The 'neo08' is this years name for the neo race, last held at this same venue in December 2006.  The venue in question is the Harper Adams college in the midlands of sunny England.  The college boasts a large indoor hall full of dirt - strange you might say, but it's so trainee farmer-types can play on diggers.  Regardless, the DXR club that organise the track aspect of the event are able to turn the unruly dirt into a fabulous 3D supercross style dirt track. 

The neo invitational or in this case 'neo08' is the brainchild of the neobuggy.net website owner, Phil Mortstedt.  And being the largest and best regarded 8th off road race of the year, at least in the UK - it's a great chance to see some faces you'd not normally see over here.  With a host of big-name drivers from across Europe and World wide thrown in for good measure it's sure to be an awesome event.

Day -1 (minus, get it?) 20 March 2008

With 210 drivers spread over 15 heats, and 10 minute qualifiers - this is the biggest neo race yet. To cope, the event has been spread over an extra day and now fills four entire days - Friday to Monday. Friday consists purely of practice, three ten minute rounds to give each competitor a whole half hour running time to get used to the layout before the more serious stuff begins on Saturday.

The neo event in 2006 at this same venue was won / dominated by the American driver Adam Drake, driving the then relatively new Losi 8ight. Adam really laid the smack down on the competition by dominating qualifying and winning the A Main with ease. The Drake is back this year to defend his title, and with only one class to concentrate on this time.
The competition this year is stiffer than ever though and the top heat of qualifying wouldn't embarrass a Worlds A Main – with plenty of drives more than capable of taking the honors.

We drove down on Thursday evening, setting off around 7pm – this being Easter weekend the traffic was always going to be bad, but strong winds and heavy rain made things even worse. Thank goodness we set off late to avoid the worst of it.

We arrived late on Thursday - too late to see the track, which by that time had long since been locked up. So we climbed through a window to get some exclusives.

Admittedly, there's wasn't a whole heck of a lot to see in the pitch black hall but the track looks incredible, that at least was very clear.