Hybrids.

After last week’s super-close battles for the minor places, this week’s race was always going to struggle to match it for action, but it did its best. Julian again took the win, but at least this time he was given some competition in the form of Lee, who managed to finish less than a second behind Julian in three of the six heats.

Once again though, Julian’s metronomic consistency proved unbeatable, his total race time a tiny 0.11 seconds faster than the previous week’s race, his best lap an even tinier 0.02 faster. One begins to wonder whether Julian isn’t some form of hybrid human/atomic clock, such is his ability to replicate performance week after week. It’s very, very impressive.

Aside from Lee doing his best to topple Julian, the night’s only other racing action was Neil doing his last-minute glory run again, this time for fifth place and with Terry as his chosen victim. Terry had pulled out a three-quarter-lap advantage by the end of Heat 2 before Neil had woken up, only to see it nibbled away over the next three heats, leaving him two seconds ahead of Neil going into the final heat.

As last week, Neil came alive in the final minutes of the race, recording his fastest heat and fastest lap to overtake Terry for fifth place. Again, your correspondent begins to wonder whether Neil isn’t some form of hybrid human/clock too, although unlike Julian’s atomic variety, Neil’s clock seems more like one of those cheap Chinese knock-offs that only tells the right time at the end of the day.

So that’s it for this round of Sideways Group 5 races. The next race is Formula 1, a class in which Julian has only a 50% win rate, which gives everyone else a glimmer of hope. As ever in racing, hope springs eternal.