Indoor Series?
 

I know this was the original idea behind restarting off road in Scotland then Dom jumped on board and we've had the outdoor series first, but are there still plans to have an indoor series once what little excuse for a summer we've had disappears?

I'm pritty sure a winter indoor series could work. Falkirk run indoors every sunday at the moment, East Kilbride, have finalised a new hall in the Glasgow area, at the moment it is just for Monday nights, but we are looking into the possibility of maybe being able to run a sunday afternoon/evening meeting there.

Also there is Ayr, Big Chris might be able to hold sunday meetings at Whifflets if there are enough entires.

What about Dunfermline, the high school would be ideal for holding a buggy meeting.
:thumbsup:

We're looking at possibility of including in the carpet championship meetings, there's not enough racing to pay for the hall currently independently.

That will get looked at after we sort out an outdoor venue. :thumbsup:

Watch this space.

Funny I was going to email you later and ask what was happening with the SCC this year Derek. ;)

Hall costs are always the crippling fact for one of events indoors, we (DundeeRCC) mentioned this before when there was talk about an indoor series. One of the suggestions was to pool all of the money from each event and pay off the hall fee's for each club before dividing up the rest.

Dundee would be happy to hold a round as mentioned previously on the Falkirk forums. Do Ayr, CSOR and EK still run 1/18th (Maverick Atoms and unlimited) as well? Of course you never want to detract from the main classes and dilute the racing but some people might only have a 1/18th and want to race as well.

East Kilbride, are strictly 10th Offroad now. We had a spell of 1/18th micros about 18 months ago, but wasn't very popular. We now focus on 2wd/4wd buggies and Short Course if there is enough interest.

I'll be updated www.ekmodelcarclub.co.uk soon with details of our new venue.

Raymond

This sounds like a great idea and another excuse to get the buggy out. If there were to be enough entries would we have 2WD and 4WD? Seriously hope this happens and can be an inter club championship.
Scotty....

I'm putting some finishing touches to the club application form for next years championship.

Essentially, I want to ensure that all the clubs who would like to run a round, are all working to the same goal and so I've taken the standard stuff from the BRCA regs and fine-tuned it to a more relaxed rule-set for the SORC series.

Means that we should be able to get an application pack to every club, and they can get them back to me before the end of the year. Then when the BRCA list is published, we can arrange a calendar for 2011, without clashes.

I still think it's a good idea to have 2WD and 4WD on different days, but I don't think there are enough drivers yet to sustain that. So next year, it'll still be 6 or maybe 8 events, both classes on the same day and I'll be pricing the events to encourage people to run both 2WD & 4WD.

I don't plan to introduce extra classes or scales in 2011, as the objective is to encourage more people to drive 10th scale off road, not dilute it. I don't see that having 6 classes of heats at one event makes for better racing - it actually takes away from it.

10th Off-road cars are pretty cheap to buy and run, and it's best to stick with that for now, until such times there are too many people wanting to run the same class. Then of course, there's the support there behind new classes.

Boys are we any further forward with this. Really want to help get a winter series up and running. I think there will be more people interested in this as there's a few looking at buggies at the moment and this is maybe the wee push that they're needing.
Scotty......

ayrs a deffo for this , i think we can get our hall and still pay for it with only buggies

I've not planned or scheduled anything, but I am planning a AGM sometime in October or November (I think it should happen after the BRCA meeting so we are clear on the rules for 2011, which I think we should stick closely to).

That may be too late for the new committee to organise something official, but there seems to be enough club level interest in this - I see four club officials commenting on running a round, so you've got the bones of this already - just needs someone to take the helm.

Afraid I'm a bit busy this month and need my "rest" after a busy summer. I'm still racing tho and will be playing through the winter, but personally I wouldn't be interested in a Winter Series.

The idea of racing every 2nd or 3rd week in a Summer Series between April and September is quite enough and the downtime is important to recharge the enthusiasm. If the season doesn't have downtime, then when do we do it? It's important for the longevity of the Scottish Off-road scene, not to make pigs of ourselves and feast too much.

I think part of the Summer Season should be indoors. It makes sense and seems proper - there are a few clubs that race indoors only.

But I'm not convinced that yet another series would be productive. Yes, it would benefit indoor clubs and hopefully increase numbers during the winter, but I don't think the numbers will be as big as Summer this year. Several people are already planning running other winter series (the addicts!) elsewhere and some are going to sit on their thumbs and work on using the 4 or 5 months to test and raise their game, and practice when the time allows.

I'm not trying to be deliberately negative but I don't think it'll attract the same level of commitment as the Summer Series. And for the reason of keeping things exciting in the Summer, I hope it doesn't happen - no offence intended.

Just my 2p worth and I hope no-one is offended if I decline from participating, organising or encouraging a Winter series.

Sorry guys, reading back through my last post and it might sound too negative.

I love the idea of racing through the winter, and if you can get it to achieve the same numbers or better than the Summer Series, that'll be great, but my point wasn't to put down the idea of a Winter Series, per se, just to protect the great Summer Series we have now.

We didn't have a Winter series all those years ago. I'm not aware of any motorsport that has a fully competitive Summer and Winter series? There must be one or two, but most take the time off to have a break and keep things fresh and exciting.

I'd presume that the main reason if there are any motorsport series that do run a fully competitive Summer and Winter series, do so because they are oversubscribed.

We're not in that position ourselves and it would be prudent to examine that and make sure we don't provide more events, than we have competitors for!

If we keep things focused on next years Summer Season, that will build up excitement, it'll encourage people to buy a car now and practice over the Winter at their clubs and then they are hungry and ready to run competitively in April 2011. Plus all the regular "hounds" will be champing at the bit to rip the grass up!

Hope that clears up my previous negativity!
I'm already counting down the days till April 2011 already!!!!

OK guys, I've added 2wd off road to the Scottish Carpet Championship this year, hopefully we can get a heat to have some fun. Just starting with 2wd to see what happens to the carpet, plus we are tight for time during the day, we'll see how it goes this year before doing anything with 4wd.

Anyway, hall is much the same size as Dunfermline, we have a rostrum :thumbsup:

Tyres are controlled on the front to the Schumacher staggered ribs, with any rear tyre, I need feedback certainly for next year to see how it works and what we need to change.

Regarding the track, it's certainly going to have features, but certainly not on John's scales, we will need to add/remove during the day. I'll hopefully be enlisting one of the buggy drivers to assist with track feature.

Remember this series is just about having some fun, and a bit of a get together over the winter.

Superb Derek, i'll be doing 2wd along with the tourer then.
Scotty....

Sounds good Derek.

I would like to point out that you'd already mentioned you might run off-road at the Carpet Champs this year, and that influenced my comments earlier. I didn't think we should over-populate the winter calendar. We still have to leave room for all the other classes, of course.

It's good to have some opportunity to run indoors, keep the thumbs in practice and for it all not to be counted too seriously.

It would still be good for a few clubs to consider doing the same and running a handfull of off-road events themselves, at their own club, obviously not clashing with other clubs or series like this.

I'm going to be launching a central calender website very soon, hopefully before end of Sept., so any and all club officials can register their club on it and admin their own calendar dates. That would give everyone a central location to view (and eventually, enter) any events on the calendar.

Tourer Scotty? Tut tut...

OK guys, investigation time.

Who would be interested in running 4wd off road at the Scottish Carpet Championship on foams.

If there is enough interest for a heat we may look at it.

me :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Sorry guys - not interested in foams on Off-road cars - next thing we'll be mounting 200mm TC shells on them again...

Rubber road tyres, maybe. Something cheap, very hard wearing and relatively low grip.

I've mentioned these before, but the Proline Dirt Hawgs are popular in one or two clubs as a control tyre, and can be made to provide some grip. They last years, and mount on 2.2 rims. Something like this.

They're also carpet-kind...

off-road foams
 

Thats the kind of tyre i was thinking about Dom. They would be spot on! Reminds me of when we used to run touring cars on Yokomo Hotlaps treaded tyres then it was ruined by bringing in foams.:confused:

If you think that style of tyre will work why not try them on a 2WD first.

This is a learning curve for us in the series, and we have to ensure that everyone else racing is not effected.

I think if we're still discussing this only a week or two before the first event, its a bit too rushed for my liking.

I don't mind the idea of running OR cars at the Carpet Champs - it'll let the other formats see OR cars running, but I was kinda hoping it would be a format and rule set similar to regular OR indoors.

I am hoping the circuit would be designed with both OR & circuit in mind - the carpet track being standard, and the OR cars running on remaining un-carpeted parts of the hall, crossing or jumping sections of the carpeted circuit track to avoid altering the nap or additive level of the circuit track.

To protect the regular circuit carpet, sections of old carpet, ply or board could be laid over corners/straights to help the OR cars cross over, and then lifted again for circuit car races.

I said the dirt hawgs are carpet-kind, but they do grip and they'll clean it up very well (removing laid-down additive or fluffing the pile up). Mini-spikes will clean or maybe even tear the circuit carpet.

Running OR cars on the same track as the circuit cars, WILL give a different carpet experience for the circuit cars. Plus it'll be nothing like running OR indoors. I think it may end up as a poor compromise for both styles.

I would love to see a cross-over event; everyone running both styles but I don't want to see what is one of the best indoor carpet racing series, being compromised. It should be considered carefully and well planned, otherwise I think both styles may suffer.

Hi guys i just wanted to let you know that i ran a charity event which catered for both on road and off road and it was one of the best events that had ever been ran at FRCC. It was well attended and very well received by everyone who ran at it. There were no issues when going between tracks and eveyone had a great time, no negativity at all. It worked flawlessly and the Off road guys all ran off road tyres on their buggies.
Hope this really takes off as it's something i'm looking forward to :thumbsup:

Well done Scott. Glad to hear there was no problems with additive and nap issue on the carpet for the circuit cars.

Tho I am surprised there wasn't any damage to the carpet. I've seen some of the OR carpet at Falkirk with the odd nick or cut and thought that there's a chance of the same anytime the bigger heavier cars are jumping/landing on it.

I presume that's what Derek is most concerned about, and is probably trying to avoid.

If you've ran the event tho without incident, that's good news, but given the amount of gaffer tape on the OR carpet @ Falkirk, there's always a chance of damage that has to be considered.

I think my suggestions may still be safest way to consider running both styles, and at least protecting the carpet from potential damage.

All,

We tried running an offroad heat at our indoor touring car meetings up her at GRCC (Aberdeenshire) last year. We used foams on the buggies so had no issues with spiked tyres. But what we did find is that it was very easy to put holes in the carpet when we rolled the cars, especially off our small jumps. This happened twice in the same race and immediately put the TC drivers against us. We tried covering the shock towers in balls of tape which did help ease their fears, but even these came off sometimes. We did think about putting down another layer of carpet in the jump landing areas, but it was pointed out that the cars can (and do) roll over anywhere on the track. It would also be a hassle to lay out everything before the offroad heat and then remove it again after, as time between heats was minimal. So alas, our test failed.

Anyway, I'm not saying you guys wont get the idea to work, I'm just sharing our experience. Its always great fun to have both formats at the same meeting as we have done a couple of times at Stonehaven (on two different tracks granted)

Im with Scotty on this one, the FRCC event was a really good one, and i think the only thing I would do differently is to put additional carpet down on the jump landing areas. We did'nt have any issues with rolling cars tearing the carpet, and the two classes worked fine together. Im looking forward to this series.

Just a quick update re 2wd front tyres, we will allow ribs now as well. Neither the standard rib or the stagger rib should cause a problem for other classes but we will of course review it after the first round.

4wd off road will definately be foams only.