Our local race saw all four school teams represented, but unfortunately team Fusion had not managed to complete their car so were there to help with marshalling, rather than racing. Wacky Racer were hoping to better their qualification mileage of 84 miles with a few changes & slim tyres. Rotary Racer were aiming to achieve their 2nd consecutive win at the circuit but had some new drivers to train. The Pod Movement were hoping for reliability with Y-Pod?! in F24+ and R-PodS SSC in F24, the main hope was to try & maintain their second qualification place for the final.
The F24+ race started promptly with a reasonable field of 8 cars. As expected, Brian & Zebedee took an early lead with Y-Pod?! not far behind and the other cars further back. After a few laps, the back cover started coming off Zebedee but the driver showed no sign of slowing till they were eventually forced back into the paddock with a puncture & to have the back taped up. This left us to take over second place. The rest of the race was fairly uneventful & we held second place till the end, despite our driver change. We were surprised to see the car stop immediately after the chequered flag & later found out we had two punctures in the rear tyres - luckily they only happened on the last lap so we managed to hold onto our second place.
The F24 race started well with Zebedee pulling into an early lead, closely followed by Rotary Racer and R-PodS SSC not far behind. As the race panned out, Zebedee was pulled off the circuit with a sheared wheel bolt - not helped by the bumpy nature of the track. This allowed Rotary Racer into the lead and R-PodS SSC into second, with Wacky Racer doing well further down the field. A rapidly improving SC07 soon overhauled R-PodS SSC so we gave up hope of a 1 - 2 finish & started to think a 1 - 3 might be possible. Wacky Racer had been doing well but along with many other cars, suffered a puncture and lost a lot of time changing tyres, by this time Zebedee was back on the track & scorching around the circuit.
As the race drew to a close, Zebedee was overhauling R-PodS SSC and we started to think our third place was in doubt - on the last lap our fears were realised as we were overtaken, having to be satisfied with fourth. Rotary Racer didn't falter & held the lead continuously since Zebedee's problems - Wacky Racer finished a disappointing 26th place after their punctures but had some consolation in that they were ahead of both the Furze Platt cars and only 11 miles behind TSR4.
The weather was wonderful and it was a truly Great Western Race…!
