Mid-South 4wd Regional Report

Mid-South 4wd Regional Report (Torch Racing)

Sunday the of 29th July saw round 4 of the Mid South regions 4 wheel drive series land at TORCH. This was the club's second regional of the year, after the highly successful 2 wheel drive event earlier in the year. The track had seen and evolution in design since the earlier event to ensure that returning drivers were fully entertained.
The day started out bright and dry, with early practice being a chance to sort out tyre choice, and trim some pins as needed to sort out the grip. Next up was drivers briefing from TORCH chairman Steve Brown, and it was at this point mother nature chose to play her first (but sadly not last) joker. As the breifing came to an end the sky clouded and a light drizzle set in, which quickly turned into a deluge of almost biblical proportions as racers returned to the pits. There was no choice but to suspend proceedings and see what happened when the rain abated.

Some thirty minutes later the rain finally came to a stop, but the track was now soaked with large amounts of standing water in places. Team TORCH and a number of other helpers quickly sprang into action with brooms, sqeegies and a commercial vacuum to get the track as dry as possible and ready for racing to start, all be it some what delayed. A mammoth effort saw the track quickly returned to a state where cars could run, but it did mean that all the dry weather practice was now irrelevant! It also meant, sadly, that a number of drivers left the event, not wanting to run in the conditions.
Qualifying got underway, with the track drying up as the heats and rounds progressed. Round one saw local ace Steve 'Chairman' Brown on top, only he and second place man Kev 'Inside Line' Lee breaking into the 12 lap bracket. In third was their fellow Kyosho runner and first time visitor Elliot Boots, fresh from sealing overall victory in the BRCA 1/8th National series.

Into round 2, and with the track continuing to dry the top three were now Kev Lee, Tony 'Rudebits' Evdoka and Steve's brother Daniel Harper-Brown with his DEX-410. The track was obviously improving as this round saw the top six drivers all making 12 laps.
Round three and Lee, Evdoka and Steve Brown were top three, again the top six making 12 laps and almost everyone going faster on an ever drying track.
Into round four and mother nature had another freak-out. About half way through it went black as night, the rain hammered down and we were treated to a spectacular thunder storm... not the way we planned to be entertained. Once again we were forced to suspend racing and wait out the weather, this time for over an hour. As we'd only had half the round the rulebook said it had to be scrapped, so TQ wold be decided from just the three full rounds run, to enable time for the finals. That gave a top three overall of Kev Lee, Steve Brown and Tony Evdoka with Dan H-B in fourth and Elliot in fifth - the three leg A Main was going to be good, but it was going to take a brave man to bet against Kev Lee, who has been mighty at all of this year's regionals. The problem was that with a flooded out track, would we even be able to run the finals?
Finally the rain came to a stop, and once again it was all hands on deck to get the track back to a raceable condition. TORCH drains pretty well, thanks to a lot of effort put in by the ground crew, and with vacuum's, mops, brushes and anything else we could find we managed to get the track back to a usable state for the finals, but good waterproofing was a must!

First out should have been the 2wd 'Open' class, but as most drivers had left already and with the reduced time available it wasn't practical to run.
The weather had also decimated the field for the 4wd finals, meaning single legs for the 'D', 'C' and 'B' with three legs for the 'A'. The 'D' final saw a win for the Schumacher Cat of Darren 'Tartman' Parker, Rob Elmes  took his DEX410 to the top spot in the 'C' (using blue mini-pins of all things!), and Matt Perry wound out with the 'B' final victory with his Kyosho Lazer.
That just leaves the 'A' final, which after three legs left a final result of

1. Kev Lee (Kyosho)
2. Elliot Boots (Kyosho)
3. Steve Brown (Kyosho)
4. Tony Evdoka (Kyosho)
5. Dan Harper-Brown (Durango)
6. Sam Martin (Schumacher)
7. Rob Rasey (Tamiya)
8. Darren Boyle (AE)
9. Paul Timberlake (Schumacher)
10. John Spencer (Schumacher)

You can find full results here, and a full gallery of photos on our Facebook page.