Having already attended and enjoyed round 2 of the Schumacher sponsored Worksop indoor winter series, we decided to race at round 3 with our creative minds in gear to actually produce some reportage this time.

The event is very well organised although shows no sympathy to bed bugs like us who would much rather be asleep at 6am on a Sunday, but showing our true dedication we arose early to make it to Worksop in time for the 7.30am doors opening. Drivers arrive early in order to baggsie (secure) themselves good pitting spaces and an electricity socket. Practice has been changed since the last round to timed practice (although not in heat order) in favour of the previous 'free for all'. This commenced at 8am and gave everyone chance to test their cars on the track and make any necessary changes before racing began.

Qualifying commenced at just after 9am and was made up of six 2wd heats and three 4wd, with a number of top level drivers competing in each class. The results after two rounds show that in 4wd the top four are seperated by only 4 points, with Fabien holding first place ahead of Richard Lowe. In 2wd Danny McGee stands with a 5 point lead from Dan Greenwood.

The Worksop venue provides very good facilities for indoor racing, which is reassuring as this is the chosen club to host the 2008 National Indoor Finals. Overhead heaters make for a very cosy pitting area, perhaps a little too cosy in some cases as hard-working drivers resort to taking an early morning snooze (see pic of Stu Evans).

In the adjoining hall is an indoor bowling green, complete with licensed bar (much to the delight of John) which serves food and drinks from early in the day. There is also a small collection of vending machines serving snacks and hot & cold drinks, along with a table set up in the main pitting area which serves warm drinks throughout the day.
Jimmy: You can't bring so much as a drink into the Worksop hall - you have to buy drink & food there - a canny bit of enforced monopoly madness, me thinks. We sneakily left an empty drink carton on Johns desk - getting him a slightly over the top 'telling off' from the sports centre staff who claimed he could be "kicked out" for having it on his desk. Awesome - we laughed hard, sorry John!

One of the clubs most unique features is the cork floor, which I (mrs.oOple) found makes indoor racing much more tolerable - compared to the more usual 'polished floor' at other indoor venues. The surface is certainly more 'slippery' than the carpeted areas of the track, but unlike other sports halls, the cork floor gives a nicer more progressive feel.

After one round of qualifying the top ten in each class were as follows.

It would seem that to qualify in the top 10 of 4wd it's almost imperative to be a Dick, in that your first name is 'Richard' with a whopping 40% of the top 10 going by that name. (Disclaimer: Please note, the above comment was purely John Price's humour and means no offence to any of the top 10 contenders, or anyone going by the name of Dick/Richard. Thank you.)

oOple boys Jimmy, John and Paul all managed to land themselves in the same qualifying heat, with Jimmy racing his review Tamiya 'Ultimate Impact', John has resorted back to the X-5 review car, and Paul has taken over driving the Cyclone D4 review car, which is proving to be quite compatible with him as he ramps it over jumps and thrashes Jimmy and Johns score. In the first round Paul finished 3rd place, whilst Jimmy finished one place ahead of John who took 16th.

Top 10 qualifying after two rounds were as follows:

The print outs for qualifying seemed to be counting 4 rounds of qualifying after each completed round, this worked out ok for the first couple of rounds where the additional scores were simply marked at (62) for everyone so had no impact on the overall results. However after round 3 of qualifying Vicky had supposedly made it to 33rd place, with scores of 44, 48, 45 (real scores), and 7! (Now that's just being silly). So we decided to skip trying to figure out the round 3 scores, and move straight on to the overall qualifying positions.

Overall qualifying positions after 4 rounds, top 10 places.

The 2WD A final was a battle between the two Losi drivers - Danny McGee and Tom Cockerill. Tom had been getting faster during the day and by the final was certainly able to match Danny. Tom got into the lead but made a mistake allowing Danny back through. Danny kept it smooth whilst Tom was faster and kept catching up but dropping back with a series of small errors.
Danny took the win with Tom in a desperate last second thrust for the line (and into the wall) barely two tenths of a second behind in second - Tom did however win the competition for the longest / most consistent jumping during the day.

2wd Results

The 4WD A final was won by that man again, Richard Lowe - who quickly built up a sizeable gap, taking the win from Richard Coates. Paul Rotheram was in a comfortable third driving the oOple review Hot Bodies D4 car - but the rear differential started slipping toward the end of the race dropping him down the order slightly.
I took the Tamiya Dark Impact into first place for the first 4 minutes of the C final - eventually swapping places with Stu Hurleys X5 a couple of times and ending up third - not a bad result considering it was the first time out with the 'Ultimate Impact' oOple project car.

A-Final - 4wd

After three rounds of the Schumacher Indoor Off-Road Masters, the championship standings are as follows:

Thanks to the Worksop crew for another great meeting - and Schumacher & RRCI for the prizes of course. Round four of the Masters is on January 6th - we won't be there as it clashes with the third round of the Micro Nationals, but it's sure to be another great meeting. Well done to Danny McGee and Richard Lowe - Again!! These two are almost sure-bets for doing well at the upcoming 'National Indoor Finals' at this very same venue.

Did you attend this event, or are you interested in attending future rounds of the championship? Comments on the race report are welcome, discuss on the oOple forums: HERE.