereas first time national A-Finalist lil' Ben was up into 6th place by lap 3.

Following his misfortune early in the race, Yardy managed to carefully climb back up the race order to finish in 5th place.
Danny McGee was having a bad time of it at the back of the race, with a series of silly errors and a 10 second penalty imposed by the ref for wrestling with a marshal.

A Final Leg 2

The rain was coming down hard!

A Final Leg Three
The final leg of the 4wd A final followed a pretty similar pattern to leg 2, Neil took off from the start line with Bradders chasing to keep close and the two soon pulled off together. Grant williams and Tom Cockerill weren't far behind, displaying some very fast but safe driving through this technical track.
Neil appeared to pull a fairly safe lead on Bradders, so the cars to watch were 3rd, 4th and 5th place; Grant, Tom and Danny McGee up from 9th on the grid, all chasing closely through the field.
Drama in the midfield for Tom Yardy coming through the bombhole on lap 6, his Yokomo briefly met with another car and stopped dead in the track, it was game over for our favourite drivers rep.
Grant caught a track marking as he approached the straight, flipping his car and allowing Tom Cockerill up into 3rd place.
Neil and Bradders remained close, on the track too, and kept a safe distance ahead of the rest of the field. Bradders looked to be pushing Neil for an error, but the newly crowned national champion wasn't going to give up this perfect day and sailed through the finish line to take 1st place (even though he had already won, you'd think he might give his buddy a spare leg win).

The juice was heavy on the track for A leg three

Paul Bradby almost made it - not quite though	Cragg

Ben Jemison - true warrior.	Lee Martin took his frustrations out on his tyres.

Lee Martin accidentally applied the throttle instead of the brakes as he rode the track after crossing the finishing line, and an almighty crack was heared, followed by 'oooohhh's' from the crowd as his car landed at a jaunty angle on the track corner.

A Final Leg 3

Overall results - A Final

2WD Photos

4WD Photos