It was a bright start to Saturday morning and the last national of 2013 at the Oswestry Model Car Club; unfortunately, the forecast for the rest of the day was not so bright.

This is a traditional grass track. It was freshly laid out for the meeting, and therefore probably the only neutral track of the year, so I was looking forward to seeing how things were going to unfold!

In practice the RB6 felt great and seemed to be on the pace, but I knew the track would change quickly as the grass dried and thinned out, so it was more about learning the layout. I opted for Ballistic Buggy Green Spikes on the rear, as did most people. In the first run I used Green Schumacher mini spike slims up front. I found this fast, but had far too much steering, so I chose to change to Yellow Stagger ribs (old style) for the second practice and first qualifier.
The first qualifier went ok but a couple of silly errors culminated in 6th place in round. My lap times looked healthy, however I was confident that there was room for improvement! In the second round I TQ’d. I had actually made a couple of errors again, however, this time I was a little lucky with the weather; the two later heats were rain affected, so nobody could beat my fastest round time.

The rain had settled in now and was forecast to continue for the rest of the day, which meant the grip had gone and tyre choices needed a rethink. After my experience with slim spikes earlier in practice I decided to choose something a little less aggressive and went for Low Profile Slim staggers in green. This combination was excellent on the RB6 and allowed me to push hard without the rear rotating on exiting the turns.

I ended up 4th on the grid behind Darren Bloomfield, Lee Martin and Neil Cragg. I was fully aware it was going to be hard to break into the top 3 with these guys in front, but all I could do was keep it clean. The finals panned out rather well even though the track was getting wetter and muddier throughout! I ended up finishing 3rd, 2nd and then 4th to secure second overall. I have to mention that I had a lot of help from the Kyosho Team between finals to get the car ready so a big thanks to Tony Evdoka, Dave Burton, Steve Brown and Daniel Town for all the cleaning work!