With blurry eyes from lack of sleep, the [B] Racing Team made our way to the ELITE Plus Speedway Circuit for the SpeedFest Time Attack Challenge. The usual setting up was done by 8.30am and fellow racers start trickling in by 9am before they head over to the Office area for the briefing of the race.
Immediately after the breifing, all the cars was invited onto the track for their warm-up and familiarization run, especially for the first timers, it’s the time for them to figure out the best line to take to get the fastest time in each lap. Sadly, our car’s lower arm broke and we stalled the start of the race for a good hour as the Orange Demon broke down in the middle of the track. We eventually got it out of the way and got the cars onto the track though while our team’s mechanic worked furiously on the car to get it ready for it’s run.
I asked the organizers will there be a separate run for each category and was told there isn’t. So every car from all the categories will run back to back. That resulted in a long line of vehicles waiting for their turns to run. It’s also messy in a way as the marshal in charge of the timing system (they timed using a stop watch) had to scramble about to jot down time for each car from different categories after each pass.
On the car’s side, those running on semi-slick tires had a hard time keeping their tires properly heated as the tires eventually cooled down by the time we get to our turn to run. it would have been better if they flag off each category separately allowing everyone a chance to do better timing and not spend all the time during the event pushing their cars to the starting line line. We joked that the whole event did give us a great chest and neck work-out though even though we can only get 8 runs at most (except for the buggy that seem to get a lot of run cause they cut cues as each car get lined-up). I believe the cars could go for faster runs if the organizer planned the sessions according to the categories. Hopefully they’ll look at doing that the next time around.
No matter whether we manage to get a lot of run or not, it was still a great time out for us as we made new friends, had a good time laughing in the rain and towards the end, we have friends who came out as winners Photos available at the Facebook Photo Gallery. See you guys at the next event!
