Grp For me & as trackside manager went very well.
Myself & Arron made the trip up on Saturday afternoon for some valuable practice. the weather was very changeable but stayed wet for most test session's. the xt8 showed good pace & required only an alteration to reduce rear droop & it was spot on.
The 808 had most of the run time as I had never run it on astro turf, with some stiffer roll bars & shock position change to the front the car was very stable & produced some very fast laps.
With snow overnight the track greeted us all with a wet track. With clear skies the track was to dry fast & give us all new challenges.
With me running both truggy & buggy my work would be hard adapting each run to the change of grip between the different tyre's in the truggy sliding & the buggy gripping like mad on the cone spikes.
Rnd 1 the XT8 truggy found the pace from the word go & with a good run TQ'd. The 808 on the still damp track started my first 3 laps with the fastest times, but from then was all my fault & threw the run away pushing to hard & finished 8th.
Rnd 2 The XT8 carried on where it left off & with another perfect clear run TQ'd the round & took overall TQ & pole position for the main. MY round 2 with the 808 had many problems with back markers, although the car was quick spent most of the run being marshalled & had a disastrous run.
Rnd 3 the XT8 again was quick was on for a very quick time only for back markers to halt that but had already secured TQ.
The 808 had been altered for the conditions of increased grip. With a solid run was enough to secure me 10th overall . A little disappointing but would give me more track time.
808 & B final with some changes the car was dialled & with a steady start main goal was to just finish in a place to bump up. By lap 3 took the lead & just pulled away to take the win at the end of 15 mins.
Remained on the rostrum for the Truggy A.
From pole position took a lap to settle down so followed in 2nd for a while. I Had a good battle with 1st for a while then lee caught up. We all diced with the lead for a while but with lee's car working better let him through to secure the win. Lee slowly pulled away to a commanding lead , I took 2nd place & extended my gap on third. At the end of the 20 mins Lee took the win & myself second with an XT8 one two.
I remained on the rostrum now for the Buggy A final.
From 9th on the grid had a good start to 6th & soon settled down into a good rhythm, I had a good battle with Kevin , mike, Jamie Booth & gradually worked my way to 3rd. With the OS speed being very economical & only requiring one stop at the 10 minute point gave myself a good cushion on those that had to two stop. With a super quick pit stop from Arron & Ben was on my way, With Bruce Thompson on the tow & myself making the pace he slowly but gradually pulled me in but no matter what he tried the 808 was ready to defend. I held my cool for the last five minutes with Bruce right on my bumper, with no errors held onto 3rd place after the 20 minutes with a rewarding drive for the end of the meeting.
After 1 hour on the rostrum I was freezing cold but was very happy with my results. The Team did very well working together to get where we did with some very stiff competition. Lee Taylor drove a fantastic set of truggy finals to bump up from the bottom to the overall win of the meeting congratulation. With team Xray going home with 3 of the 6 trophys not a bad haul of silver ware.
Well done to all
