It was a wonderful return to racing (well, testing anyway) this week on the historic Gotham Park track. Lovingly restored & braided by Batman himself the excitement among all who were present was obvious. Some early testers (still with magnets still attached) were very quickly converted into magnet racing zealots & immediately started pushing for this work of the devil to be immediately introduced to racing on this track.......doesn't take much!
It was certainly fun while it lasted, but once we moved onto our “fun” class for the night, things quickly settled back into normality….with even more de-slots than usual as drivers tried to awaken their long lost muscle memory of this track, while others tried to learn it for the first time. It will be very interesting once “real” racing classes are run on it once again. We can also hope that Rhys remembers which lane his driving station is actually controlling by next week as well.
The most ironic moment for the night came towards the latter end of racing however. Bruce’s amazing & dedicated work in braiding the entire track to make it immune from the compulsory track breaks was completely bypassed by the simple matter of the entire suburb being plunged into darkness & loss of all power. However, it was a good learning curve on many fronts.
1stly - Race Co-ordinator proved extremely robust & its autosave function worked perfectly (once the users had worked out how to initiate it !)
2ndly – we also earned that it is always wise to boil the jug early.
3rdly – Before the next “fun” night we have, it might be time to revisit the fleet of cars available & to take a bit of a look at the service record of these cars. (as much as it was entertaining to see a red alfa regularly driving backwards towards the other cars, it is a practice that is not normally recommended).
All in all though, it is great to get this track back on our rotation, and gives us another great test of driving to look forward to each month.
It was certainly fun while it lasted, but once we moved onto our “fun” class for the night, things quickly settled back into normality….with even more de-slots than usual as drivers tried to awaken their long lost muscle memory of this track, while others tried to learn it for the first time. It will be very interesting once “real” racing classes are run on it once again. We can also hope that Rhys remembers which lane his driving station is actually controlling by next week as well.
The most ironic moment for the night came towards the latter end of racing however. Bruce’s amazing & dedicated work in braiding the entire track to make it immune from the compulsory track breaks was completely bypassed by the simple matter of the entire suburb being plunged into darkness & loss of all power. However, it was a good learning curve on many fronts.
1stly - Race Co-ordinator proved extremely robust & its autosave function worked perfectly (once the users had worked out how to initiate it !)
2ndly – we also earned that it is always wise to boil the jug early.
3rdly – Before the next “fun” night we have, it might be time to revisit the fleet of cars available & to take a bit of a look at the service record of these cars. (as much as it was entertaining to see a red alfa regularly driving backwards towards the other cars, it is a practice that is not normally recommended).
All in all though, it is great to get this track back on our rotation, and gives us another great test of driving to look forward to each month.
