Spectators Welcome.

So that’s it. NSR Formula 86/89 has run its final one-make race at Molesey. For 2023 it’s joined by Scaleauto’s Formula 90-97 cars, so NSR’s highly successful formula gets some competition. Before that, though, we had the small matter of this week’s race.

NSR F1 has come a long way since its first event at Molesey way back in March 2020, but unsurprisingly many of the drivers haven’t, as was amply illustrated this week when six of the ten drivers crashed in their first heat, several more than once. Ed all but destroyed his car, Alex did almost as good a job with his, and Terry began what appeared to be a determined race-long attempt to smash his car into a thousand pieces.

Whilst the violence, frequency and predictability of the crashes was impressive – so much so that Julian hasn’t raced for the past few weeks and now just turns up to spectate – the race itself wasn’t a classic.

Lee took an early lead of four seconds, David and Simon squabbled over second place, Josh did his usual thing of mixing several blistering laps with a similar number of crashes, and Alex had a disastrous race, only failing to finish stone last because he’d brought a guest along, John Chng, whose race was even worse. John had a good excuse though: he’d never driven a slot car before. Alex is still searching for his excuse…

Despite the lack of overtaking, the racing was still pretty close, much as it has been all year, and NSR Formula 86/89 has well and truly shown itself to be a great class. Let’s hope that the inclusion of Scaleauto cars for 2023 sees it go from strength to strength.