1998 Pfizer Motorbike Club Annual Competition.
Reports
Results,

Report 4/12/1998

This was the second year that the Pfizer Motorbike Club have rode in to town and terrorised the locals. No, they are not that bad, well not quite, OK maybe Ian, the Chairman!
I was thinking of using motorbike/sidecars for the event but I think the marshalls would end up tearing their hair out, you know how easily bikes come of the track! I settled on SCX Porsche GT2 cars, painted in their lane colours (each car stays on its own lane) as these stay on the track quite well and are not too fast. I was making the assumption that bikers find it a strain to use brakes. Who's ever heard of a biker giong slow? These Porsches should keep these mad hatters in check.
I organised the race in to two events. The first was a straight round robin where each driver raced for 10 laps on each of the 6 lanes. This sorted out the steady eddies and the nutters. The results revealed, as usual, that there were good and bad racers amongst both the adult and juniors. As you see from the 1st race results table Ian was feeling pretty confident that he was going to do well in the 2nd race.

On with the second heat. This was were I took the wind out of Ians sails!
The second round was run as a handicap race. The computer software which manages the race is able to calculate the advantage each driver had over the slowest driver and sets a time in seconds against the faster drivers. At the start of the race the slowest driver has power to his lane straight away and can shoot off in to the distance and try to get a good lead. In turn each of the faster driver starting with the second slowest driver is automatically given power to their lane so that they can chase the driver in front. Now, all things being equal, all cars should cross the finish line at the same time. In theory!
Ian was shocked that he had to endure 45 seconds of a painstaking, patience shredding WAIT at the start line while everybody drove off ahead of him. Off he went, eventually, and each of his six races was fraught with the problems of other cars coming off around him as he tried to make his way up the field. In fact, he didn't do too bad and usually finished 4th in the heats.

The handicap system worked well giving a close race result for the top four drivers with only 3 points separating them.  Three more drivers tied for 4th place. Close indeed!
The youngsters were having a taste of success now that the handicap system was working in their favour. Philip, a junior racer, was able to win most of his heats and this enabled him to grab overall second place. Much to Ian's disgust as he was seldom able to catch the front runners. However, Ian still managed to sneak up to 3rd place just 1 point behind 2nd placed Philip.
Dale kept up some steady racing and didn't take too many risks and thus managed 1st place overall.

Again, as last year, this was a keenly fought contest with a good helping of fun and I look forward to seeing the Pfizer Motorbike Club again next year.