Mad Ax

Yeah. Nah. I sold my original a long time ago and regretted it. I didn't buy the first round of re-res and regretted it. Now they've come back with a big-ticket limited release, I won't bother. There's enough demand for a full re-release of this, there's enough vintage racing in the UK now and we need more options for racing. Once all the vintage cars are beyond repair, we'll have a heat full of Wild Ones, Foxes, Turbo Ultimas and Top Cats (which have also been discontinued) - and perhaps the most iconic of them all, the RC10, is going to disappear. With all the tooling available to make a mass-production kit, this feels a bit unfair.

Well folks, that's round 1 completed. The final could have gone better - I lost 2 places in the first couple of corners and they were way faster than me, however I managed to stay with another and was very close all the way. When he moved over to let a lead car through I pounced, took the place and held it, even pulled out some distance. Then a leader caught me in my least favourite corner, I tried to pull over but got a wheel on the grass and flipped. I clawed back the lost time and was within a second of 9th, but alas, ran out of time and had to settle for last. It's clear that my car isn't as good as it was last year - or maybe it's me? The m05s have switched it up. So do I break my m05 out, or give the m03 some attention? I have some things to work on before the next round a month from now!

This is racing in super stock

Final time! So round 4 went as well as could be expected, I finished 7th after some other racers had trouble. A clean race with no mistakes and lots of focus on lines. As a result I have qualified 8th overall and remain in the A, which is Mission Accomplished. Best result now is to finish better than 8th, although I know the driver in 10th is faster over a single lap and 9th was bumped up from B, so it could be a close race or a total disaster. Fingers crossed . I considered changing to an older set of EXP32s as the track is getting colder, but I figured consistency is more important than trying to banzai or right now

Transit!

Mr Iconic himself gave me a coaster!

Round 3 was a big improvement, at least in terms of consistency. The stiffer diff felt like it made a difference, and although my fastest laptop time was still 3s off the fastest lap time, I had a much better race, overtaking one slower car on merit and getting a couple of other places from drivers who were clearly faster but having scruffier races. No mistakes was a big bonus. However, the times for that race are not showing online so I'm not sure if there was a problem. The result sheet was physically printed so there definitely were times, just maybe they have been removed or just didn't make it online yet. No changes for round 4 except re gluing the front tyre walls.

Round 2 was a marginal improvement. My overall time was better and I was only 1 lap off the lead, but my best was several seconds off the top time and the slowest in the heat by some margin. The car drives nicely and isn't lacking speed on the straight, but either the car isn't able to maintain speed in the corners or I'm not able to get the best from it. The diff has softened up a lot since yesterday so I have repacked it and will see how it goes in round 3.

Round 1 wasn't a huge success. The track had warmed a lot since morning practice and the tyres were too sticky. It was a bit twitchy from the start, and I had a couple of grip roll incidents towards the end which put me down to 9th. Looking at my best time, I'm a fair way off the lead and lost 2 laps, and in danger of being relegated by some B drivers. Switched back to the EXP36 tyres, fingers crossed for next round

The trailer got lots of attention but wasn't eligible for concourse prize due to not being an actual race car

I have been placed as car 7 in the A heat, which is kinda scary given how badly I raced yesterday. Tyre warmers on for the first time, although it warmed up quickly earlier today without them. If you want to follow along, live results are here. I am Alex Sparey in group 8. https://www.rc-results.com/Viewer/Main/MeetingSummary?meetingId=11418

Driver's briefing and concourse

I wasn't going to bother with practice this morning, but it's way colder today than yesterday so I figured it would be good to get a baseline. I put the D32s back on and found them much better in the cold, especially after solving some other setup problems yesterday. Now getting prepped for the concourse

Ending the day with a few games of pool...

The main reason to come to practice at Mendip is the curry night