Saturday morning brings us to the track for this years qualifying run for the 2016 Kleskun Hills Open. The cars were rolled out of the garages and on to the track to get ready. Qualifying is a 20 lap run where total time and fastest lap are noted. To qualify first you must compete the quickest 20 lap time, with the fastest lap used to break any ties. Deslots result in a yellow flag, with the car re-positioned on the track and the run restarted. Deslots will effect the time run as reaction time to the track call button and subsequent restart will add to the time.
The cars were entered into the computer and I believe the software randomly selects the qualifying order from the cars entered
This years order is
Barc Lexus
Taskak Nissan
Taskak Porsche GT3
PDRT Porsche 956
PDRT Mini
JHRICO Capri
JHRICO Porsche alm
DF Mazada
CJR Aston Vantage
BARC Porsche
First out on to the track is the BARC Lexus. The BARC car ran a clean 20 laps, not an overly fast car, with a light front end that can lead to deslots with too much acceleration coming out of corners. The car was driven with this in mind.
It crossed the lane with a 20 lap time of 115.189 sec and a fastest lap of 5.524 sec.
The Taskak Nissan was next. This SCX chassis with the ONYK shell is a stunning looking car A good running stable car lead to another problem free qualifying session. A little jumpy with the tail end sliding , but predictable and controllable
Crossed the line with a 20 lap time of 115.620 sec and a fastest lap of 5.482 sec
No sooner had the Nissan returned to the garage and it was time for the Taskak Porsche GT3 car to begin its qualifying run. A stock Go car with Urethane tires, and added weight and a modified guide pin were used in an effort to get the most out of this stock chassis. Light with the torqy motor meant running it at lower voltage as well as dialing in the ohms on the controller to get the most out of the car. Had trouble on lap 9 and deslotted after exiting under the bridge which effected its over all time.
TaskAk Porsche ended up with a 20 lap combined time 125.609 with a fastest lap recorded at 5.948. This puts the car into the race as it is under the cut off time of 7 seconds.
IT was now the PDR teams time to see what its cars could do, Taking the challenge first for the team was the Porsche 956, a Kyosho bodied car sitting on a PDRT 3D printed chassis and using Dnano power. This car is a pleasure to drive with smooth consistent performance with lots of driver feedback. A great COG, good tires and a strong motor lead to clean 20 lap run, crossing the line with a combined 20 lap time of 99.254 sec with a fast time 4.736 sec.
As the 5th car on the track we are now halfway through qualifying as the PDRT mini takes the green light to start its run. The vacuum formed shell on a scratchbuilt chassis with an open frame motor is the only car in the field to have some inherent magnetic traction in it's design that was measured at 9 gms. This fact means that we have two different classes of cars on the track this year, as the magnetic force will help.
This car is very smooth and fast and with its added magnetic traction was an easy car to drive fast. A great car but to be fair to the other entries I decided to put this car in a class of its own. In future races the class structure will stand as the car has no added magnetic traction, but all cars that have some inherent magnetic force will race in the Inherent Magnetic Class(IMC) class. This year Peter's Mini is the only car to show up like this, but I know others build similar type cars so to be inclusive these cars will always be welcome at Kleskun Hills.
Not surprisingly the Mini had a clean 20 lap run with a combined 20 lap time of 97.880 sec with a fastest lap of 4.653 sec.
At the halfway point and to break up the post, a break will be taken in the reporting of the action. A video has also been done as well that will be posted later this morning. Not sure how you guys want the news. Video and then text to follow, or what I am doing now which is text with video to follow?
Cheers
Dan