Jim O’Halloran’s Weblog

Published February 17th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran

Hobby Habit Racing - Round 1

Saturday night saw the start of the new Hobby Habit Racing season, which of course means a new track, presentations and concourse. I’d painted up a new body shell for concourse. Some excellent designs were entered, but the clear winner was the guy who entered a Lambourgini with a Scooby Doo motif done entirely with an airbrush. Not a sticker in sight.

Presentations were uneventful, but it was good so see Matthew win F! last season ahead of Darren. Matthew won the season in the last race of the last season, where he had to beat Drarren for the season win. Matthew also took away the perpetual trophy for season champion. Good to see!

The usual debates were had about the new track layout. Originally a very fast curcuit was proposed, but that had to be scrapped because cars were lapping in about 10 seconds which was way too fast for the lap counters. The track was then lengthened, into what is now a very technical curcuit which should provide some good racing for the season ahead.

In practice my car was a bit taily, so a change was made to stiffen the front suspension. I still wasn’t entirely happy with the car but it seemed good enough. I set a reasonable time in the first qualifier, but my car felt like it was struggling to gain speed in some parts of the curciuit, so I dropped back on tooth on the pinion to get some more accelleration. In qual 2 all hell broke loose, my car suddenly was very oversteery to the point of being almost undrivable. More front end tuning only made the problem worse for qual. 3. My qual 1 performance was good enough for 5th in te B grade, but more tuning was needed.

In the half time break I pulled everything off the car and went back to the suspension setup I had at the very beginning of the night to start tuning again, and without touching anything the car was great. Mistake No. 1 If I had left it alone in the first place I would’ve been fine!

Everything went well in race 1 until about 5 laps before the end I clipped a corner marker and ended up in the bushes. It took over 20 seconds for the marshals to find me and put me back on the track, during which time I almost dropped an entire lap. After timing problem were sorted I eventiually finished third. Race 2 was almost a repeat, a smooth race throughout before clipping the same corner merker, but this time I got away without needing assistance from a mershal and finished the race first.

After two good runs, a first or a second should see me win the B grade, so I decided to break out the new body shell for race 3. Mistake No. 2!, despite both body shells being Frewer Honda Accords, they have different rear wings. Unfortunately the wing on the new shell is considerably less efficient then the old one. This I found out the hard way when the back end broke loose on turn 1 and put me into the barrier almost flat out (ouch!). After a few laps I found that by keeping my speed up (to get more downforce) and taking a much wider line through some corners (to keep the speed up), I was able to sort of drive around the problem. I eventually finished 5th in the last race.

My 1st and 3rd, led to a three way tie in results between myself, Ryan (also with a 1st and a 3rd) and Reese (two 2nd places). Reese qualified better, and took away the B grade win, while I finished second and Ryan picked up third.

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