first of all, it has to be said that the Talywain crew put in a massive amount of effort, a proper drivers stand, grass that was mowed nice and short and had it not been for the heavy rain prior to the event it would have been a good grass track, it seemed the ground was sodden it just didn't dry out, even in the early saturday sun.
having radio's collected after the race was brilliant, I am certain it helped drivers get out to their marshalling points, some drivers have no pit crew to I certain that helped out some people.
they had people out on the track marshalling praccy, this was great, I have wasted a large percentage of my practise time because of bod crashes on the other side of the track, it was great to have my car turned over fairly quickly by the club provided marshalls.
I agree with Chris Long regards the distance some of the corners were away form the rostrum, some area's of the track I found it hard to see and I just drove around those corners just to 'get round' I never felt happy to 'race' those parts of the track, this got even worse when the finals came around, trying not to have someone off when racing in close proximity what seemed like a mile away from the rostrum was very hard.
the smaller table-top style jumps were great, nice shaped take-off, long downramp, perfect, maybe the length of the features were too small or maybe they should have been at a slower part of the track.
what they did with the single jump onto/over the tabletop feature for 4WD was by far the best jump/feature of the whole weekend, I watched 3 distinct variations to doing this jump, 2 of them were safe, the 3rd one to clear the lot to the downside required lining up and a good exit from the previous corner, I think a mix of the A-final drivers were taking 2 different options, good to watch.
the corner tabletop was a nice feature, but I found it hard to judge with it being quite far away from the drivers stand and chicane going side-side instead of to or away from the drivers stand, the 'line' was very hard to thread through at speed.
I personally didn't like the corners section going up and down the banking, the car felt quite awkward bumping its way up and down the bank, the one at the start/end of the straight was not too bad, it was a simple 'loop' shape - and it worked almost like a wall-o-death, but the other one back up seemed a funny shape and driving the car sideways along a 45 degree slope felt awkward.
the tripple what turned into a double for the 4WD felt like a repeat of the Ozfest tripple, no real downramp to connect with, massive height for very little distance meant that if you were following someone you HAD to jump it shorter than they do else you would land on top of them, and it was so easy to come up short, the other option was to go wider or tighter than them, but its really hard to watch their car while you are trying to launch your own car to not land on top of them. it seemed like there were 3 take off ramps in series.
landing ramps can (and maybe should be) taller than the take off ramp if it is a 'kicking' take-off, they should certainly be at least 2x the lenght and 1/2 the angle of the take off ramp.
I would like to repeat my first paragraph, the club did an amazing job, great effort and plenty of club members helping to keep things going, great job!
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