2 Wheel Drive - Round 4
4 Wheel Drive - Round 3

Report by Brian Hopps.
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Race and Championship 2WD Race Data 4WD Race Data 2wd Series 4wd Series

Batley was the venue for the second full weekend of regional racing in the last month. With another visit to Bury Metro for a National plus two further regional events at Teesdale and Durham, it certainly has been a busy few weeks.

The Batley track is a challenging course made up of a mixture of astroturf, grass, clay and concrete. The club had laid out an interesting track for 2 wheel drive on Saturday using every feature, and this extended lap times out to around 4 seconds longer than the regular format.

Saturday started out quite damp, but very soon the sun had dried out what remained of the overnight dew and by the time qualifying started just about all of the 74 entered drivers were using Schumacher Yellow Mini-Spikes. With the Junior Finals being held at Batley at the end of July it was expected that the entry would have been even higher, but surprisingly, this was not the case, maybe everyone had stayed home to watch the Live8 concerts?

As with all other regional events, round by round was used as the qualifying method.

Dianne Harrison kept things moving along efficiently in race control, so even with nine heats, racing was finished in plenty of time for the regular football match.

The A final was again extremely close between Paul Bradby and Richard Lowe, third placed Ben Riley didn't make it through for the last lap, and pole sitter David Snee dropped out after setting some blistering lap times early on.

Sunday was again hot and dry and the Batley members had devised a track which was more conventional for the club, but was primarily built to avoid any areas that had become damaged on Saturday. The dry weather meant that the clay bank cut up quite badly towards the end of the day, and speed at which cars arrive on this corner provided some spectacular accidents.

The 4WD event went just as smoothly as 2WD the day before, except that Mike Riley wouldn't agree with that. Ben had just started round 2 and his car took off at full throttle, coming to a sudden halt against one of the concrete sections. The destruction was complete, with chassis, top deck, motor, receiver, speed controller etc all extensively damaged. Nevertheless Ben was still smiling after finishing second in the D final behind David Snee who had also had an difficult day.

David Snee's 4WD (above)

Batley Club would like to thank everyone who helped out over the weekend, especially York Off Road Car Club member Tom Cockerill, who did more than his fair share in scrutineering.

	Tony seems to have found other interests now David does his own pit work !

2005 Outdoor Calendar Sun 17th April 2WD NE Regional - TEESDALE Sun 08th May 4WD NE Regional - HARROGATE CANCELLED Sat 04th June 4WD NE Regional - BURY METRO Sun 05th June 2WD NE Regional - BURY METRO Sun 12th June 4WD NE Regional - TEESDALE Sun 26th June 2WD NE Regional - DURHAM Sat 02nd July 2WD NE Regional - BATLEY Sun 03rd July 4WD NE Regional - BATLEY Sat 20th August 4WD NE Regional - YORK Sun 21st August 2WD NE Regional - YORK Sun 04th September NE INTERCLUB HARROGATE