Above: Very posh venue for the Hereford round of the micro national series.

The 7th and final round of the 2009/2010 BRCA Micro National series was held at the Hereford Radio Car Club in Leominster. The long three hour drive to the meeting began shamefuly early - barely past 5am and a maximum of 45 minutes sleep prior to that made the foggy wet start to the day all the less enjoyable.

The sat-nav took us through some beautiful countryside, and glorious sunshine soon replaced the cloudy northern skies.

The club venue is located Bridgestreet leisure centre in Leominster and the track was already laid out to greet the racers arriving early. Booking in was seemingly immediate but practice didn't get started until a leisurely 10am or so - with the first round of qualifying at around 10:30.

The Track
The Hereford guys set up a challenging track with some interesting features. The triple in the middle of the track really had to be done in one - but you needed to hit it with full power to make it and it was the scene of a lot of crashes during the day. The small wall ride and other small jumps really weren't too much of a challenge but helped make the racing interesting. The final tabletop / big / mad jump that lead onto the main straight needed a perfectly straight aproach and a delicate throttle to make it safely - plenty of drivers succumed to this beast.

Cris 'no H' Oxley - chief of everything micro, demonstrated the best way to 'mince' down the stairs at the end of the race.

4WD and 2WD classes again featured, with 6 heats of 4WD and just the lonely single heat of 2WD heros battling it out. The top honours however had already long-gone, with Danny Conway dominating the 2WD series and Mark Stiles wrapping things up in the 4WD class at the fourth round of the series.

Keith Robertson had sewn up second place in the 4WD class and along with Mr.Stiles the pair were away attending the 12th scale national which clashed with this event. We're pretty sure if the guys hadn't already afirmed their positions in this series that they'd have 'sacked off' the 12th business.

3rd place in the highly competitive 4WD series was still open and Danny Conway had his name all over it - though former champeen Craig Harris driving his home-brew special could still take third in the series, though he'd have to rely on Danny finishing several places lower down, such was the points situation.

Sleigh and Jonesy are both micro converts

Chaos after the triple jump - often!

The big jump was a chance to get some serious hang time.

Craig Harris brought his latest creation to the final round of the series for its first proper race meeting. The car is similar to the one we featured in the Tamworth round 4 report. The new parts which make the car stand out are the carbon fibre 'tub' chassis that Craig manufactured himself using a kit from carbonmods.co.uk. Using a wooden and fibre glass mould and a makeshift oven to bake it all in. Craig used six layers of carbon to create his masterpeice.
The other unique feature of the car is a exotek motor mount and slipper unit - which should help protect the drivetrain and help smooth out the drive depending on how it's set.

Craig pushing hard rounds the tabletop on his way to aproach the main straight.

Carbon DANCER	Servo saver post from the nitro version of the Shark

Carbon fibre laminate tub chassis that Craig painstakingly created - awesome!

	Craig uses the 'Trakside spares' alloy shock bottoms

Exotek motor mount and slipper - high spec!	Close up of the slipper - metal spring washers do the duty.

Craig looks to have created one of the finest 'micro' scale buggies we've ever seen - using the proven LRP Shark as a base, Craig has taken it to the extreme and the car ticks all the boxes. Craigs car is powered by the surprisingly price-concious EZrun 18amp sensorless controller with a JP 6800kv motor.

Craig took the top qualifying spot with the new car which he's rather romanticly named 'willy' - hmmmm.

Dan Osborne was driving another homebrew car - a carbon fibre chassis 2WD with 1/10th scale buggy components. The huge rear gearbox is straight out of the X6 car and Associated dampers all round help keep things on the ground - it's like a pint-sized XFactory X6.

Dan and his dad created the car using various parts borrowed from other cars along with plenty of hand machined and cut parts. It's an impressive bit of work despite this being it's first outing. The Osbornes aren't a TV show but are actually the guys behind the popular 'Phat Bodies' brand of polycarbonate bodyshells for various scales of car.

It's like a micro X6! cool!

Almost like an X6 with a gian gearbox! but it's not the gearbox that's big - it's everything else that's small!	B4 front end parts - all the suspension arms are from the rear of the TC5 touring car.

A hand cut carbon fibre flat chassis mates up to the AE B4 front end. The front axles on this 2WD wonder are from the Losi XXX - with the bearings in the hub rather than the wheel.

B4 dampers on the rear and older RC10 dampers up front. At this scale, big bore!	Dan Osborne with his burly 2WD mini-X6 warrior

Overall Top 10 Qualifying - 2WD

Craig 'never doing the Euros again' Harris - he stood like this for approximately 45 minutes without moving. Amazing guy.

Carl Venter loves the micros

Trackside spares were on hand with their shop

Heroes do battle

Overall Top 10 Qualifying - 4WD

Harris lines up first on the grid with the mean-green-Sleigh machine watching on.

Sleigh reels in Harris over the big one

Sleigh looking for an inside line

Closer!

Harris bobbled over the small triple and Sleigh was through.

Phil Sleigh took a well deserved win, putting on a stellar performance in the final and always looking in full control.

4WD A final results

2WD A final results