Round and round and round......

At last i managed to make it to HOT racers at haywards heath to race the banger i built way back in january.
HOT's had a good turn out of drivers, 25 banger drivers, with a good mixture of seniors and juniors, the drivers were split into 3 heats over 4 rounds with the best 3 to count for the final!!! more on this later.

Round 1, brand new car totally untested and it handled like a dream and with brand new vapex 3700 batteries endurance over the 4 min heats was never going to be a problem getting taken out by other drivers was though! the heat passed without too many problems and very little damage compared to some of the other cars in this heat, top three finish was not too bad.

Round 2, again the car was handling like a dream and i was now starting to improve on my lines and learning how to dispose of slower cars without impeding my progress too badly, but with about a minute to go i got 'collected' by a driver going the wrong way which caused some strange handling problems for the final minute of the race, at the end of the race i found the huge head on that had been dealt to my car had caused the front of the chassis to kick up by about 20 degrees!!! never mind another top 3 finish. This time some work was required on the car to sort the chassis tweak out ( brute force and the edge of a table soon had it sorted )

Round 3, more of the same in this heat, kept myself out of too much trouble and this time i was rewarded with a second place finish.

Round 4, it was at this point that i was accused of 'hot rodding' the heats, time to show what i could do, with three good rounds in the bag i got stuck in and had a great time firing cars of and turning them round as and when i got the chance, at the end of the heat i found that the front of the chassis had kicked up again but not as badly as before ( brute force and the trusty table soon sorted it though )

The finals, well more to the point THE final, now this was totally new to me 25 cars on the oval all at the same time, after the heats i was 3rd overall which meant a inside 2nd row start with all the cars lined up bonnet to boot lid the buzzer went and some how i made it to the front and managed to stay there for around 18 laps, it was at this point my luck ran out and i was collected by another driver which put my car on its side for what felt like ages, bangers aren't marshelled they are just left to there own devices, but after a few laps i got knocked back onto my wheels again and managed to keep going without too many problems for the remainder of the final, in the end i finished 5th out of 25 which i was most pleased with.

There are a few changes that i need to make to the car before the next race but nothing too major, if you fancy racing in a class that is dirt cheap and great fun i don't think you could do worse than giving the bangers a go, don't knock it until you've tried it.