STCC Round 4 – West London

 

This weekend saw the STCC heading for West London with a severe weather warning for the weekend !

Tristan and myself set out at about 6:15 on Sunday morning and it was pouring down with thunder and lightening !

We arrived at the track to see people brushing the water off the track and began setting up our pit area.  A lot of people had decided not to race this weekend, but the british weather did us proud and the sun came out soon after arriving at the track.

Practice was in the wet, but by the time we came to start qualifying, the track was starting to dry out.

I have always struggled to get a good setup on the car for this track, and this time I was trying something different with heavier shock oil all round compared to normal.  The car felt really good in the first qualifier, so I was surprised to see that I only managed 14 laps !

I decided that new tyres were worth it for the day as the rain had completely gone and the sun had dried the track out for round 2.  I managed to put in a run of 17 laps on new tyres.  For the third run I made a couple of small changes to the car and found that it was more stable.  I ended up on 18 laps, which saw me qualify in 8th spot for the A final, so I was very happy.

The finals were a bit of a mixed bag, but another few small changes saw me getting and 8th place finish, followed by a 5th place finish with a great first final where Colin and myself had our own little race for position, very enjoyable !

The weather forecast came true for the last final, and it was wet so out came the wet car, which I’ve waterproofed by using Plastidip on the electronics, but also by mounting an underbody from Slipstream RC

Using the combination of the two, I had no water at all in the car and was able to run brushless gear in the rain !

I was going well in the last final, getting up to third and chasing the 2nd place guy down when I had a crash on the douglas d (where else !) which broke a steering arm and meant it was race over.  I finished 4th in that run meaning that I got a 6th place overall finish for the day.  Excellent result !