First of all i would like to say a big thanks to the club for putting on the event. I felt they did an excellent job of making sure the day ran smoothly which in my opinion it did. Also a big thanks for the effort put in to trying to make sure the track was suitable for 1/10th, your efforts are much appreciated.
I dont think its fair the club takes any of the blame for it been such a poor 1/10th track they did the best they could.
I totally agree the track was awful to drive and almost impossible to get any consistent runs in without breaking anything. The jumps were far too big and almost certain to cause damage. The fact that Steve Lawson who is a seriously experienced driver blew about three shocks, not from crashing but from the sheer impact of landing proves this. I for one suffered many breakages throughout the day many of which were no fault of my own. In the fourth round i was going down the straight in a perfectly straight line when my car just decided to flip causing the rear shock tower to break along with various other parts. This was very frustrating not only from a racing point of view but also from a cost point of view.
I spent over £30 on new parts throughout the day so adding that to the cost of tyres, entry fee and petrol money the whole day cost me arount £80! not what i expect to be shelling out for a regional especially when you can only manage to complete a few runs without breaking something. For some money might not be an issue but for others it is and given the current economic situation where people are been cautious with their hard earned money the last thing we need is to race on a track where its gonna cost people a fortune and maybe put people off the sport!
I consider myself to be quite an experienced racer but still struggled to get round without breaking. I feel seriously sorry anyone who went yesterday and are just getting into the sport, god knows how much they must have spent fixing their cars. Please dont let this event put you off any other venue is usually a lot more forgiving.
Lee - you say you dont think the track was that bad but come one, everywhere you looked cars were in bits. You even said to me at one point look at how many b4's are in bits. This situation is unacceptable and certainly not fair for those racing on a budget. Even cars that were going over the jumps one at a time were still breaking things.
Like i said this is not a dig at the club in any way but more a bad decision to allow the club to run a regional. As soon as the club put themselves forward the track should have been inspected to make sure it was suitable.
At the end of the day we live and learn and i think they should be allowed to run another event providing they take peoples feedback on board and make some major improvements to the track for next time.
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