Four times during the year the Southend Slot Club suspends its regular Tuesday race evenings and holds a different night of racing. The Autumn event in 2016 featured two separate competitions, both of which involved the use of cars that rarely if ever feature on normal club nights.
In the first half of the evening we were indebted to our member Ian Wells who brought along four almost identical Mirage sports cars for us to destroy. Each one of the four was placed on a lane and stayed there for the duration of the event. Thus, all eleven drivers drove all four cars so nobody was able to complain about anything. Well, almost nobody.
There is no doubt that one of the cars was much more difficult to drive than the other three but as we all had to drive it things were perfectly fair.
We ran three minute heats and our European member, Joël Thura, came out the comfortable winner by almost three clear laps from an on-form Tony Avis. Joël's usual sparring partner, Alan Shawe, found the cars not at all to his liking and finished further down the results than he has probably ever been before.
But overall, I think the idea was very successful and may well be repeated at some point in the future.
Here is the result of the Mirage Grand Prix:
|
Mirage Grand Prix |
3 minute endurance |
|
1st
|
Joël Thura
|
75.00
|
|
2nd
|
Tony Avis
|
72.02
|
|
3rd
|
Barry Boor
|
71.17
|
|
4th
|
Ian Castleton
|
70.19
|
|
5th
|
Vic Bettell
|
70.00
|
|
6th
|
Ian Wells
|
69.26
|
|
7th
|
Colin Spark
|
69.24
|
|
8th
|
Alan Shawe
|
67.09
|
|
9th
|
Graham Robinson
|
67.05
|
|
10th
|
Mark Nicholson
|
67.00
|
|
11th
|
Colin Nial
|
65.05
|
|
F.L.
|
Alan Shawe
|
9.164 secs
|
A Formula Libre event graced the second half of the evening. This means that members were allowed to race absolutely anything, as long as it was 1/32nd scale and looked at least vaguely like a proper racing, sports or saloon car - (sorry Richard, no rocket ships!) One or two members who only possess cars from our regular classes simply picked their best car but others were able to roll out vehicles that did not comply with any of our usual eleven classes. The true definition of Formula Libre.
And so it came to pass that the one known as Biscuit - Ian Castleton - was a resounding winner driving the pinkest G.T. car anyone has ever seen but boy, does it fly! To his eternal credit, Alan, who no doubt could have produced something even quicker than Ian's car, ran various unusual vehicles none of which had a hope of competing with the front runners.
So here is how the event ended:
|
Formula Libre |
4 x 12 lap heats |
|
1st
|
Ian Castleton
|
|
|
2nd
|
Mark Nicholson
|
|
|
3rd
|
Graham Robinson
|
|
|
4th
|
Barry Boor
|
|
|
5th
|
Ian Wells
|
|
|
6th
|
Joël Thura
|
|
|
7th
|
Alan Shawe
|
|
|
8th
|
Colin Spark
|
|
|
9th
|
Tony Avis
|
|
|
10th
|
Vic Bettell
|
|
|
11th
|
Colin Nial
|
|
|
F.L.
|
Joël Thura
|
9.103 secs
|
On our normal club nights we get points towards an unofficial and non-prize award club championship. These points are awarded on the basis of 30-23-18-15-13-11-10-9 etc etc etc. Just for fun I decided to produce an overall points result based on the evening's two sessions.
Here is how it all turned out:
