Mallet’s Winter Series – Final Round

The final round of Mallet’s Winter Series at NDOR nearly saw it being cancelled, with the conditions seeing all four seasons in one day. I was loading the van up at 6am with Dave Brown, and both of us had snow on our shoulders and thinning crowns. We opened the track up and I was getting text messages left right and centre asking, “What’s the weather like there?” Well we had sleet, then I was looking over to the hills and I could see brighter skies. Drivers where turning up and asking if it was still on. I said that I would give a decision at 9am and around 8am the rain had just about stopped so we got out with the brooms and started sweeping the track off. Around 8.30am we had a couple of cars going around so that the drivers could see what the track was like for them and then a few more guys got on the track and everyone was happy to run. We had a few drivers turn around and go home, but we still had 35 drivers left out of the 60 who were pre-booked so we had got a race on and the day was getting brighter and brighter.
With the weather conditions in the morning, the format for us would be three rounds of qualifying, a 17-minute long C final, 22-minutes for the B final and a half hour A final. The final round of the Mallet’s Winter Series at NDOR was sponsored by RC Disco and saw a great showing of the new Xray XB9 with some 11 showing up, nearly a third of the field.

Local man Graham “Sloppy” Alsop showed that he is going to be a force to deal with this year at the Nationals as he has been dominating the series and today was no exception with him taking the TQ over John Holmes and Dave Bailey. With the top drivers holding their own for the A final, the top junior was little Adam ‘Talo’ Taylor who would start in eighth in the A final. Arron Girling took pole in the B final. Brandon Tills took pole in the C final with Lewis Whitley and Robert ‘Eddy’ Coastsworth bringing up the rear.
Brandon started off in front of everyone with his new Xray XB9 buggy at the beginning of the C final and stayed there until he must have had some bad back markers to pass as at one point he must have had a problem as he went down to fifth place, but he kept his head and came in third for a bump place into the B final. He had a tough time in the B final and just couldn’t get into a rhythm with everyone tussling to try and be in the A final. Brandon showed great maturity and was proud enough to pull out so not to damage his new XB9 buggy. Brandon well done Buddy.
The B final saw young Arron Girling starting on pole and lead all the way and looked like he was going to walk it to the A final until lap nine when he had a driveshaft pop out in him. Unlucky Arron. This left the door wide open for Lee Baldry, Ben Riley, Dave Griffiths and Lee Bunker to battle it out for the three bump up places. Lee Bunker (XB9) took the win with Ben Riley second and Lee Baldry (XB9) third.
The A final got under way and that saw Sloppy take off and never look back. John had a lonely run in second place just leaving Dave Bailey and Alex Mortimer to swap over positions at the fuel stops. Alex momentarily held third place for a few laps only to have his buggy act up, which we think was an electrical problem. That left Dave to battle off a flying XB9 of Lee Bunker. The top qualifying XB9 driver Dave Brown made that fatal mistake of changing his set-up just before the final and it made his buggy a heck of a lot slower than in the heats resulting in him coming home in ninth place. Dave – if its not broken then don’t fix it!
The overall result for the buggies had Graham Alsop on top and winning an Xray 808E. He was followed by team mate John Homes in second with Associated driver Dave Bailey third.

The winter series in buggies saw Adam Taylor taking top top stop with his AE RC8, Arron Girling in second driving a Losi with Robert Coatsworth took third place driving a Mugen.

The winter series results for the Truggies saw Vinny Ping take the top spot, Michael Shorey was second and Rob Wood took third. Thanks to everyone that has turned up to race at NDOR – if it wasn’t without you we would not have what some say is the best Astro track to race on.
A big thank you to RC Disco for sponsoring this incredible series, Podium RC for supporting us and Alex Vernon for running race control. Finally, one more thank you to the NDOR crew as without you lot, racing would be nothing – hanks for keeping the track and series running lads.
Booking in is open for the first round of the Mallet’s Summer Series on A April 2012 and can be found here.

Source: Tim (Mallet)