SMD Race Reports

Welcome to our race reports section, this is where we report on news at the events that we are attending.

Thursday 20th March

Well its finally here, the day before the biggest race in Europe this year, Neo '08, the track is looking awesome and its a lot more flowing than the Proline race held at Harper Adams last year. The DXR boys have done us proud again. Also to welcome our overseas guests the rain is gently coming down. If there ever was a perfect venue to race at this is it.

Friday 21st March

Today started a bit bad, there were heavy rain fall in the middle of the night, and some sleet this morning.
Cars hit the track at around 9.15 and the first impression is of a good layout but the surface is a little slippery, lots of the top drivers have Holeshot M3 or similar on their cars. The first round is only a few heat in now so lets see what happens after everyone has been out.





























Jay Halsey, the first ever off road World champion is in attendance with Taylor James and Chad Bradley from the US with their Hong Nor Cars.





12.02 PM

The first round of practice has finished and the first round was untimed, the usual suspects are looking fast. The second round is just starting, this is a ten minute timed practice and this will help to seed drivers for Qualifying which starts tomorrow. We will report the top ten at the end of this round.


Round 1 Practice

1 Adam Drake
2 Saxton
3 Truhe
4 Chad Bradley
5 Boja Hernadez


practice overall (see below), basically the Americans are the class of the field, Truhe, Bradley and Drake are making the track look easy ! Truhe and Drake are on Proline Bowtie and Bradley is on the Holeshot, all are running M3 compound as the surface is really slippery. Bradley had an error in the last run, other wise its really close overall.





Saturday 22nd March

The first round of Qualifying has taken place and as predicted the Americans are leading the way, Maifield lead round 1 followed closely by the Losi twins Drake and Truhe. Tyres are generally Proline M3 in either Bowtie or Holeshot. Taylor James is running very strong with his Jammin/Hong Nor powered by OS and running Proline M3 Holeshots. Team HN runner Chad Bradley is also on the pace but a couple of errors prevented a higher finish.

Round 1 times below.





Chad Bradleys X1CR FT BB Below.




Much of the same in Round 2, the Losi Twins having good runs. Darren Bloomfield and Graham Alsop holding up the British end. Chad Bradley having an excellent run with the X1CR but loosing 8 seconds in a marshaling error. Thats Racing ! Taylor James is holding up the Hong Nor end in a fine 4th place. Taylor driving style is strange to watch. He looks slow, but the stopwatch tells all.








Round 3

1st Darren Bloomfield Losi
2nd Lee Martin Associated
3rd Borja Hernadez Hobao
4th Taylor James Hong Nor
5th Neil Cragg Associated
6th Ryan Maifield Associated
7th Adam Drake Losi
8th Danny Vega Mugen
9th Graham Alsop
10th Elliot Boots Associated

A great round for the Brits !


Will post the overall for 3 rounds (all three scores added) when they are up.



Bloomers dad and car.




Overall after 3 rounds with 2 to count.






Sunday, Sorry our internet connection was down, dont know why :-(



Monday,



Finals day, the 1/4 finals are on at the moment and the fist semi final is just about to start.


Wow Awesome semi final from Taylor James and Chad Bradley. Taylor smoking the field and lapping up to 5th place. Chad Bradley made the main after the most gentlemanly piece of driving i ever saw. He hit Borja Hernandez and waited to let him go, then just 10 metres later he passed Borja on the line to take the last main spot !
Hong Nor takes pole position !


The starting line up for the main final is


1. Taylor James Hong Nor
2. Adam Drake Losi
3. Darren Bloomfield Losi
4. Mike Truhe Losi
5. Jorn Neuman Serpent
6. Dani Vega Mugen
7. Yannick Aigoin Losi
8. Lee Martin Associated
9. Saxton Associated
10. Miguel Matias Kyosho
11. Degain Z car
12. Ricardo rabiti Losi
13. Davide Trotorici Crono
14. Chad Bradley Hong Nor

Pole sitter Taylor James chilling after his stunning semi.






Well what an awesome Final, Taylor James lead off for the first few laps closely followed by that man Adam Drake. Coming into the first pits stop at ten minutes Drake had a small lead, but hang on whats going on? Drake is still out there, amazingly Drake pits at 12 1/2 minutes ! 10 minutes is incredible but 12 1/2 minutes from his GRP powered Losi threw a serious blow to Taylor. I was pitting for Chad Bradley and quickly understood that this awesome fuel mileage would mean it would be tough for Taylor to take the win. loosing valuable time in the pits. As the race progressed Adam Drake edged his lead further and by halfway he would look comfortable for the win unless something went wrong. Mike Truhe had a good race with Taylor and eventually forced Taylor to crash and went past.


In the end the result was,

1 2 Adam Drake 85/ 1h 39.77
2 4 Mike Truhe + 18.25
3 1 Taylor James -2/ 1h 20.81
4 6 Daniel Vega -2/ 1h 32.61
5 7 Yannick Aigoin -3/ 1h 4.02
6 10 Miguel Matias -3/ 1h 17.69
7 14 Chad Bradley -4/ 1h 14.48
8 13 Davide Tortorici -4/ 1h 34.62
9 12 Riccardo Rabitti -5/ 1h 21.73
10 9 Richard Saxton -15/ 52m 0.68
11 5 Joern Neumann -22/ 1h 9.53
12 11 Greg Degani -25/ 1h 34.86
13 8 Lee Martin -65/ 30m 23.09
14 3 Darren Bloomfield -76/ 6m 9.99


At least Taylor got the best trophy girl !