Saturday April 13th 2013 - 2wd

Round one of this years BRCA 1/10th off road national series kicked off pretty much where it finished last year - at Kidderminsters all-weather astroturf track, and with a similarly matching forecast of the wet stuff. All the same, drivers trooped across the country in droves to compete at the first of six series events, and prepare to battle it out for the national championship title.

Reporting bus in action	Stu's reporting setup

The spoon makes a comeback	International reporter extraordinaire

oOple B-Team Vicky and Stu had been allocated to take charge of race reporting for this race, in the absence of A-Team Jimmy who had travelled to Dortmund for the international toy fair and final round of the Euro Off Road Series events. After a discussion with Paul Worsley over this weekend we had chance to clarify the situation with the date clash of these two events, and following my previous comments from the EOS round 3 report I should apologise to Paul and the 1/10th section for insinuating that the section made a choice to clash with the Dortmund event. With a busy race calendar weekends are very limited and the BRCA earmark the same weekend for their first 1/10th national of the season every year - I still think it is a shame that our own top drivers couldn't compete at the toy fair, but the UK national championship is an elite series in its own right and there was certainly no shortness of competition present.
Having driven down throughout Friday afternoon and camped over in the oOple reporting bus, we were awoken early by the sound of traffic arriving, generators being sparked up, and Tony Meredith annoucing over the tannoy that Stu Evans needed to move his car immediately.
Stu wandered off to park his car elsewhere, and capture some early morning practice shots and interviews.

It turned out that Adam and Jake were the on-site security this weekend, their first task of the day being directing incoming cars to appropriate parking bays. Kidderminsters parking arrangements allow for cars around the edges of the field, and tents within a confined area. Caravans and campers must only be parked against the hedge adjoining the roadside, well away from the track.

Interview with Adam and Jake (not to be confused with Adam Drake) Adam: Chief Security officer at Worcester Cricket Club - well qualified for controlling the r/c model car boys. Jake: Son and helper. How will you know whether you have had a successful weekend? Adam: Unless I have told off at least 10 people for parking incorrectly, I will not have had a successful weekend - I have only told off 7 people so far but there is still plenty of time yet

A misty start to the day when practice went out on the track	These lads had come from up north where it's much warmer

Practice.

According to the thrash metal gods SLAYER, a misty night is a perfect night. However for r/c racers a misty morning is not a perfect morning, and the overnight fogginess had failed to clear for round one of practice, meaning the astroturf was very greasy to drive on. Most drivers were taking it slowly and slippery around their practice laps and it was too early in the day to really see who was shining through.

Drivers Briefing - held at the usual time of somewhere between 9 and 10, followed the usual format. It was mentioned that national entry numbers were slightly down on last year, perhaps due to less disposable income, a busy years race calendar or a bit of both; grass roots racing is very healthy however so the force is still strong with 10th off-road!
The usual rules were relayed to drivers, along with a reminder about safely charging li-po batteries, and ensuring everyone is using a personal transponder compatible with the RC04 Decoder.

Qualifying Round 1

	2WD Qualifying Round One - Top 10
	position name result 1 Simon Moss 13/308.62 2 Darren Bloomfield 13/310.21 3 Tom Yardy 13/310.34 4 Neil Cragg 13/310.78 5 Lee Martin 13/313.40 6 Nathan Ralls 13/316.71 7 Chris Rowcliffe 13/318.11 8 Paul Bradby 13/321.27 9 Tom Cockerill 13/322.59 10 Stu Wood 13/323.48

After taking the TQ and win in 2wd at Kidderminster last year, Simon Moss kicked off this years national just where he left off, taking the round 1 win two seconds ahead of Darren Bloomfield in 2nd place.

Stu wood had organised a team meeting with Schumacher drivers in the pits on the Friday before the national started, to offer advice to new tem members on setup and driving tips. Clearly those who CAN, teach, as he put the Cougar 10th in round 1.

In his first heat at his first national race after the recent passing of his legendary father, Stu made a great start to an A final campaign - Roger Wood have been proud ;)

	If you were to hand-write one gigabyte of information in binary at a rate of two characters per second, it would take you one hundred years to write it. So if you were to write the 32 gigabytes of information that can be held on this toe-nail size micro-sd card, you would have had to start writing when people were living in round-house huts using stone tools - 1000 years before the romans even arrived - a bit like being in Huddersfield now. Available on the market but extremely expensive are 128gb versions - but we're not even going to try and work out when you would have had to start hand-writing that amount of data.

Qualifying Round 2

Rain showers had been forecast from around 2pm, however just a few heats into round 2 of qualifying, some spittle started to descend and the track lost a lot of grip.

	2WD Qualifying Round Two - Top 10
	position name 1 Darren Bloomfield 2 Neil Cragg 3 Tom Yardy 4 Chris Rowcliffe 5 Simon Moss 6 Nathan Ralls 7 Lee Martin 8 Stu Wood 9 Kevin Lee 10 Craig Collinson

Bloomfield, tyre off, on his way to round 2 TQ	Chris Rowcliffe

One of Darrens tyres started to come loose early into his second qualifying race, but this did not put him off and he TQ'd the round. First round TQ Simon Moss made some errors but still managed to finish fifth in round.

"It rained on my heat - only my heat" Damian Whittle.

Dan Greenwood, Rich Lowe and Dave Orbell talked to us about their new X6 'Cubed' cars, although they asked us to be tight lipped about some of the details. The cars are clearly much slimmer than the outgoing 'Squared', so can no longer run a full size stick pack. The guys are running short stick packs accross the car, sitting these slightly further forward that in the old car. The smaller Li-Po pack and new chassis arrangement results in the car being much lighter than its predecessor. The new car certainly looks like the finished article to my eye, although you'll have to take my word for that for the time being as the lads politely requested no naked photos of the car.   We asked Dan how he has changed his shock setup to deal with the weight loss, he told us 'Not at all, I have the damping set just the same. The car seems to responding really well, corner speed is so much better I've had to re-calibrate my brain to deal with it'. Round scores of 20 and 25 were to Dan's satisfaction. Dave Orbell told us he'd dropped 2.5wt oil, and reported all was good. Rich was eating a pie.

Darren Boyle from X-Factory distributor D.M.S had some news about the X-7 prototype that Ellis Stafford has previously run, he still has a car in the UK and is expecting another soon. Now that the new 2wd development is coming to climax the 'sidelined' 4wd project will be busted back out and will be moved forward,watch this space...

Damian Whittle - 2012 BRCA National Champion (Veterans)

Qualifying Round 3.

	2WD Qualifying Round Three - Top 10
	position name result 1 Elliott Boots 12/301.14 2 Simon Moss 12/302.23 3 Lee Martin 12/303.53 4 Neil Cragg 12/305.72 5 Ed Kerry 12/308.38 6 Chris Lake 12/309.15 7 Matt Latham 12/310.36 8 Jack Neal 12/312.07 9 Tom Yardy 12/312.53 10 Phil Sleigh 12/312.68

Half way through the round, down came the rain - affecting results for the later heats, and it was only really the top heat which came through on form, throwing some new talent into the mix at the top.

Qualifying Round 4

	2WD Qualifying Round Four - Top 10
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 12/305.84 2 Lee Martin 12/308.85 3 Tom Yardy 12/309.54 4 Danny McGee 12/312.04 5 Paul Bradby 12/313.55 6 Simon Moss 12/314.25 7 Darren Bloomfield 12/314.61 8 Nathan Ralls 12/315.59 9 Phil Sleigh 12/315.63 10 Stu Wood 12/315.71

Neil Cragg took round four to make four different round top qualifiers, but he couldn't beat Bloomfields round two time, leaving Darren to take pole position on the grid. Super Stu Wood finished tenth in round to slip his car into the A final, 10th on the grid - nicely done.

	Overall Qualifying top ten in 2wd
	position name result chassis 1 Darren Bloomfield 2 0 (109) (71) TLR 22 2 Simon Moss 0 (5) 2 (6) Schumacher Cougar SV2 3 Neil Cragg (4) 2 (4) 0 Associated / Centro C4.1 4 Lee Martin (5) (7) 3 2 Tamiya 201 / VEGA 5 Tom Yardy 3 3 (9) 3 Associated / Centro C4.1 6 Chris Rowcliffe 7 4 (58) (54) Associated / Centro C4.1 7 Nathan Ralls 6 6 (56) (81) Associated / Centro C4.1 8 Paul Bradby 8 (65) (41) 5 Associated / Centro C4.1 9 Elliott Boots (114) (71) 0 16 Kyosho / RB6 10 Stu Wood 10 8 (13) (10) Schumacher Cougar SV2

A Final Leg 1

With the drizzle continuing into finals, drivers were reminded that if finals had to be stopped due to the weather conditions, none of the finals results would count, and finishing positions would be based on qualifying.

The track surface was very slippery and drivers took it carefully leaving the start line - the first few laps were very uneventful, with almost every driver in their starting position except for Stu Wood who had moved up into 9th place.

Bloomfield on pole	The top 4 running in start order

Elliott moved up	Cragg hunts down Mossy

Darren held a one second lead back to Moss in 2nd, who was being hunted down by 3rd place Neil Cragg. Neil looked every way to make a pass but Moss kept the door shut. In an attempt to pile the pressure on Moss, Neil tagged him slightly, but eased off a moment later. Now Neil had Lee Martin knocking on his back door. The chase continued but neither car changed position.

The drivers battled through the wet conditions and showed everyone how it's done, keeping the driving nice and clean as the track spat sticky mud at them. Darren kept hold of the lead until the race end to take leg 1 win.

	A Final Leg 1
	position name result 1 Darren Bloomfield 12/306.34 2 Simon Moss 12/306.96 3 Neil Cragg 12/307.61 4 Lee Martin 12/308.32 5 Tom Yardy 12/309.12 6 Paul Bradby 12/316.20 7 Nathan Ralls 12/317.09 8 Chris Rowcliffe 12/319.39 9 Stu Wood 12/319.50 10 Elliott Boots 12/323.75

A Final Leg 2

Error from Moss on the first corner	Darren Leads

Neil chases Darren, the two pull a lead back to 3rd place Moss	Neil pushes Darren hard

But makes an error himself, allowing Moss through to chase Darren	Simon chases poleman Darren

Mossy makes an error and drops down the order	Neil is back on the hunt for lead position

Gives Darren a nudge, but can't quite get past.	The top 5 race closely, Neil still can't pass Darren.

Darren thanks the rainy skies for a clear run.	Darren pleased about his 2wd win

	A Final Leg 2
	position name result 1 Darren Bloomfield 12/312.02 2 Neil Cragg 12/312.30 3 Tom Yardy 12/312.90 4 Simon Moss 12/313.36 5 Nathan Ralls 12/318.93 6 Stu Wood 12/319.34 7 Lee Martin 12/320.57 8 Paul Bradby 12/323.44 9 Chris Rowcliffe 12/324.99 10 Elliott Boots 11/302.35

A Final Leg 3

As the rain showers continued, Darren made the sensible choice of observing, rather than participating in leg 3 of the A finals, having taken the win on leg 2.

Clean start, Mossy leads in Darrens absence	Bradby ahead of Rowcliffe

Mrs Rowcliffe gasps at how fast these cars go	Lee Martin hassling Mossy for the lead

	A Final Leg 3
	position name result 1 Simon Moss 12/311.77 2 Neil Cragg 12/312.50 3 Lee Martin 12/316.66 4 Paul Bradby 12/320.76 5 Nathan Ralls 12/324.56 6 Tom Yardy 12/326.67 7 Stu Wood 12/331.22 8 Chris Rowcliffe 11/305.30 9 Elliott Boots 11/307.46 10 Darren Bloomfield DNS

	2wd A FINAL RESULT
	position name points leg scores chassis 1 Darren Bloomfield 2 1 1 10 TLR 22 2 Simon Moss 3 2 4 1 Schumacher Cougar 3 Neil Cragg 4 3 2 2 Associated Centro C4.1 4 Lee Martin 7 4 7 3 Tamiya 201 / VEGA 5 Tom Yardy 8 5 3 6 Associated Centro C4.1 6 Paul Bradby 10 6 8 4 Associated Centro C4.1 7 Nathan Ralls 10 7 5 5 Associated Centro C4.1 8 Stuart Wood 13 9 6 7 Schumacher Cougar SV2 9 Chris Rowcliffe 16 8 9 8 Associated Centro C4.1 10 Elliott Boots 17 10 10 9 Kyosho RB6

Day 2 - Sunday 14/04/2013 - 4wd

4wd day would follow a similar format to 2wd - same time for booking in, practice, drivers briefing, and start of qualifying.

Tamiya-Dave in motion Beard-off Tamiya Dave, Amish, That guy from the hangover movie - however you like to refer to him, David Gibson travelled all the way to Kidderminster from the U S of A to attend the first off-road national of the season, evidence that in fact the 1/10th off-road class in the UK continues to move from strength to strength. Dave will be returing to his new homeland next weekend but promises to return later in the year. He was especially delighted with his top F3 award at Kidderminster - well done Dave :)

Qualifying Round 1.

Neil Cragg dominated the first round of qualifying - throughout his heat he was proper running on 15 lap pace, but three errors in the last minute of his race dropped him back onto 14 lap pace - he still finished first in round.

	Qualifying Round 1 - 4wd
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 14/304.26 2 Lee Martin 14/304.65 3 Tom Yardy 14/305.60 4 Danny McGee 14/305.93 5 Simon Moss 14/306.21 6 Paul Bradby 14/307.98 7 Phil Sleigh 14/310.66 8 Tom Cockerill 14/310.97 9 John Spencer 14/313.06 10 Nathan Ralls 14/314.20

Qualifying Round 2

Neil Cragg set the pace by putting in the first 15 lap run of the day.

	Qualifying Round 2 - 4wd
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 15/317.77 2 Lee Martin 14/300.35 3 Danny McGee 14/301.34 4 Simon Moss   5 Tom Yardy   6 Phil Sleigh   7 Paul Bradby   8 Tom Cockerill   9 Greg Williams   10 Nathan Ralls

Qualifying Round 3

After setting a good pace in round 2, as Cragg lined up for his third qualifier the rain once again started to descend, resulting in a 45th in round for him.

After a poor round 3 result, Mick Cragg ensured Neils car was well prepared for the moisture in round 4 - adding innovative moisture entrapment devices to the cars front end.

	Qualifying Round 3
	position name 1 Simon Moss 2 Tom Yardy 3 Rich Lowe 4 Paul Robinson 5 Lloyd Storey 6 Phil Sleigh 7 Ben Jemison 8 Ed Kerry 9 Danny McGee 10 Andrew Jones

c

Qualifying round 4.

Rain affected qualifying round four all the way through - meaning the end results were slightly more consistent and once again Neil came out tops, taking the overall TQ.

	Qualifying Round 4 - 4wd
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg   2 Danny McGee   3 Tom Yardy   4 Ellis Stafford   5 Paul Bradby   6 Darren Bloomfield   7 Phil Sleigh   8 Simon Moss   9 Nathan Ralls   10 Craig Collinson

	Overall Qualifying top ten in 4wd
	position name result chassis 1 Neil Cragg 0 0 (45) (0) Associated / B44.1 2 Simon Moss (5) 4 0 (8) Schumacher Cat K1 3 Lee Martin 2 2 (39) (89) Tamiya 511 4 Tom Yardy 3 (5) 2 (3) Associated / B44.1 5 Danny McGee (4) 3 (9) 2 Schumacher Cat K1 6 Paul Bradby 6 (7) (54) 5 Associated / B44.1 7 Phil Sleigh (7) 6 6 (7) Associated / B44.1 8 Rich Lowe (21) (17) 3 (11) Associated / B44.1 9 Paul Robinson 12 (93) 4 (96) Durango / DEX410 10 Ellis Stafford (95) (14) 12 4 Durango / DEX410

A Final leg 1

Neil set off from the grid with a clean start and began to pull a lead, Ellis moved up from tenth on the grid to join the battle for 2nd place between Mossy and Bradby. Yardy had problems early on when his receiver was affected by some seepage, and his car crashed into the end of the straight, breaking something.

Neil Leads	Moss ahead of Bradby

Rich Lowe pulls a move on Danny McGee	Pulling through

Rich Lowe battled with Danny McGee and moved up the order, but the pair later became entanged and Rich's car came off the track at the end of the straight, he was broken and out.

Ellis chases Phil Sleigh	Danny McGee and Phil Sleigh

After Ellis' early race success he was soon left disappointed when he crashed in front of fellow Durango driver Craig Collinson, who tried to put his car back together but it was not to be, and he too was out of the race.

Ellis chases Phil Sleigh	Danny - Sleigh - Robbo

Paul Robinson was working his way up the order from 9th on the grid and was definitely in there with a good chance of winning if the race had gone on for another 30 minutes, especially if Neil had thermalled.

Neil continued to cruise around pulling a 5 second lead from 2nd place Mossy, and taking the leg 1 win.

	A Final Leg 1
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 14/302.88 2 Simon Moss 14/310.53 3 Paul Bradby 14/312.67 4 Lee Martin 14/314.11 5 Phil Sleigh 14/320.03 6 Danny McGee 14/321.38 7 Paul Robinson 14/321.75 8 Richard Lowe 11/256.66 9 Ellis Stafford 7/157.56 10 Tom Yardy 1/24.57

A Final Leg 2

Neil Cragg raced away once again, Simon Moss drove a great race to challenge his lead but just couldn't catch up. Neil walked away with the leg 2, and overall win.

Cragg in pole	Simon Moss lining up second

Yardy - McGee - Bradby	Ellis from 10th place, ahead of Paul Robinson

Lee Martin dropped back behind Danny McGee	Ellis hassles Sleigh for 7th position

Cragg was untouchable	2nd place Simon congratulates the winner

	A Final Leg 2
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 14/305.03 2 Simon Moss 14/309.44 3 Paul Bradby 14/311.48 4 Tom Yardy 14/312.92 5 Lee Martin 14/316.24 6 Danny McGee 14/316.93 7 Phil Sleigh 14/319.67 8 Ellis Stafford 14/320.49 9 Paul Robinson 14/321.53 10 Richard Lowe 13/301.85

A Final Leg 3

Neil had already won the meeting and could have kept his car clean for the final leg, but returned to the track for one last time to show us all how it's done. Neil walked away from the grid, and for the most part ran a clean race. An error in the last few laps saw him need marshalling

Cragg does his thing and leads the others around	Lee, Yardy, McGee

Back of the pack	McGee chases mossy

Whlst Ellis hunts down Sleigh	Ellis wheelbarrows

After an error from Cragg, Lee Martin came right up his rear

	A Final Leg 3
	position name result 1 Neil Cragg 14/308.83 2 Tom Yardy 14/311.75 3 Lee Martin 14/313.59 4 Danny McGee 14/316.94 5 Simon Moss 14/317.71 6 Paul Bradby 13/302.35 7 Phil Sleigh 13/302.67 8 Ellis Stafford 13/303.06 9 Richard Lowe 13/305.85 10 Paul Robinson 13/308.09

Neil Cragg - 4wd Winner, receives his trophies from Paul Worsley	Winners smile

Tom Yardy - Neil Cragg - Simon Moss

	4wd A FINAL RESULT
	position name points leg scores chassis 1 Neil Cragg 2 1 1 1 Associated B44.1 2 Simon Moss 4 2 2 5 Schumacher CAT K1 3 Tom Yardy 6 10 4 2 Associated B44.1 4 Paul Bradby 6 3 3 6 Associated B44.1 5 Lee Martin 7 4 5 3 Tamiya TRF511 6 Danny McGee 10 6 6 4 Schumacher CAT K1 7 Phil Sleigh 12 5 7 7 Associated B44.1 8 Paul Robinson 16 7 9 10 Team Durango DEX410 9 Ellis Stafford 16 9 8 8 Team Durango DEX410 10 Richard Lowe 17 8 10 9 Associated B44.1

Massive thanks to Stu Evans who gave up one of his last free weekends for the next 18+ years to take photos in the rain - without his help this would have been an especially blurry race report. Thanks also to James Helliwell and Em Shields who brought back useful information for reporting, to Tony Meredith and the Kidderminster club for hosting the event and being so very accommodating - and of course to the BRCA 1/10th off-road section crew who put so much effort into the planning and running of what is still a top class national championship series, and for helping out with results and information.