The Hopefuls.

With the NSR British Grand Prix just ten days away, this week’s meeting saw a bunch of hopefuls turn up to race their NSR F1 cars and try out last-minute improvements. A notable absence was Josh, one of the pre-race favourites for Grand Prix victory next Sunday, who’d been hospitalised by illness. Get well soon Josh. Team Molesey needs you back asap.

Julian and Lee, neither of whom are competing in the Grand Prix, plus the on-form Ed who is, filled the podium this week. Julian’s victory looked fairly easy, but the battle for second seemed to be going Ed’s way until the very last heat, when Lee managed to claw back a 1.33 second deficit to finish less than a second ahead.

Grand Prix entrants David and Terry took 4th and 5th places, although neither looked great. Clutching at straws in an attempt to find the pace he had a year or so ago, David had replaced his trusty TruSpeed controller with a Slot.it one, but it made no difference whatsoever, proof, if ever it were needed, that when the connections between eyes, brain and trigger finger start fading, no amount of fancy technology will improve things.

Terry chose a different route and decided to share his car with Simon. With both of them driving and fine-tuning it, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, if the stopwatch is to be believed. What started out as a reasonably quick and almost complete Ferrari F1 lookalike ended the evening a bit of a wreck, its steadily worsening performance suggesting that whatever groundbreaking tuning technique they’d discovered probably won’t catch on.

The remainder of the field included four more Grand Prix entrants: Molesey’s Phil, Tom and Martin, and visitor Alan Wilkinson, a Nascot Wood SCC and London Scalextric Club regular. With the exception of a poor final heat, Phil drove well all evening, with Tom not far behind. Both have the potential to do well in the Grand Prix itself. Alan Wilkinson chipped away, learning the track and a few car set-up tweaks that should stand him in good stead next weekend.

So that’s it. The next F1 race is the big one. Of the 33 entrants, 9 are Team Molesey. Best of luck, guys!