Sunday 19th February 2006, Round 4 of the North East regional at Batley Buggy Club, held at the indoor track of Batley Sports Centre, venue for the recent Supercup and soon to be holding the Indoor Finals.

This is the final round of the Northeast series, the series consisting of 4 rounds with 3 rounds counting.  Many drivers now need to improve on there previous worst to improve positions in the series.  Chris Long needing to beat Tom by 4 points today to win the 4wd series.

The venue is a large sports hall which is part of the Batley Sports centre, the hall is used usually for badminton, basketball, 5 –a-side, and sometime dog shows and fairs, the sports centre also has other facilities, including a pool, it has been known that for some of the girlfriends of racers have disappeared for a swim during the racing. The track is not permanent and relies on the good nature of the local club members to set it up and put it away.  So the track for the regional was set out on Saturday afternoon ready for Sunday.  It consisted of a few areas of slippery floor and a few areas of carpet, with a couple of well place jumps and a couple of rippled sections made from gym mats.

The track direction is clockwise, the start line is towards the end of the straight just as the carpet end.  Sweeping around a right hander on the slippery sporthall floor and over the transponder loop, onto carpet for a fast right hairpin into left hairpin with a dogleg exiting to the left sweeping right infront of the rostrum and over a hump landing onto crash mats into an immediate tight sharp right on carpet flowing into a left hairpin on the slippery floor, which then leads into the second hump landing on carpet bending slightly to the right then into a hairpin right and over the rippled crashmats for 6 yard, these are difficult to take fast and difficult to change direction on.  Coming off the crashmats into an immediate hairpin left on the slippery floor and back onto more crashmats with more sever ripples, these can be taken slightly faster, these crashmats end with an immediate hairpin right and back onto the carpet straight.  This is a very flowing track with well placed bumps and humps.

Practice was like the supercup, with drivers being handed a ticket to race to allow them one timed session.  This works very well, avoiding crystal clashes and stopping high level of traffic. Setup here is usually similar to what would be used outdoors, with many bumps, and jumps and various levels of grip.  Drivers briefing followed practice, it was announced that qualifying was by Round-by-round, which makes sense here as the level of grip on the slippery surface can start off very low and will improve each round.

Round 1

Saw a very close and clean race for the lead between Chris Long and Tom Cockerill.  Tom Cockerill took the round win with his BRM powered BJ4 closely followed by Infinity powered X5 of Chris Long in 2nd and the Infinity powered X5 of Dan Greenwood in 3rd.

Round 2

Was again was very close between Chris Long and Tom Cockerill, the round win was taken by Chris after Tom drops out followed by Dan Greenwood and the BJ4 of Bruce Thompson 3rd.

Round 3

Was won once again by Chris but now also holding the Fastest TQ too which would have been 16 laps had it not been for a last lap error, now with two 1’s to move up a position and Tom Cockerill taking 2nd followed by the new ZX5 of Richard Isherwood in 3rd.

Round 4

Was won by Dan Greenwood, this guarantee’s Chris on pole on the grid for the A final, followed by the X10 of Tim Wood and Chris Long in 3rd. The grid for the final now decided as Chris, Tom, Dan, Tim, Richard, Bruce.

4wd A Final

A final 4wd gets a clean start, Chris managing to take full advantage of the grunt of the line from his X5 to tuck into the first sharp corner unchallenged, Chris needing to beat Tom by 4 points to win the series.  Tom is able to stay in 2nd, and is comfortable to stay 2nd to win the series. Both Chris and Tom setting their fastest laps of the day through the final and both with the same fastest lap, Chris finishing some 7 seconds ahead of Tom.  Dan dropping positions after some mid-race accidents lets Richard Isherwood through to finish 3rd and James Dixon 4th.

Finishing position for the North East Winter Regional series is:

4wd
1          Tom Cockerill             301
2          Chris Long                  300
3          Richard Isherwood     290
4          Ben Riley                    289
5          Graham North             286
6          Dan Greenwood         285
7          James Dixon                284
8          Tim Wood                   282
9          Adam Carter               271
10        Steve Kirk                   270

It has been an excellent series through the winter and the 4 clubs deserve a large thank you.  They are York Radio Control Car Club, North East RC Racing Club, Teesside Radio Car Club and Batley Buggy Club.

Chris Long