Having not run any rallys for almost four and a half years (since March 2020), a decision was taken to have a rally session, and what a great decision it was! Nine drivers turned up to takle the stages, giving everyone a chance to see who'd master them. Although there were several new cars, many of us pulled out and dusted off our old rally cars to prepare for the event. As usual, three stages of five laps per car were run, drivers rolling a dice to determine the sequence of each starter.
As usual, all but the driver and the person recording the times for each stage were spread out around the table to marshal any de-slotted cars, of which there several. The key here was to go as fast as possible without coming out the slot, something that can seriously affect your results, as some drivers - including myself - were reminded of. Whereas the previous Powerbase showed cumulative times for each driver's laps, the new Powerbase treats each lap as a separate time. But this didn't affect the recording of the times, although it did result in some lengthly re-programming in our results database which compiles and computes all the info. You'll notice some stage times as exactly 90 sec. This is based on a long-written rule that for anyone who completes the five laps of a stage in over 90 seconds, his time will be set as 90 seconds. You can see this in the Rally Class rules here:
https://frcforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=279
By the time all stages were run, we were asking ourselves why we'd waited so long to re-introduce rallying to our hobby. I'm sure it'll now be a regularly-scheduled class like all the others.
Some pics by Luke to start things off:
Everyone busy getting prepared for the rally:
Practice time:
Removing the magnet from Mark's LMP car:
Lucas checking things out:
Three slot racers taking a break:
FRC mascot Gunther sneaks a peek from under the board-room table:
Steve's Impreza:
Steve driving a stage:
O'brie's Porsche:
O'Brie driving a stage:
Peter's Alpine:
Peter driving a stage:
Luke's Peugeot:
Luke driving a stage:
Jon's Peugeot:
Jon driving a stage:
Ian's Peugeot:
Ian driving a stage:
My Peugeot:
Me driving a stage and not looking very happy with how its going:
Warren's Lancer:
Mark's Citroen:
Warren and Mark practising (no stage driving pics):
Rally results
Official timesheet:
The orange highlights below indicate who did the best time for each lap of each stage, the driver who did the fastest lap for the stage and the driver with the lowest variation in times driving the stage.
Congratulations to the top three, O'Brie in third, Peter in second and Steve for taking first place, winning every stage in the process and topping the best of everything in the third stage!
Total Championship Points for 2024:
Next event's classes: Scalextric BTCC, GT, LMP.
Don't forget to see the updated overall fastest times and the fastest no-magnet times by driver and class to know what the benchmarks are for your cars. Older stats can be found in the Archive area of the forum.
See you on the circuit...
Gordon
. I lost a lot in the last lap of the last race ! Guess I miscalculated on laps as I derailed on the 1st corner after the start finish line however there was no catching Steve as he was WAY out there. Well done Steve congrats
I have a lot of work to do.....as usual 
I believe the reason for Rally Car Class, taking so long to be hosted (in 2024) because it was already / officially a 
