BRCA National Rallycross Round 8 – The Season Finale

• Date: September 4th
• Location: Ware
• Track: Westmill
• Report: Rob Cuss

This was the venue for the 2-dayer earlier in the series and was being used again due to another club pulling out and as usual the Westmill crew put in a fantastic effort to prep the track. The track itself is modular so it allows different layouts – the layout for this track was shorter and missed out the tricky back left corner, but included a small chicane and the big jump had been re-profiled to make it much better.

Tyres: Much like the 2 day national it was Bow Fighters, Crow bow and XBT Eclipse combinations, Cityblocks, Kamikazee’s, Revolvers and Calibers. It was quite dusty to start with so bigger block tyres were the favourites in a soft compound. As the dust cleared the medium compounds started to appear.

Qualification

Round 1 – Darren Bloomfield and his Novarossi powered Losi would take the round from Neil Cragg and then Elliot Boots, Simon Willets had a strong run to finish 4th just ahead of local lad Karl Jackson in 5th.

Round 2 – Elliots Boots and his RB Powered MBX6 would take this round from Darren Bloomfield and then a quick Sloppy in 3rd, Neil Cragg could only manage fourth just ahead of Karl Jackson.

Round 3 – Elliot wrapped up TQ with a great run, Simon Willets had a great run to put him 2nd ahead of Neil Cragg, Richard Barton and Reece Sawyer would round out the top 5.

Traffic seemed to be a issue round this new layout, causing quite a stir up in qualifying that would lead to some corking finals. There were some big names who had trouble in qualifying, Stewart Wilcox could only manage 51st after his great Pro-Line performance, Rob Rasey was 46th.

How did our young guns fair, well Joe Adams was 50th, Callum Niblett was 63rd on his home turf which was a little disappointing for the little monster from Stevenage. We also had both Hamiltons turn up to have a blast, with Lewis out qualifying Nic which was a turn up for the books.

Finals

And we’ll start with the K final, Scott Walker won this by just under 3 secs from Nic Hamilton who was desperate to get to the next final to race his big brother. In 3rd was Piers Pearson and 4th Wes Robinson these 4 would bump up to the J final.

So onto the J final, Piers Pearson drove well to win this one from Duncan Neale, in 3rd was young Jonathon Skidmore and 4th Steve Hawkins, Jimmy Whitehall was the unlucky man in 5th. Nic and Lewis had their own little battle with some interesting attempts at passing by Nic, good to see the boys having fun and relaxing.

The I final was next up and it was Piers ‘bump up machine’ Pearson again taking the win from Rachel Merry and young Jonathon Skidmore in 3rd with a great drive, the last bump up spot went to Nino Athanasiou.

So onto the H Final and this was won by yours truly, 2nd was a hard fighting Ricky Burnett, 3rd was ‘Mr Slough’ Adrian Svennson and 4th with a cracking drive was Rachel Merry. Piers Pearson’s bump up mission stopped here but a 35 place improvement is still a great result!

So the G final came around and I got off to a flyer running 2nd from 11th, it was all going well until I tangled with 1st place Lewis Millman over the big jump, I came off worse and dropped back to 11th. Ian Barnard took the win, Jim Davies had a great drive to finish 2nd, Richard Hanscomb 3rd and Dave Blakeley 4th.

The F Final was the start of a monster bump up by Stewart Wilcox who won this from a super fast Jordan Hart, Charles Godwin and Jamie Conway. Alex Mortimer won the E final from local Mark Tatman, 3rd would be Stewart Wilcox and 4th young gun Joe Adams and his Hobao.

Anthony Potter drove really well to hold off Stewart Wilcox to win the D final, Michael Lewis was 3rd with his Kyosho and Stephen Childerhouse took the last bump up spot. Joe Adams missed the bump in 5th. In the C final was the end of the bump up for Stewart Wilcox as he could only manage 6th, it would be Simon Reeves who took the win from Tony Truman, Brennan Ralls and Matt Lewis.

B Final time and this was dominated by RCRacer team driver the Mighty Chris Doughty, however don’t let him glue your tyres as he had to drive most of the final with his front right hanging off… Tony Truman was in awesome form to finish 2nd with RC8B, Dave Spashett with Kitt his blacked out Losi would finish 3rd and Craig Drescher would get the last spot, there were some mega battles all through this final with the bump up only being decided in the last few laps. Sam Taylor broke his car on his last outing which was a shame, Jon Hazelwood also retired his Agama with a loose servo screw, drinks are on you next time Russ.

A Final Time

The usual suspects shot away with Elliot and Darren swapping places at the start, Lee Martin who dominated the electric 10th Euros was 1st to retire, this seemed to be the catalyst for other big names to fall by the wayside as Darren Bloomfield had a rare mechanical as his driveshaft let go whilst leading.

Bootsie took the lead only to have a flameout due to a bent exhaust and cracked fuel tank from a collision, so Simon Willets took the lead, for about a lap then his rear shock decided to un-attach itself from his car! It was Neil Cragg who would take the lead from Simon on lap 33, with Neil’s luck this year would he be able to finish? The answer would be a emphatic yes taking the win from a  hard charging Graham Alsop in 2nd while the Mighty Chris Doughty finished 3rd with another great drive. Local Lad Karl Jackson would finish 4th with a great drive and Tony Truman finished 5th with another good performance.

So with the season over the top 3 juniors would be

• 1. Elliot Taylor, Losi
• 2. Joe Adams, Hobao
• 3. Nick Hill, Mugen

The over 40’s

• 1. Mike Craddock, Kyosho
• 2. Dave Grunill, Hotbodies
• 3. Dave Blakeley, Associated

The Clubmans

• 1. Ben Williams, Xray
• 2. Anthony Conroy, Mugen, DXR
• 3. Anthony Potter, Associated

The National Championship

• 1. Darren Bloomfield, Losi
• 2. Simon Willets, Kyosho
• 3. Neil Cragg, Associated

Also congratulations to Darren Bloomfield from all at Racer for getting engaged to his girlfriend Sheris Martin!

Huge thanks to Racer for letting me cover the series, and massive thanks to all the clubs, drivers and support staff that make the series! Now with some new cars on the horizon who will be driving what next year?? Stay tuned!! Laters!

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