Last weekend the excellent Halifax track hosted Round 4 of the BTCC touring car championship. Daniel Booker was racing his TRF419X in the stock 17.5 class.
He was the only Tamiya racer at the event, but he was the class of the field as he TQ'd every round and won the final against some very strong competition.
Dan has been running the car for over a month now, whereas I am a carpet racer, he prefers racing outside and he has been refining his outdoor set-up.
As you can see there are a few things that are different from the stock set-up.
Here you can see the sweep, and deck raising
Raising the top deck gives the car more grip, adding 1 degree of sweep with the E block gives the car a lot more corner speed on the large flowing Halifax circuit. A little more filing needs to be done to stop the belt rubbing. It is exciting to see how Dan does at the next round, and maybe he will go even faster with some of the prototype RCRACER parts for the 419X.
This past weekend saw us visit the super fast circuit of Halifax for the fourth round of the BTCC championship.
As usual on Saturday many drivers turned up to practice, the weather was mixed and we had the occasional heavy downpour of rain, however due to the temperature it meant that the track would dry very quickly. A few drivers braved the wet conditions but most waited for it to pass.
Sunday was a totally different story, we woke up to bright sunshine and had it for most of the day. We had the usual open practice session first thing and then it was onto the qualifying rounds. Schumacher’s Mark Musgrove gave the drivers briefing and explained the format for the day. This was the usual format of round by round qualifying, with the best 2 from 4 rounds to count.
In the modified class Elliott Harper was away at the touring car Euros in Slovakia for this event, however there were still many fast drivers in attendance. It was Olly Jefferies who took 3 out of the 4 qualifying rounds to secure himself pole position for the final. Behind Olly it was a very close battle between Chris Grainger and Kyle Branson. With Chris winning the final qualifying round, this meant he would line up 2nd on the grid and Kyle 3rd.
In the 13.5 class it was James Hart and Zak Finlay that would be very close on pace throughout the day. Zak coming out on top and therefore this meant he was on Pole position for the A final.
In the 17.5 class it was a dominating performance from Daniel Booker, taking all 4 rounds of qualifying and securing pole position for himself. Behind him it was very close but Michael Ball would line up 2nd and Bradley Coaker 3rd.
Next it was onto the finals, some exciting moves in some and here are the results as follows:
Modified 1 Olly Jefferies 2 Chris Grainger 3 Zak Smith 4 Colin Price - Schumacher Mi6 5 Marcus Askell 6 Stefan Chodzynski 7 Matthew White 8 Darren Lee - Schumacher Mi6 9 Kyle Branson 10 Richard King
13.5 Boosted 1 Zak Finlay 2 Mark Wallace 3 Chris Gunter - Schumacher Mi6 4 Lee Price - Schumacher Mi6 5 Scott Scholey 6 Michael Bolt 7 Mikey Mansell 8 James Robinson 9 Alex Brocklebank - Schumacher Mi6 10 James Hart - Schumacher Mi6
17.5 Blinky 1 Daniel Booker 2 Michael Ball 3 James Stewart 4 Adrian Sully - Schumacher Mi6 5 Bradley Coaker 6 Steve Bessent 7 Andrew Dawson 8 Paul Hill 9 Mike Mansell 10 Keith Jenkins - Schumacher Mi6
A special mention has to go to young Michael Bolt for making the A final in 13.5, he drove great all day and thoroughly deserved to be mixing it in there, well done.
So after all of the great racing in the finals, we had the presentation for the winners and top 3 in each final, this was followed by the traditional Schumacher raffle. Congratulations go to Bryony Freeman for winning the star prize of the Arrowmax set up system. Bryony also showed the boys how to drive in her B final also by taking the win and was rather pleased with herself.
Once again it was a brilliant event, pretty much all drivers leaving with a smile on their face which was great to see.
Many thanks to the Halifax team for everything you did with us, you have all done a fantastic job of getting the track and facilities back in great condition after the floods previously.
The next round will see us at the fast Mendip circuit on Sunday July 31st. Entries still available, so come and get booked in: www.centralbooking.org
