Next Race Meeting 15/9/2023

Our next race meeting will be on Friday 15th September 2023 at our usual Racetrack in Milborne Port (click here for details) from 6:30pm to 10:00pm.

We have a variety of club cars you can use, so come along and have a try, see if you like it. Or bring whatever you have and race it.

See you there!

2021 Q3 Championship is complete

Well we have got here, having been in lockdown on and off over the past 18 months, we have finally resumed normal activities.  We’re still recovering members who have found other things to do with their Friday evenings but I believe we will get back to full attendance over the winter.  Come on guys give up work and fishing and let’s get back to some fun racing!

We have also gained a few new members, welcome to Max and Paul and we have members returning to us, welcome back Mark!

The Q3 championship was run amidst the restart and members coming back so the positions have been decided as much on ability as attendance, but why not!

Trophys go to Joseph for the Hot Hatch. This is well earned. Fred made the switch to Hot Hatch and gained the Cool Hatch trophy for being the best of the 2nd tier drivers.

The GT12 trophy has returned to me, with the GT trophy being awarded to Tom as the best of the 2nd tier drivers.

Let’s make Q4 as good as we can!

Restart of racing

Now that the Gryphon has re-opened to the public, we can consider restarting racing on a Friday evening. For this to happen we would need to make some changes as well as trying to abide by as many safety rules as we can. This obviously poses issues which some of you may have reservations about, so we need to discuss it, find solutions and then decide.

The Gryphon has a restriction on the number of people in an area of 6-8 people which would apply to the half of the sports hall we use and we have to be aware that there will also be either the Taekwondo or Badminton in the other half. Because of this we will have to restrict our numbers to 8 on a race night.

To facilitate only having 8 drivers we also propose to limit the classes we run on a race night to 2, therefore we run different classes on alternate weeks, e.g. GT12/GT on one night and Hot Hatch/Cool Hatch on the next. This means that drivers may only be able to race once a fortnight.

To ensure we have more space available to try to maintain some form of social distance we can re-arrange the track layout so that that the carpet runs in the opposite direction and not cover the area from wall to wall. This would give a maximum track size of 12m by 12m, but allow a 2 metre gap all the way around the track. 2 sides will be the pit areas for 4 drivers each and 1 side (where the old pits were) will exclusively be the driver area during qualifying and finals.

With this number of drivers each week there can only be 4 drivers in each heat to allow for marshalls to be available. Because of these restrictions it is our intention to limit the number of heats to 2 qualifying and 1 final providing more time between heats and less rushing around. By starting round 1 at 8pm and the finals at 9pm more time will be available to build a track and clear up at the end.  With limited numbers everyone will therefore have to contribute with set up and clear up.

If these proposals are acceptable and we can get 8 drivers each week we can go back to racing on a Friday, but otherwise we won’t have the numbers to make it worthwhile and we will struggle to pay rent on the venue.

Let me have your feedback and whether you are prepared to go back to racing on this basis and we can then see if we have sufficient number to make this work each week. Please email some thoughts to derek@yeovilrc.org

Thanks