[Mr Modifier]

We kick off our 2022 season with our second season of Fibreslots.

These little cars are so much fun - fairly straightforward to build, very robust and their lightweight makes them very fast and very nimble.

And our 2022 season started off in style with 8 racers (the most we have had for a long time) with the welcome return of Gareth and Keith and a Guest (who we hope will come back as and when his family commitments allow).

Fastest Lap:
The racing was fast and close although fastest laps are still half a second off the end of 2021 - but there was a TON of traffic to cope with in this heat and a little finger rust probably.

The Championship:
After a 7 week break from championship racing we got back into the slot with a decent prospect of a full season of racing in front of us. We had a strong start from RichP and Mike - winning all the heats between them. Jason and Clive were not far behind in speed and lap count. RichF was super fast but visited the track barriers too often. Guest driver Martin put in some very respectable lap times especially considering he has never raced digital or magless before and only does analogue at home with his son. It's a long way to go and we are currently looking at 9 heats and counting best 6 (with countback to best 7 then best 8 etc. if we have a tie) although Covid may have a say in that.

There has been some debate around racers who race entirely with borrowed cars so we have decided that somebody who races 100% with loan cars may not appear on the podium (best they can come is 4th) and may not earn the bonus point for fastest non-podium finish (after all their speed is partly down to whose car they borrowed). So Keith gets the bonus point as he started with his own car and only borrowed one after his broke a pinion.

Gareth struggled with his tired motor - but a transplant is on the cards. RIchF, Keith and Martin had unfamiliar loan cars to content with. The top 4 were back in the groove albeit a little rusty after a long break from racing (we last raced championship races on December 1st).

 

[Flat_Out_Jase]

What a fantastic evenings racing had by all, a great example of digital racing with quite evenly matched cars and a load of traffic to contend with over each 10min heat. Looking forward to next time.

 

[Mr Modifier]

Fastest lap
Mike, RIchP and Clive all improve on their fastest laps. RichF got the fastest non-podium bonus in a borrowed car but he started the evening using his own car until suffering an LED failure.

Championship
Round 2 saw a welcome return from James who placed his brace of Fords on the podium. Mike's Beetle is fast and largely stable but was losing it on the ragged edge too many times chasing RichP's slightly slower Moggy that seems to be enjoying using up its nine lives on heat wins. The racing was super competitive with many wheel-to-wheel battles throughout the evening and several heats seeing every racer take the lead at some point in the race. These little cars are great fun to race and are pushing the Group C slot.Its and Group 5 Racer Sideways hard on lap times despite costing less than half what the premium brands sell for. RichP and Mike are slightly easing away from the field but this is only Round 2 and we know of a couple of motor swaps that could bring others right up there in terms of lap times.

RichF and Clive both suffered issues with LEDs (the standard wire is best replaced with guide wire to avoid these breakages and it can be handy to secure the LED with a tiny blob of glue or blu tack). Looking at the lap counts there were some very close heats with the top three often separated by a single lap. Heat 8 was a particularly tight one, in fact all the 5 minute sprint races were tight and often decided by the number of deslots.

 

[Mr Modifier]

Fastest laps:
Mike, James and Clive all improve on their fastest laps. Mike raises the bar by going under 8 seconds. Clive earns the fastest non-podium bonus point.

Championship:
Mike's Beetle is getting even faster but was, again, losing it on the ragged edge too many times chasing RichP's slightly slower but more stable Moggy. The racing was super competitive with many wheel-to-wheel battles - at some points all 4 cars were lapping within a few lengths of each other making it very intense. These little cars are great fun to race and are really pushing the Group C slot.Its - the top 3 in Fibreslots would feature above the slowest of the Group C cars. RichP eases a little further ahead and there was much discussion in the mid-evening break about gearing and motor swaps to try to reel him back in. Clive and James leapfrog RichF on the leaderboard.

Some very close racing - the heat lap counts don't tell the whole story because the actual racing was close with cars very evenly paced - the main differentiator being the number of crashes. Mike was resurgent in the shorter sprint races and could have tied for top spot if it wasn't for a string of "offs" in the final heat. His Beetle is so much faster than the rest of the field but does visit the barriers more than most.