Team Hopeless Endurance Race Report

[Shannow]

Team Hopeless were..
Si, Rob, Chris, Johnny and Me (Stu)

Keighley is a flat(ish) grass track with a small raised astro section lined with railway sleepers and a huge central astroturf jump.

Rob was first up with his B4 and put us into an early lead, making landing the central jump look very easy.I was up next with my Bmax and Johnny followed with his Bmax, still leading at this point. Si then following with his Bmax but shattered a wishbone with a heavy landing on the jump after a few laps meaning Chris was thrown on earlier than planned and was struggling to get his Laser to land the jump - a few heavy landings caused his electrics to shift and broke his speed control switch. Rob was back on with his B4 and doing well before landing upside down and breaking his rear shock tower and then I was back on with my Macnum before the laptiming computer lost power and forced a restart with 4 hours to go and we were in 2nd place.

Jonny started with his truck but popped a shock off the tower about 8 mins in, Si managed a few laps with the rebuilt Bmax but it was making horrible noises - the front drive shaft wasn't in the cup! Chris managed a few laps with his XX4 before breaking the front wishbone mount.... So far so hopeless, and we'd dropped down to third place but we then managed to get a good run going without any breakages or issues apart from Si's recharging battery going flat due to 6 chargers running constantly off it.

Having just 5 team members this time round meant things were a bit hectic but meant more track time and we managed to keep a spare car in the pits at the ready for most of the day which reduced the time lost for breakages or thermal cutouts. For the final stint Rob stayed out whilst Johnny took over the transponder in his truck to scare the opposition - didn't actually go to plan as they both tore down the back straight neck and neck, neither giving way until they both slammed into a railway sleeper! Johnnys truck just laughed it off and sauntered away, Robs B4 however was kinda dead.

Final casualty count:
Rob - B4
Broken Rear Shock tower
Steering Knackered
Chris - Laser
Knackered switch lead
Chris - XX4
Front wishbone mount
Summat terminal
Si - Bmax
Front Wishbone
Drive shaft
Si - RC10T
Rear Wishbone Mount
Si - XX4
Jammed Steering (transponder!)
Johnny - Truck
Shock popped off shock tower

Quite a list but we didn't fare as bad as some other teams

Great day, can we do one of these at Bury?

[Si Coe]

You forgot I also killed the rotor on the Bmax's motor. We thought its cells were flat, but actually it was a dead motor.

Also, and most importantly you forgot that we broke a marshal. Johnny stunned him a little first, before Rob took him out completely!

Technically the Losi wasn't broken - i just stupidly mounted the transponder where it jammed the steering. In my defence I normally run a PT.

The breakage list isn't that bad when you consider that in a typical race meeting you get 25-30 mins of track time each. Even with 6 people we'd have been double that, but in practice with 5 of us it was higher than that still. Indeed, heat from 10+mins running is what killed my Bmaxes motor.

After the Lazer electrics issue Chris had a serious manhood failure and wussed over the double for the rest of the day - does that count as a breakage?

Still - good fun, and a great track once you get used to the monster double.

We could do this sort of event at Bury if people want, but I think a few alterations are needed.
1. 6 hours, or even the 5 the actual scoring race lasted, is too long - 4 seems like a nice figure.
2. We'd need to set out the course to avoid the grass as much as possible. Keighleys track cut up really badly and that caused some issues.
3. Some sort of rotation of marshals. Some marshal points involved a lot more work than others. When we inherited the point by the jump after Rob KO'd its official marshal we doubled our workload.
4. Mains power to all. When my battery died our challenge near ended there. As it was it lead to some pretty tense moments where you were out on the track and there was no one to replace you!

[Shannow]

I forgot about your motor and Rob landing his car on the marshalls head

You managed to park your car on my toe during on of the pit stops which hurt like a bastard and bled, and I've got a big scratch up my back where a cat SX landed on me whilst I was in the marshalling dangerzone! Johnny scared the crap out of everyone who had the misfortune to get the double jump marshalling point

I quite liked it when the track cut up so much towards the end - made drifting round that tree great fun as long as you missed the exposed roots...

4 hours would be about right and you could get away with 4-5 man teams as long as they've a few spare batteries. If the race had gone on for the 6 hours as scheduled I think we'd have struggled to make it as we were running out of batts.