Tuesday April 17th

32nd Formula One and 32nd Eurosport were to be raced in the one day. With the Eurosport race format kicking in, there was not going to be any more semi final madness, just qualifying and mains.

32nd Formula One Eurosport

I knew I would struggle with the old heavy F1 car in qualifying against the newer lighter cars, and that I would probably be racing form the B main, and so it was. TQ was Gugu with a 3.20, while I struggled my way to a 3.61 down in 11th place, but I was pretty confident that I would be competitive in the race.  A 14 car field meant there were to be 2 mains, 7 racers in each, and with 5 minute heats it was going to be fun. It was also fantastic to see the field of cars all looking great in original F1 liveries. before the event there was a lot of talk about having to paint the car in an original F1 livery, but as the instigator of this class I felt it was important to stay with the International rules that all of the current chassis are made to, and the was part of the package. After seeing the field, and seeing the remarkable pre painted bodies that Gugu has available, the detractors were silenced.

Being int he B main, my race was first up. As the race got under way it was clear that Greg Gilbert and myself were setting the pace, however by mid race Fred Hood put in a charge (after getting to grips with his car that had never turned a wheel before qualifying) and got to within a couple of laps of Greg and I. Greg and I ran very close throughout the race, ending up only 4 tenths of a lap apart, with me ahead. We both ran hard the whole race, as we knew that even a podium position overall could be possible.

Once the A main got underway, as expected Gugu and Brian Saunders were the class of the field, running side by side for quite a bit of time. Behind them Jonathan Forsyth was the only other driver to be near the average lap totals that Greg and I posted int he B main. In the end Brian took the win, 2 laps ahead of Gugu, who was 17 laps ahead of Jonathan Forsyth, who was  only 4 laps ahead of myself and Greg. So at the end of the day a 4th place with a 15 year old car and motor was not a bad effort, and I was happy after the first ever USRA F1 race.

This class really is a fantastic one, a real drivers class. you cna easily over horsepower the car, so motors are not an issue, and being 68mm wide you can run side by side, and pass without hitting each other (unless you slide out a lot). Despite what a lot of people thought before the races, this class was one of the highlights of the event, especially the breathtaking heat where Gugu and Brian were running side by side on adjacent lanes for almost the whole heat.

32nd Scale Eurosport

This was one of those races that just did not go well. I was way behind getting the car ready, and had problems getting the race body mounted right before the race, so had to revert to the old practice body, which really was not mounted in the right position. My car was good, smooth and fast, but I just did not cut a good lap in qualifying, leaving me in the B main, and then it seemed I was just always in trouble, and that of course led to a stripped gear in the middle of one heat, and a slow change with some trouble getting the new gear in, just cost me more time than I would have liked, leaving my in 6th overall, more than 100 laps behind overall winner Greg Gilbert from the A main.

The one high point form this race is that the new BOW Eurosport arm ran another full race distance in the 32nd car, without any problems. Encouraging for the future.

After the 32nd race it was time to finally get my 24th car onto the track, well finish building it then get it onto the track. Brian Saunders had finished building the chassis the day before, but with 2 classes in one day I had not had a chance to assemble the car. I did that, cut and mounted a new JK Audi and finally got onto the track after it had been cleaned and sprayed ahead of the 24th Euro race next day.

I cycled through a few of the motors we had prepared before the event, including a couple of 26 guage motors with BOW armatures. All were smooth and fast, it was just going to be a case of select the most driveable one and go with it.