FFS !!

Molesey’s Super GT class exists to satisfy the demand of those who like to tinker with, modify and generally spend their free time building ultra-rapid slot cars built to a fairly unrestrictive set of rules, so you’d assume that on a Super GT race night, most of those who fall into that category would be little rays of sunshine, all happy and content as their lovingly prepared missiles scorch around the track. This week, as so often happens with assumptions, you’d have been completely and utterly wrong. Instead of happy and content, a lot of the drivers spent much of the practice period and a good part of the race issuing that time-honoured phrase common in competitive situations, “For f**k’s sake!!”

Yes, dear reader, competition does that. Forget the nonsense about it being the taking part that counts. Whoever dreamt that one up eons ago didn’t have a competitive bone in his body (or her, their, its, if you’re a member of the pronoun police). The truth is that competitive people get frustrated when things don’t go their way, and given that there can only ever be one winner, with fifteen drivers present this week we had fourteen losers and so a lot of FFSing. Loud FFSs, quiet FFSs, muttered-under-the-breath FFSs, the whole gamut, mostly, but not exclusively, directed by the issuer at themselves. If breadth of vocabulary is your thing, Molesey’s clubroom wasn’t the place to be this week.

Once the initial frustration period had drawn to a close – also known as pre-race practice – the main frustration period, a.k.a racing, commenced, and very shortly after that the secondary frustration period too, it being the one where drivers start directing their FFSs not only at themselves, but at the “twat” (a generic term for the other driver and/or marshal) who, they claim, caused them to crash and/or hit them up the chuff and/or re-slotted them with all the speed and dexterity of a cactus.

Actually, there’s also another frustration period, the one where nobody ever lines up promptly at the start despite being repeatedly urged by the start marshal to do so, but that’s a habit so ingrained at Molesey that it’s now just another part of the fun and games that make Molesey such a great club to race at, just like yet another frustration period, the one where marshals have to be persuaded to stop yakking in a huddle in the corner and man their marshalling positions instead. But would anybody really want the club to change? I mean, there are clubs run with military precision where everything starts on time and marshals do their duty without needing a kick up the jacksie week in week out, but most have all the atmosphere of a morgue, so, unless you’re into necrophilia, you really don’t want that. Nope. Despite its plentiful frustration periods, if you want to really enjoy your slot car racing, Molesey’s where it’s at.

Anyway, enough of the waffling and on to what happened in the race. A lot of crashing, that’s what, but when you’ve fifteen drivers all trying to win, or at least beat whoever it is that they view as their nearest competition, crashes are probably inevitable, although this week there were an unusually high number by the quicker drivers.

Julian immediately demoralized the opposition with a blistering Heat 1 in his Slot.it Lola B12/80, causing some unspoken FFSs among those who until that point had thought that they might have a slim hope of victory. Lee managed to keep Julian within three seconds, but for the rest it was pretty much game over.

Heat 1 was also the beginning of the end for Josh. An error exiting the long banked corner leading onto the main straight saw him launch his car from the inside green lane across all six lanes and into the path of Terry’s NSR AMG Merc, the resulting high-speed collision wrecking the rear of Josh’s pristine Slot.it Porsche 911 GT1/98 and the front of Terry’s Merc. Cue more FFSing as each appeared to blame the other for being an imbecile.

In Group 1, the slower of this week’s two groups, Peter had wheeled out a lovely Scaleauto Radical, which sadly wouldn’t stay lovely for long. Your correspondent lost count of the number of times it was hit in the first few heats by the out of control cars of others, but it was several, most of them at high speed and, although not one to loudly make a fuss, Peter’s muttered FFSs didn’t go unnoticed. Your correspondent probably owes Peter an apology for laughing at his misery, but purely from a spectator’s point of view, the sheer bad luck of Peter being so often in the wrong place at the wrong time, plus the gradual sad destruction of his car and his subsequent reaction, was comedy gold.

In Heat 3 Julian crashed, a rare error that gifted Lee an almost five-second lead, while elsewhere a lot of debatably-legal car swapping and sharing was going on. Simon had held third place for the first two heats driving a Mosler, but David had been chasing hard and by the end of Heat 3 had caught and passed Simon and built a seven-second gap. By now, Josh had completely given up on his race and was languishing in a lowly thirteenth position, so for Heat 4 he loaned Simon his freshly repaired Porsche to see how fast he could drive it. Very fast was the answer, Simon recording the night’s fourth-fastest heat to destroy the gap to David, bringing it down to just 1.01 seconds. Cue David joining the FFS bandwagon to complain about the car swapping that was about to see his third place go up in smoke.

Not to be outdone in the car swapping stakes, Alex had switched from a Mosler to a McLaren back to a Mosler, the Tomster had jumped from his Group C Mercedes C9 to a Group 5 Lancia Stratos which had no glass or interior, and Simon had let David off the hook by driving one of Alex’s cars before swapping back to his own Mosler. FFS just about sums it up.

The beneficiary of all the car swapping, crashing and FFSing was Ed, who’d quietly climbed his way up from sixth place to an eventual fourth, but the biggest of all the FFS moments was Lee’s, when he threw away what looked likely to be a comfortable win by crashing in his final heat, Julian picking up the pieces to take top spot by just 1.43 seconds. FFS? You bet!