Brian McGinty - RCSnaps Contributor has writen a report of Slough/Remote World Model Car Club’s Sumer Series Round 5, this Race day was used by many as a ‘warm up’ to the 3rd Apex Gp which will take place in a couple of weeks.

Today brought upon us the challenge of the Slough track, having never previously been here before it was bound to be a new challenge and after hearing a lot of good things about the track I was optimistic and looking forward to it. I met up with the usual hooligans I race with and we pitched up and walked the track. I was impressed. It was very smooth and technical with some jumps, perfect. Also it was a suprise to see the Hyper 9 at the track beeing tested by the HoBao UK team. My car was setup and ready and my first heat was upon me and I chose some HoBao Tri Spikes as my tyre and set upon the track. Everything was going well until unfortunately my engine cut! I had a busy marshal point to say the least but it provided a good view to see other people’s race lines and where I could make up some time.

My next heat came around and the only thing I changed was the plug, thinking this would cure my still mysterious engine cut how wrong can one person be! 3 cuts in this heat pretty much scrapped that and put me back to the drawing board. I reset all the needles and started again and put another plug in (This was turning out to be an expensive day, but more on that later). My third heat came up and by this time I was off the pace. Elliot Boots was setting the track on fire with a speed only he could find. I’m sure he isn’t human. The third heat I went out on new set of M3 Bowties which after being recommended by several people I could see what they were on about. They provided excellent grip but I was hampered by radio gear problems, I had this earlier in the day but by the 3rd heat it was a lot worse, this hurt me in the heat and I finished with 7/ 5m 37.99, which wasn’t to bad but I was frustrated at not being able to have a clean heat so far. One left so fingers crossed!I made a few changes lowered the car a small amount and increased the toe out on the front, and I charged my battery which I considered to be at fault for my radio issues. Out I went and hurrah I got through the heat and I bettered my previous time with 7/ 5m 28.23, but as I pulled up onto the pit table the radio went awol again and it required some skilful blocking from my pit crew to stop the car. After all this I was in the D final quite disappointing but given the problems I had all day at least I wasn’t in the bottom final.I settled quite happily in the final and was going around in 2nd without any worries until around the half way mark after my fuel stop the radio started to do its own thing. I wanted to brake, it had other ideas. Frustrated I continued to battle on suffering these minor interference problems which although minimal happened fairly frequently, but I managed to limp home in 3rd scoring a bump up as well. A change of batteries hoping that the battery was the problem and I began the next final but with the fantastic climate we experience in this country the heavens opened up and unleashed a downpour, which not only ment the stop of photos but also the possible end to the day…

The track soon filled up with puddles and I was thinking maybe an outboard motor would be better than a nitro engine. A few people pulled out which in hindsight I should have done but I wanted to see if the battery was causing the radio issues, 4 laps in and it became apparent it wasn’t the battery as my car did its best kamikaze impression of the day whoops! There is some known issues with the Futaba 2.4GhZ FASST system over heating and going into thermal shut down, which is what I suspect happened to me.

Even if it was raining it was still quite hot. Some brave drivers battled on through the conditions and bumped up to the next round by this time however the rain was really starting to come down and only a brave few decided to run much to my sadness I had to stand in the rain on my marshal point now with only a jumper as protection from the elements. Suffice to say it didn’t work, Reece Ashby and Chris Smoothy were going well in this final from what I could tell as after a few laps every car looked very similar, a fast moving noisy brown object. The weather eventually did get the better of us and the day was stopped after the C final, which was a real shame as the B and A final had some top class drivers in it. I mentioned earlier about it being a costly day the rebuild proved it every bearing in the car was impressively dead. The track was fantastic even with the great ‘British Summer’ weather our day wasn’t dampened.The Truggy class final was a thrilling watch. Early on you would have put your house, car, wife and anything else to hand on Steve martin taking the win with some consistent driving and good lap times. Simon hunter was chasing him hard though and over the period of 8 laps Steve was 1st and Simon 2nd, however on lap 10 Steve had encountered a problem which enabled Simon to take the lead which he kept for the next 5 laps which gave him the win over the field. The results are as followed:

1: Simon Hunter 14/10m 19.68
2: Steve Martin13/ 9m 46.72
3: Luis Sampaio12/10m 21.62

Due to the A and B final Buggys being called off the qualifying positions determined the final results. The A final Starting positions - and therefore the final standings – were:

1: Graham Alsop
2: Elliott Boots
3: David Bailey

Bring on the Apex GP!

Brian McGinty - RCSnaps Contributor

Detailed results can be found here…

Photos of the event can be found here…