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What's this? Another Back to the Track thread? Yes - I periodically start these whenever I get the urge to go racing again. 2024 was perhaps my best year of racing ever, completing all rounds of the Iconic Cup for the first time. It was hard work - 6 weekends away from home plus the bonus non-championship round at Cotswold. But there was a moment when I was sitting on the tarmac, watching the end-of-season trophy presentation, the sun on my back, the tyre dust on my face, additive on my fingers and the smell of the previous night's barbecue smoke in my clothes, when I reflected back over the miles driven, the time on track, the battles, the passes, the crashes, the breakages, and I was temporarily overwhelmed with emotion. What an adventure. What a journey. I was certain, as I set off on the 4+ hour journey home from Halifax with the entire season behind me, that I would be back again in 2025. 2025, however, brought fresh challenges. Not least, the Iconic Cup's schedule was punishing - it would have been hard to cover my fuel costs for the first 3 rounds. Losing Mendip Raceway meant there was no home race for me. Sealing the deal was the fact that the entire series got fully booked out within a few hours of opening, while I was busy racing at the Modelsport 50th at the beginning of February. But - all is not lost for 2025's racing plan. A new race series - the BRCA Sporstcar Endurance Championship - pits teams of 4 drivers against each other, driving modern touring chassis with Le Mans Hypercar bodies and 21.5T brushless motors, in races ranging from 2 to 6 hours in length. This is something I've wanted to do for years. Sadly I missed out on Mendip's endurance race last September by dint of Facebook's wonderful algorithm deciding I didn't need to know about it until it was too late to get a team together. The only endurance I've ever driven was a 2-hour buggy race on A1 Racing Club's astroturf track. It was dark by the time we started, it rained throughout the race, and our re-release Sand Scorcher suffered a number of problems - not least the universals coming lose every 5 laps - but we finished top of our class by being the only SRB entry to finish. The ciders we sipped after the race had ended were some of the best we've ever tasted. Almost a decade later, a racer who I know from a local club but haven't seen in years, posted on Facebook saying he was entering his TRF-421 in the Sportscar Endurance series and was looking for drivers. I jumped in straight away, offering my services and - I hope - accurately and honestly describing my abilities as someone who is definitely not quick, nor skilled at car setup, but careful, dependable, and doesn't crash much. At least - that's how I was in M-chassis in 2024. My relatively high place in the Iconic Cup championship didn't come because I was topping the timesheets (far from it) but because I was consistent, stayed on track, picked up points in every race and was always there on track while others were spinning off it or haemorrhaging parts. However, this was only in the M-chassis class. I haven't driven a 4wd touring car in anger since the TA-05 IFS was a current car. I had a brief stint racing a stock TT-01E with a Fat Fox body at my local club, but that was a few years ago now. 2019, by all accounts, and I wasn't very good at it. So - I figured my best chance of not embarrassing myself and my team mates at the first race of the season was to get myself something modern and head along to the local club to get my eye in. If I can handle a modern touring car around a tight and technical club track with a 17.5T brushless in it, a 21.5T car on a nice big outdoor circuit should be easy by comparison. Modern TCs are seriously expensive - way out of my budget - but with the new Schumacher Mi-9 on the market and Christmas just over, there were a few Mi-8s for sale in the Book of Face. A week later, this landed on my doorstep.

I was running my df03 on a carpet track for the first time and melted the rear diff on it during a run. Is there a gear diff that will work in the rear of it?

I've posted a few Back to the Track series in the past, each time documenting my return to the wonderful world of indoor club racing, each time starting full of enthusiasm and delight and, as often as not, ending a few months later in apathy and boredom when I hit my plateau and get bored of getting nowhere, declare that I don't really enjoy racing and pack it all in for another year or two. Will this time be any different? Who knows! But this has been something I've wanted to do for a little while, so here's a nice and typically long opening post to get us all started. TL;DR: I went back racing. Continue to the next post if you don't care about my epic ramblings on the state of my life I haven't been a regular racer since I retired my M03 a few years back. We raced to Clubman rules, with a Saturn 20 control motor, Sweep control tyres, and bearings and oil shocks and springs being the only allowed hop-ups. By that time everybody was using the M05, and no matter how hard I raced I could never quite get on the back of the top racers. It might have been my skill, it might have been my setup, it might have been the deficit of the M03 against the M05; more likely it was all of them, in various measure. Either way, I got bored of having to pick up 3rd place whenever somebody else didn't show. I got frustrated that my hopes for a podium finish in the championship hinged not on my success but everybody else's failure. I shouldn't really race for the trophy but there's got to be a goal, otherwise it wouldn't be racing, it would be bashing, and I felt (rightly or wrongly) that my laptimes were as good as they were ever going to get. So, why am I going back again? Well, various reason. 1. My 2018 Revival Failure. I went to the 2018 Iconic Revival full of enthusiasm and confidence. I had a great car (a vintage Top Force with vintage hop-ups) which had done me well the previous year, I'd raced well at the opening round of the Iconic Cup that spring (unfortunately I couldn't make any other rounds, as that turned out to be the highlight of my RC year), the weather had been fantastic and we were all looking forward to a dry weekend. The reality was different. I'd failed to properly prepare the Top Force and it punished me for it in every race - loose screws, seized suspension, the lot. I let the red mist descend when I couldn't get it to drive straight, and ruined most of my heats with bad driving. The weather turned the day before the event, treating us to three days of downpour, and the pit shop didn't have any wet tyres in stock. I, as an infrequent off-road racer, didn't have any wet tyres either. To top it all off, I was taken ill and spent half the weekend in the toilet tent. My wife came down with the same virus but owing to a medical condition, she was taken into hospital on the Sunday morning, having to leave our 18-month old daughter in the care of friends. As a good father I should have aborted my race weekend and made the 4 hour drive home, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it) my camper was at the very back of the camping field and blocked in by at least 5 other tents and caravans, so there was no way I was getting off site until the end of the day. Plus, given heavy winds, a lot of gazebos had been damaged so I'd offered my awning to some other racers - leaving early would have left them and their kit out in the rain again. Despite all that, I managed to get 2nd place by the first corner of the C final and was all set to hold the position - until the timing system failed and the race was aborted. I started badly in the re-start, was plum last after the first lap, and two laps in the car became impossible to drive. In a proper example of racetrack bad manners, I stormed off the rostrum after a huge head-on crash with a wooden post, to discover the Top Force had lost a kingpin from the front hub. No wonder I couldn't drive it. Why is this relevant? Well, the Revival is usually the highlight of my year. Bad weather and ill health can't be helped, but I could have done a lot better if I'd prepared and practised. I underestimated how much prep the Top Force needed and overestimated my ability as a driver. Taking a hiatus from racing had not just affected my laptimes, it had affected my judgement, and my enjoyment of a rare weekend away. I left the venue determined to do better next year. 2. My 2019 Iconic Success I only managed two races in 2019: the first round of the Iconic Cup at Mendip RC Raceway in April, and the Iconic Revival at Bingham Model Raceway in July. First change I made from 2018 was downgrading my ability rating from 5/10 to 3/10. Less expectation on myself and less embarrassment if I had a bad day. I never expected success at Mendip because my TL01-LA didn't have the speed tuned gear set, and was up against much newer chassis in the Super Stock class (the LA isn't eligible for the Stock class). Mendip is fast, so the speed tuned gear set is pretty essential. Even with the biggest pinion, I was being slaughtered on the back straight - it didn't matter how much corner speed I could carry (and as a 3/10 driver with limited tyre and spring options and an older chassis, I was never going to run rings around the class leaders) I couldn't get close to the FTD. But that didn't matter. I focused on small setting changes and improving my technique. I found a setting that kept oversteer to a minimum out of the tight hairpin and, as temps came up, learnt to drive around the grip-roll that started to occur there. Despite having a(nother) upset stomach all day (who would believe it..?) I had a really enjoyable time, improved every race and went home feeling happy. I wouldn't race again until the Revival in July, where I campaigned a new-built Novafox and my fully-restored Top Force. It was almost a disaster - my older MRT transponders don't work with BMR's new timing system - but tireless Revival organiser John Weston loaned me his spare, saving my weekend. The new pit shop (local heroes and new friends Racecraft RC) had a great supply of wet weather tyres, so even the anticipated downpours couldn't spoil my challenge. The Fox was epic. Properly prepared with a rebuilt Super Stock BZ, it had just the right amount of speed for the wet weather. Like at the Cup, I didn't expect to get on the podium - but I went out to enjoy my racing and improve every heat, and that's just what I did. Top day. The Top Force was almost a failure - a brand new Alturn high-speed race servo (a model I've been using for a long time) turned out to be slower than a slow thing on national slow day. I've now had a couple of really slow Alturns - I won't be buying any more. Adie from Racecraft had a spare race servo lying around which wast just perfect. Disaster averted, the Top Force was an absolute dream. I didn't go out to win - I went out to improve, and that's what I did. I qualified 3rd in the C final, with a qualifying time that was miles away from either 2nd or 4th, and I figured if I stayed out of trouble I'd take home the 3rd place trophy. I got tangled in an incident in the first corner and was last, but I kept my cool, reeled in my competitors, made neat, careful passes and - thanks to the mechanical breakdowns of my closes rivals - finished in 2nd. For the first time in ages, I genuinely felt like I'd earned my trophy. Why is this relevant? Because I really enjoyed racing. For the first time in an age, it wasn't just about getting drunk with mates, talking nonsense about toy cars, eating fried food and camping out in the rain. It was about racing, as well. I really got my money's worth that weekend. So I figured - if I'm seeing results from my racing just by being patient and taking time to learn, how much more would I see if I did that every week? Is it time to go back to the club? And how much better will I race at the Revival next year if I get in some regular practice? 3. My 2019 Rut OK, so the whiny and self-absorbed bit now - outside of RC, I've really struggled to find a happy place this year. With a 2.5 year old in the house it's hard to be anything but Dad. Being Dad is OK (it's not every day I can even bring myself to say that), sometimes it's the best thing in the world (I really mean that) but it's so hard to being anything else. Once the bedtime story is read and the toys are tidied up there's precious little evening left. Add to that the exhaustion of disrupted sleep and interrupted downtime, and once my duties are over, all I can do is flop into the sofa. The things that my life used to be about have fallen away. It's hard to write good music in a brain that's cluttered with nursery rhymes and kid's TV theme tunes. It's hard to write good fiction when you're used to tempering every thought for toddler ears. So I figured I could either sit on the sofa, feeling miserable and yearning for that one weekend every month when I can pack up the camper with toy cars and head off for a couple of days of freedom, or I can use the time I've got to go out and have fun. So really, that's it. WWMCC races on Monday nights, and Monday is my night off. I get Fridays off, too. I'm allowed to go do whatever I want on those nights (provided it's legal and compatible with continued marriage). So instead of locking myself in my studio and feeling sorry for myself, I decided I'd get out and actually do something. So... Let's go racing!