Hot Bodies Indoor Juniors and Off Road Championship 2007

The Hot Bodies indoor off road race was held at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, an indoor carpeted venue aimed mostly at the on-road market although with a cleverly designed track in-situ which could be adapted depending on which class was racing. The 'carpet' at Don Valley isn't easy to describe but it's a very hard wearing almost rubbery carpet. Traction was fairly low and the touring cars looked more like drift cars as they slid around the various hair pins - good fun!

Practice commenced at 8.00am, with everyone receiving one ticket for timed practice on booking in. At 9.30am drivers briefing was called. 44 touring cars - spread over 4 classes, under13 Stock & Super Stock - and Under 16 Stock and Super Stock. For the off road side of things there were 36 2WD buggies & 21 4WD buggies racing.

It would appear that touring cars were scoring on the ‘fastest time of the day’ system, whereas buggies were scoring round by round. We obtained results for each round of buggies racing, and the overall qualifying positions for the touring car races.

The race was backed by Mirage (The Hot Bodies importer in the UK), who paid rent on the venue, and provided raffle prizes, trophies, and team drives to the two most impressive under 13 TC drivers of the day. The race was organised and run by members of the Sheffield and District MCC, run by John Freeman.

Elliott Harper was Mirage’s main Touring car man, driving his X-Ray T2007, Ben Cosgrove who usually runs Touring Cars was trying his hand at off-road with his borrowed B4. Tom Yardy and Adam Skelding were racing their Hot Bodies D4.

The touring car track was quite small with around 10 second laps being the norm for the best drivers. The off road cars got two detours with some bumps and a couple of fairly basic jumps - nothing very challenging but it made for fast frantic racing with around 12 second laps for the top guys. It was always going to be a compromise to have the two classes racing side-by-side, but the club did a decent job. Hopefully with the success of the meeting perhaps next year things can be even bigger and better.

4WD A Final. Adam Skelding in pole position got off to an early lead with his Hot Bodies D4 followed closely by Tom Cockerill with the Losi XX4. Tom was pushing Adam hard, looking for a way past. Coming around past the drivers stand Adam got out of shape and Tom had nowhere to go, piling into the back of him – putting them both out of the running until the marshall could do his job. Adam and Tom Cockerill were the class of the field in the final, running in 3^rd and 4^th respectively after their tangle it only took a couple of laps before they were back in 1^st and 2^nd. Tom was again giving it everything he had to try an pass Adam but a roll coming onto the straight allowed Adam some breathing room. Adam didn’t look back and slowly built a good lead, cruising home to victory ahead of Tom Cockerill and Nathan Ralls..

4wd A final

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	1	Adam Skelding
2	3	Tom Cockerill
3	5	Nathan Ralls
4	4	Tom Yardy
5	6	Bruce Thompson
6	10	Mark Christopher
7	7	James Ambrose
8	2	Mat Dodd
9	9	Richard Coates
10	8	Steve Pierce

2wd A Final.

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	1	Greg Williams
2	2	Lloyd Storey
3	4	Steve Bond
4	6	Terry Atkinson
5	8	Matt Dunning
6	10	Stu Hurley
7	7	Simon Smith
8	5	Joshua Rose
9	9	John Langley
10	3	Ben Cosgrove

A Final – Under 13 Stock

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	2	Thomas Knight
2	4	Josh Castle
3	1	Charlie Ware
4	3	Luke Lee
5	5	Ashley Caunt
6	6	Daniel Coggin
7	8	Brad Allen
8	7	Kyle Marrows
9	10	Robin Jones
10	9	Robert Hogson

A Final – U13 Super Stock

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	1	Luke Thompson
2	4	Jake Young
3	5	Nathan Winyard
4	7	Liam McConnell
5	6	Adam Winyard
6	2	Sam Clifton
7	3	Michael Lee

A Final U16 Stock

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	3	Ryan Lewin
2	4	Jordan Howe
3	8	Tom Hayes
4	6	Adam Ratcliffe
5	10	Tom Wilkins
6	7	Lewis Briggs
7	9	Adam Smith
8	5	Alan Wilson
9	2	Thomas Daley
10	1	Matthew Tuplin

A Final U16 Super Stock

Finishing Order	Qualifying Position	Name
1	1	Elliott Harper
2	2	Alistair Graham
3	5	Luke Thorley
4	6	Andrew Low
5	7	Cam MacDonald
6	8	Richard Crookes
7	9	Tom Moore
8	3	Adam Richardson
9	4	Luke Humphrey
10	10	Oliver Pearce

Thanks to Ben Cosgrove for all his help!