Published November 18th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Hobby Habit Racing - Summer 2003/4 - Round 3
I haven’t written about RC car racing much lately, and I can’t promise to start doing so again regularly, but I will try to write whenever something itneresting happens.
Round 3 of the new season (Summer 2003/4) was run on Saturday night, and was the first round that I’ve really competed in so far. I missed the first one, and weather conditions weren’t suitable for me during the second round (blowing dust and contact lenses don’t mix). In addition to all that, two other race meetings have been cancelled due to rain!
Anyway, after giving my car a major rebuild a couple of months back it was great to finally get out and give it a good run. During practice and qualifying I made a few changes to my car setup. The new track layout has quite a few high speed corners, and my car a bit oversteery on the way into a corner. Firstly, I lent the front shocks inwards on the shock tower which gave the car dramatically more steering but made the problem worse. Then leaving the shocks lent in I sent a spring softer in the rear end and dropped the body shell down a couple of notches all around.
I generally run my body shell very high to avoid problems with it scraping on the ground, but decided to see if I could gain any aero advantage by lowering it. The end result was a car that by the end of the half time break handled like it was on rails.
The new track layout is quite different in character than the last one. Its quite fast, and you’re hard on the throttle for most of the lap, backing off slightly for only 3 or 4 corners. Its virtually identical to a couple of layouts we’ve raced before so it didn’t take long to find the groove again.
Qualifying started out reasonably well, with onloy a few mistakes. My first qualifying time was a 14/316 (14 laps in 316 seconds), followed by 14/314 and 14/312 as I refined may car setup. 14/312 was only good enough for last (eigth) in the B grade though, so I had a bit of work ahead of me. Bryan managed to qualify 8th in the A grade with a 15 lap qualifier.
Run time was an issue in all of the qualifiers, and in addition to the handling changes I decided to drop a pinion size during the break to make sure I made the finish. As the sun went down, the tire warmers came out, and when the racing got underway the car handled MUCH better. The first race started well, as I worked my way through the pack into the lead while the others were caught up in first lap incidents, however a coming together with another car on the final turn put us both off in the grass. When we rejoined we were both last by a clear margin. I worked my way back to fourth (14/302), the other guy managed second.
The second race was a bit cleaner, again I worked my way through into a comfortable position by avoiding first lap incidents, but a couple of small mistakes saw me finish in 6th just shy of 15 laps (14/301). I was determined to crack the 15 lap barrier in the third race, having missed out by a second the previous race.
The third race was a similar story, a hard and fast race all the way, two tiny mistakes though cost me my 15 laps. At the finish I was chasing another car to the line with about a matre between us, he made it though for another lap, while I was buzzed home. Ripped off!
I think everyone who competed in helfire B’s on Saturday night thoroughly enjoyed it. There was some excellent, clean, fast racing. Races 2 and 3 were frantic, if you weren’t attacking the guy in front, you were defending from behind (sometimes both at the same time). Simply sensational stuff, and my car finally seems to be sorted now. Its never been so good in its life.
Bring on the next race meeting in two weeks!