The Somerset heat was held at a new venue this year (RNAS Merrifield) and attracted a strong field of cars. The circuit was a well laid out triangle, similar to Dunsfold but the main straight was slightly uphill and into a strengthening headwind so it was all set to be a challenging race. There wasn’t an F24+ event so the school was represented by “Team Fusion” (with the Wacky Racer’s old car), “Rotary Racer” & “R-PodS SSC”.
The day was bright & breezy as we arrived and queued up for scrutineering. Pretty soon, all the cars were scrutineered & out for practice prior to a very civilised 12:00 race start. We managed to get all the cars to the start in record time so it was a Chipping Sodbury lock-out on the front row of the grid, with all three cars lined up together.
As the race started, Taunton School pulled out an early lead but were soon to fall foul of the max lap limit, “Rotary Racer” was in second with “R-PodS SSC” in close attendance. The second & third places changed a few times as the slower cars were lapped until the telemetry on Rotary Racer showed a battery fault, resulting in a dramatic throttle back to conserve power. With Taunton suffering a time penalty & “Rotary Racer’s” battery problems, “R-PodS SSC” took the lead. We had a worrying pit stop when it appeared that one of “R-PodS SSC’s” tyres had a puncture, but this was pumped back up & stayed up for the remainder of the race. “Team Fusion” were lapping well at first but suffered the perennial battery problems and had to sit out part of the race in the hope of some battery recovery. They were not alone in this as the headwind caused many cars to suffer & the field dramatically thinned in the last half hour of the race. As the race drew to a close, “Rotary Racer” was wound back up & was lapping well but the Taunton car had broken, so was unable to challenge the leaders, “R-PodS SSC” was in a comfortable position, 7 laps ahead of the field. “Rotary Racer” managed to pull up to second place so it was a Chipping Sodbury 1,2.
This circuit was a great new venue, there was a very friendly atmosphere, the marshals were excellent very good - it was a traditional Greenpower race near Taunton. The pit lane was fairly quiet, so some teams were allowed to do some maintenance in the pits, very much like when we were first involved…. when races were less hectic… & there was more time … all 6 hours of it…!
