Destruction, Disgruntled, Disqualified.
Molesey’s open and sweeping track means one thing, high speed, so when there’s a crash it’s often a big one. Twelve drivers arrived this week, all wanting pre-race practice, so no prizes for guessing what happened next. It wasn’t pretty.
David had rolled out a pristine new Scaleauto Viper that he’d built for Molesey’s upcoming round of the National GT3 Series. With just two practice laps driven he found himself in a four-car gaggle with Josh, Simon and Julian, Josh very slightly ahead. Exiting the corner at the end of the main straight, Josh deslotted and speared across the other lanes. Lady Luck, always an interested spectator, thought it would be amusing to see David’s new car smashed to pieces, so while Julian and Simon narrowly avoided colliding with Josh, David wasn’t so lucky, his Viper hitting Josh’s Porsche hard, the resulting impact badly damaging the Viper’s front and breaking Josh’s car too, although not so badly. Lady Luck laughed, David and Josh sighed. Still, Josh’s car was soon fixed and back on track and, with the help of copious amounts of superglue, so eventually was David’s Viper, albeit now a lot less than pristine.
Lady Luck, however, wasn’t satisfied. She wanted proper destruction, not fixable-with-glue destruction, and preferably of more than one car, which is precisely what she got.
With the glue barely dry on his Viper and only two more laps covered, David crashed at the same corner that Josh had, but this time directly in front of Julian’s flat-out Slot.it Lola. The resulting collision was, in the eyes of Lady Luck at least, epic. Countless bits of Lola and Viper exploded into the air, David’s Viper launched skyward by the impact before completing its destruction when it landed on the floor. David sighed again, Lady Luck laughed, Julian didn’t. To put it delicately, Julian was disgruntled. So disgruntled that he packed up and went home. And the racing hadn’t even begun…
When the racing did start, Josh built a small lead, Simon was second a few seconds back, then David who’d replaced his destroyed Viper with his old NSR Mosler, then a close battle between Alex in fourth and Terry in fifth. Terry was struggling with his NSR Mosler though, his lap times several tenths slower than they should have been, something not quite right with his car, so at tea break time the order was Josh, Simon, David, then Alex half a lap ahead of Terry.
Rather than trying to fix his Mosler during the tea break, Terry chose instead to swap to an ultra-rapid Team Bryant Slot.it Lola for the second half of the race and risk disqualification for swapping cars. It was a decision that would cost him dearly, because the Team Bryant Lola was so much faster than his Mosler had been that he easily caught and passed Alex for fourth, Alex now completely outgunned and powerless to stay ahead of Terry. Sure enough, by the time the official results were published, Terry had been disqualified. This time Lady Luck couldn’t be blamed. It had been an eventful evening.
