Newbury RC Club is an established club that caters for 1/10th off-road, amongst other classes, at club level. However they recently decided to run a large event for tenth scale buggies and eighteenth micro cars, the MK Racing GP. It’s quite unusual to see a serious tenth scale race in the south. The recent resurgence in tenth scale however has been nationwide, so a serious race in the south seemed inevitable.

Fantastic! Tenth scale is where I got into RC racing in the early/mid ‘90’s so I couldn’t wait. In fact at the point of learning about the race I didn’t have a tenth scale car, a search on the fantastic oOple.com forums however resulted in me purchasing a nice Kyosho Lazer ZX-5 on my small budget. I already had a micro Associated RC18T FT, so I entered both classes.

The race was sponsored by MK Racing, hence the name. Marc Knight provided a nice array of prizes for the raffle, and also was trackside with his shop for people to get spares and parts for those inevitable crashes. So my first tenth scale 4wd race, sponsered by my local/favourite model shop, at a relativly local track..... I could not wait!

On arrival at the track, this is what we were greeted with:

Drivers briefing was held promptly after booking-in, and lead to a pleasant surprise for me. Qualifying was to be run using the rolling start system, which is more commonly used in nitro racing. I was much more familiar with this system, and prefer it over the traditional staggered start. Other than that the rest of the meeting seemed that it would follow usual conventions. It wasn’t long before I got to go out for practice with the 4wd, and experience this track first hand. The track had been designed by top level driver Lee Martin, already well known for designing his own track, CML Raceway. So we had expectations beforehand, especially after Andy Bell (Club Chairman) posted photos of the jumps he had built online.

Well, it did not disappoint! Straight off the timing loop there was a cross-over jump with a short landing area, leading to some hairpin corners and to a large table-top style ramp jump. This lead around into a double, a hairpin back, through a fast chicane style section, and back over another double jump! Finally it was down the back for the long straight, a couple more hairpins and over the timing loop to do the cross-over again. Wow, how did they fit all that in an indoor track?

Most of the jumps could be rolled for the wary racer, however this lost them time. The cross-over however obviously had no opt-out, and had a very short landing distance, this meant drivers with good jumping skills were rewarded with good lap times. Judging by the comments trackside and the feedback online it was very much a marmite feature; people either loved it or hated it. Personally I loved it, even though I certainly couldn’t always get it right. Practice went well for both my 4wd and Micro, although my RC18T obviously didn't have the same stability as the ZX-5, I was surprised how well the micro got around the track. Fortunately for the micro heat there was a slight track modification to reduce the main straight size.

The later heats were soon changed from the rolling start to a more conventional qualifying due to problems with the timing of the rolling. Lots of fast drivers were present and this was easily visible either watching them race or seeing their times. It was also surprising the number of Associated B44’s at the event considering how new they are. The B44 certainly seemed like a wise option judging by speed they were going, and of course the spares support from MK Racing.

Unfortunately from round 2 onwards is where I started to break a lot. Due to a mixture of mistakes and bad luck I managed not to complete an entire qualifying session for 4wd. This is where I have to say a big thanks to Giles Bishop for the spares and advice, I wouldn’t have been able to get going again. It was a good lesson in how punishing indoor racing can be when you get things wrong, which all added to the drama for me. The top qualifiers for each of the classes were as follows:

Straight after qualifying the raffle was held, with lots of prizes from MK Racing to be had. With qualifying and raffle over it was time to move onto the finals, which were to be held in two legs. Unfortunately there were a few issues with the timing system during the day, it seemed that some PT’s weren’t counting too well. However it seems on the whole, this issue aside qualifying seemed quite representative  and people ended up in the right finals.

There is little to comment in the finals, other than that the level of driving in the top finals was outstanding. As he had done with qualifying, Cris Oxley dominated the 1/18th modified class to take the win. Even if my servo hadn’t broken and I wasn’t taking racing lines an oil tanker could navigate.... I certainly wouldn’t have caught him. 1/18th Prostock appeared to be much harder fought over, with Chris Harris winning both legs of the final to finish ahead of TQ Chris Bottle.

In 1/10th 4wd TQ Elliott Boots won both legs of the final to take the win overall.  In 2wd Ellis Stafford also won both legs of his final to finish just ahead of 2wd TQ Lee Martin. The top 3 in each class are as follows:

Well with racing over, the trophies were next. With more than half the drivers gone home, and results awaiting clarification I didn’t get any podium photos as it were. Which leads me onto the last part of this short report, photos. Well the hall was very dark, and I was using a compact camera.... so even with ISO200 I was getting grain. I done the best I could, and the “interesting” results are below. The report also is a bit short as I spent a fair bit of time fixing the car and racing 2 classes to do too much, sorry.

I would like to thank all of the many people involved for putting on an awesome race... I just can’t wait for the next one now!