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Racer series 1/5th scale bike national round 1 Wombwell Mark's meeting For the first time in years Team Benwell were actually ready for the start of the season, we have new bikes (BD4 our own design), new packs of cells, new motors and a new found enthusiasm which has been lacking at the start of so many seasons before. The first round was at Wombwell, South Yorkshire and although it is 230 miles away and early April is still not quite ideal biking weather, we still cheerfully got up at 4.30 Sunday morning to start the long ride up. With clear motorways all the way 100 mph + is easily sustainable and we arrived way too early and had to stand around for three quarters of an hour until some others arrived. I couldn’t practice until Steve Newey arrived with some parts for my bike so I contented myself with watching Ian “grass track” his way round the very tight, narrow and twisty Wombwell track. A couple of laps with Ians bike while his fingers thawed out confirmed what I thought, this is one difficult track. Not only are most of the corners not a constant radius but there are camber changes and surface changes to cope with as well. Part of the circiut utilises the go-kart track which is super fast very grippy and plenty wide enough, while the RC section is really too narrow for 1/10th scale let alone 1/5th and is very slippery. After a thankfully brief drivers meeting, where the new rule changes were outlined for us, we got on with round 1. We had seventeen entries for this first round, which considering the weather and the location of the track was really good, so the heats were split with eight bikes in the first heat and nine bikes in the second. Nine bikes on this track kept the marshals extremely busy. So, round one confirmed what I had previously thought in that this was going to be a frustrating day, with many trips across the grass and worse. I don’t know what my first round result was as I knew it was pretty awful so didn’t bother looking, the bike was pretty good as it should be after taking me and Ian over six months to develop, however, I was the limiting factor and needed more practice on this tricky track. Round 2 was even worse when two laps in my pinion gear came loose, pretty amateur stuff and something that hasn’t happened since round 1 of the series last year. Round three was marginally better however the slippery track was still catching me out. Ian managed to borrow some instructions for my new MRT speed controller from Derrick and adjusted the torque for me, and by round four I was starting to settle down and find the groove. New front brakes for the bike this year meant some really awesome stopping power, so much so that the bike would start to do a stoppee in a straight line and with the bike leant over slightly the front tyre would just let go. This took me all day to master and I really should have practiced a bit more with it. However my round 4 time meant that I had qualified 8th in the A final and a fairly trouble free final saw me make a place to finish 7th. All in all a fair result considering how difficult I found the track, and hopefully a result I can drop later in the series. For all you techies out there this is the tech spec of my BD4 Chassis: BD4 03-002 ESC Settings: Function 1 (solid) = 1 flashing Ian's meeting So it’s the start of a new season and although I’m looking forward to it I don’t feel that ready to defend my title. I’ve just got back from a month away, I’ve started a new job which gives me a lot more to think about and just started a Microsoft MSCA course which takes up what little time I have left. However We did get the BD4 chassis’s sorted out in time so I was heading up here with some hope for the bike even if I have only actually raced twice since Mendip last year. Wombwell was the venue for this meet and I’ve never been there before. Very technical, very narrow, very little grip and very hard. Fortunately the bike was awesome so I could just concentrate on learning the track. In fact apart from an extra turn on the rake adjuster I didn’t change it all day. In hindsight I think I should have but hey after the first couple of rounds I was a lap up on everyone so it didn’t seem that important. A good lap around here was in the 30 sec bracket, A very good lap was creeping into the 29’s and the best lap all day was by me in round 4 of about 29.3 but by this time Steve was doing 29.4 so things were close. I took pole by 3 seconds on 14 with a 9 sec split (7 min qualifying) I was chuffed with that and although it was tight I wasn’t that worried about the final. Baring any erratic bikes I knew I could manage a clean final so all I had to do was pump in reasonable times and Steve wouldn’t catch me. And as it turned out that’s what happened at the start. I had a problem with the front brake working to well and locking the front up but I was handing it reasonably well most of the time (over did a stoppee pacing Colin Mac and rolled her end over end) By the six minute mark though my hands were too cold and I was struggling to have a feel for the brakes and was missing my braking points or braking to hard more and more. I have no idea how big a lead I had at this point but I couldn’t see Steve but with a minute to go he was right back with me. I missed another braking point and he passed and I couldn’t do anything about him and from here on he just pulled away leaving me to finish second. I didn’t look at the lap times but from what I thought happened and what Steve said after the race I think he was just riding well and I just got slower. I should take a look I guess to check what laps he was pumping in because if he was doing 28’s then perhaps the best guy won……… but I’m not so sure :-) Chassis: BD4 03-001 |