Dowty Slot Car Racing Club

An interesting day with almost as much going on as the Australian GP. Things started badly with at least a foot of water over the road to the club which meant about 1/4 mile hike carrying car boxes over soggy fields to get the club room. Many stories of flooded roads were passed around. The flood subsided about mid morning so there was a break to fetch the full size cars between the heats and finals in production.

Only 13 racers arrived because of clashing dates at Luton & Swindon, but thanks to all who made the trip. Here's looking to a better turn out at Bournemouth in May.

The Falcon B final was fairly spaced out, with James Davey taking a comfortable win. In the A Final Noddy Lockey was well in charge while the other 3 were far from spaced out - in fact they all collided more than once. Roger Townsend eventual took second ahead of Dave Hammond and Mike Perkins.

In the overall finals, Dave Hammond had a much better run to win the C final from Roger and James.

The B final saw a second win for young Noddy Lockey under some pressure from Chris Frost, while Mike Gibbon too a close fought third ahead of Mike Perkins.

The A final started with a Dave Coward taking the lead, but a few offs left him 4th, while Rob Harris had 1/2 lap lead from Ian Barker and Ian Fisher. In the closing seconds both Ians fell off separately side by side, they were marshalled more or less together, and Dave come through the middle to take second by the smallest of margins. Congratulations to Rob Harris on the win.

With just 4 entries the team event was run for a full hour. The Heavy Penguins took an early lead, but after loosing the lead with a tyre change in the second segment, their car wasn't quite as quick, leaving first round winners the two Ians with enough of an advantage to win by 10 laps. Third place looked fairly close after one segment, but the Dowty youngsters had all sorts of breakdowns leaving the (much) older Funky Ice Men running a long very way behind second and a very long way ahead of fourth. This was fortunate because the jury rigged race control system survived until 3/4 of the way through the team race. Fortunately the first two positions were unaffected. The exact scores for third and fourth had to be estimated, but they were so far apart that there was no doubt about the positions.