A Backmarker’s View of the ISRA 2014 Worlds

[Greg N]

Heat 3, Nabokins lost 12 total with the gear change. More crashes this heat. With 3 mins to go, Piero is 3 laps up on Olli. Chris, and Horky just behind Olli.

[Greg N]

At the end of 3, Piero in the lead, then Olli 2 down, Horky 4 down, but I can hear another loud gear. Jansons is 6 down, Chris 7, Fyhr 10, Nabokins 15, Paolo 15

[Greg N]

After 4, Piero ahead, Olli 3 down, Horky 4 down, Jansons and Chris 6 down, and the last 3 way back. Clean heat, Piero running 4.9s on black.

[Greg N]

As I've written before, these guys drive F1s at speeds similar to baby Euros from only a few years ago.

[Greg N]

After 5, Piero was fast in yellow, 4.8s, now 6 up on Olli and Chris, who was fast on orange. Then Horky and Raivis 8 down. Very clean heat, but the tire changes may start soon.

[Greg N]

After 3 minutes, Piero, now on orange is 7 up.

[Greg N]

After 6, Olli is now in 2nd, 9 down tied with Chris. Horky lost a few (I didn't see it) now 14 down. Raivis is in 4th 11 down, and there's a loud gear again.

[Greg N]

After 7: Piero appears gone unless he breaks, now 11-12 up on Chris, Olli, and Raivis who are essentially tied 11-12 down, after Olli needed to fix his braid. The others are out of it, I think. Clean heat. Olli is flying, trying to take over 2nd. Raivis is fast, too.

[Greg N]

After 1 min, a 3 way tie for 2nd.

[Greg N]

Half-way thru the 8th, Olli walls at the end of the main straight on a rider. Car made an awful sound and flew 15 feet. Chris now 9 down, Raivis 10, Olli 12. Olli just dropped out.

[Greg N]

And that's it. El Bandito wins, Chis Bruyninx is 2nd, 8 back, Raivis Jansons 3rd, also 8 back down, Vladimir Horky 4th, Matti Fyhr 5th, Paolo Trigillio 6th, Olli Kantamaa 7th, and Janis Nabokins 8th.

Good race! Very well driven by Piero, who was simply fastest, and for Chris a great way to break into ISRA World mains. Olli got really punished right at the end

Now a short break to clean the track and 1/24 ES practice till midnight for everybody.

BTW, 2 school classes present during the main.

Hope that you enjoyed this!

[Greg N]

1/24 ES: The practice sessions yesterday went fine, with the single exception that Janis Nabokin was running lap after lap on purple and black in the 3.4-3.5s. All racing is a mind game, I'm thinking, though walking in quietly usually works better than intimidation.

We'll start qualifying in an hour or so. That'll take a few hours, then we'll start running the Group heats. All will be run today. Tomorrow is Semis x 3 and the Main, then the Delegates Meeting, then the party.

Speaking of the Delegates Meeting, there are always lots of slotcar politics here. ISRA politics have a decidedly bureaucratic feel to them, but are otherwise like slot car politics in the States. I'm not interested in them, I just read the rule book before the next Worlds, which unhappily about 400 pages long (just joking). But the one thing that I did notice is that many of the bigger or important disagreements seem to come from the varying viewpoints/backgrounds of the participants/delegates. Basically, you've got a very few people who make their living from slot cars, a larger number of more hobby-like track owners or club officials (clubs are very common in Europe), the ISRA Worlds fast guys and girls, the regular ISRA World guys and girls, and for lack of a better term, the fans, both here in person or watching on the computer. If you watch the arguments it's almost always 2 people or coalitions from more than one of these backgrounds. Note that this doesn't say anything at all about who's more right or more wrong, but it does make the disagreements easier to understand, and occasionally easier to analyze. Theoretically, this should also help people keep their tempers in check, but there's no empirical evidence to support that at all. :-)

[Mic Byrd]

Nice run in 1/24 Greg and thanks for all your reporting great job.

[Greg N]

Thanks, MG!

Actually, things didn't start out well. The track had been normal at last practice, but in qualifying it was very slippery. I couldn't get in a rhythm and qualified poorly. But I had a good day, actually best 1/24 ES race I ever drove. I was in the first (worst) group, but it turned out to be good. Our group was rough, the next one was just awful, at least 40 track calls. So I screwed up white and red, too, but then my car hooked up, and off I went. Ended up 2nd in the heat, 1 1/2 laps behind Indre (one of the Lithuanian young women). And I won 2-3 of the heats, and turned a bunch of 4.1s according to one of my friends. (I didn't look at the results sheet yet.) So I'm feeling just great!

I'll go to dinner soon and to sleep, but I'll be here for the semis and main in the morning, and of course the party tomorrow night.

As I write this, Group F is running. Anna K and Michael Landrup are running steady 3.8s for much of the heat. And it's just Group F.

Now back to packing my stuff up! See you tomorrow.

Greg

[GT1]

Thanks for all the updates Greg! Love the "insider" view so to speak.