Crash Fest Three.

Three and a half years ago, way back in November 2019 during an ill-advised musing, your correspondent thought it might be a nice idea to add a few words to the race results published each week on Molesey’s website. Just a few, nothing too taxing, maybe a sentence or three. It was easy back then because flatulence is a gift to any race report about slot cars and Molesey’s clubroom was at the time notorious for its, er, cropdusting. Urban Dictionary even had a special name for it: Fart City.

November 2019 is long gone and, just like gas when released from a body cavity, the race reports have expanded (another ill-advised musing) and flatulence no longer cuts it, not least because your correspondent can’t keep padding out fart jokes indefinitely. What he needs instead is race action to report or the Tomster to do something stupid. Sadly the Tomster didn’t turn up this week, but thankfully there was plenty of race action instead, although “race action” is probably an over-generous description. Chaos would be better, “Crash fest” better still. But, just like slot cars, titles go round and round in circles too and we’ve had Crash Fest twice before, (Crash Fest 1 and Crash Fest 2) so this week it’s Crash Fest Three.

Anyway, moving on from the padding and waffling, we at last get to the race report. Succinctly, it went like this: chaos in both groups, numerous crashes and trips to the floor, several cars missing bits by the end of the evening, one all but destroyed. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, but orderly racing it most definitely wasn’t. Julian had turned up but elected not to race, which initially seemed like an odd decision, but given that he was one of the few able to return home with an undamaged car, with hindsight it was perhaps the wisest decision of the lot.

In Group 1, this week’s faster group, Terry crashed more times than your correspondent could count, his car shedding so many bits that by the final heat it was little more than a chassis and wheels with a cursory amount of bodywork loosely covering the motor, guide and gears, its front and rear wings nowhere to be seen. The track calls caused by Terry’s crashes were so frequent that nobody could get into any sort of rhythm, but out of the chaos Lee emerged the least unscathed to take a comfortable win, David was second, Simon third and, astonishingly given the number of times he crashed, Terry fourth, which doesn’t say much for the racing in Group 2.

Your correspondent’s note about Group 2’s race simply says “effing mess” so that’s all the info you’re getting. At one point things got so bad that Neil was seen slumped against the wall, eyes closed in despair as the race was stopped for the umpteenth time to allow marshals to crawl around in the dust under the track and retrieve yet another crashed car. The final straw for Neil, who not only has to race and marshal, but also keep a record of the heat stats after each heat, was when the timing system threw a wobbly and credited Lee with a negative time, thereby messing up the evening’s results and requiring Neil to spend even more time interrogating the computer to calculate Lee’s correct finishing time. It’s a thankless task and, Molesey’s drivers being the unsympathetic bunch that they are, rarely acknowledged. Nonetheless, thanks Neil. We may laugh, but we all appreciate your efforts.

So that’s it, the story of crash fest three. It doesn’t contain much about the actual racing, other than that everyone enjoyed themselves, but when all’s said and done that’s all that really matters. As has been said many times before and as plenty of drivers have discovered over the years, if you want to enjoy some really close and competitive racing and still have a great time, Molesey Slot Car Club is hard to beat. See you next time.