DMS Winter Series Round 1 – Report
The opening round of the four round DMS Model Car Club Winter Series kicked off over the weekend in Watford, England. A technical and challenging layout was set for the drivers, with several sections extremely challenging to get consistent and at the same time be fast. The risk certainly returned reward on clean laps, but really (REALLY) hurt your time with an error. We had four rounds of FTD qualifying and in 2wd it was young Abe Lyons (Associated) who took the TQ with his Reedy powered B6.4. Ellis Stafford (Schumacher) lined up 2nd with his Cougar LD2 from Karl Jackson (Schumacher) in third. The rest of the guys straight into the A direct were Rich Miller (Schumacher), Shaun Garratt (Associated) and Thomas Lau (Associated), the rest would come via the bump ups.
The 4wd class saw TQ go to Darren Boyle (LC Racing) with his ORCA powered LC10B5, with Sam Cook (Xray XB4) lining up second and Andy Otoo (LC Racing) 3rd. The first final to run was the C final 2wd, this was taken by poleman Keith McDonald (Schumacher) from Freddie Morgan-Smith (Schumacher) and Luciano Pini (Schumacher) in third. Both Keith and Freddie would get the bumps up to the B final. The B final 2wd was led off by poleman Darren Boyle (Associated) but an early error saw him drop right down the grid. It was Sam Cook (Xray) who took over the lead, but he was caught and passed by Gareth Cutting (Associated) from P3 in the final minute, a lead he would not relinquish. So the top three ended Gareth, Sam, Darren with the top 2 getting the bump to the A final.
Next up we had the first of the two A finals, the 4wd class. Poleman Darren Boyle (LC Racing) got a great start and began gapping the chasing pack early on, Sam Cook (Xray) was leading the pack round, then two laps from home, an error and large impact by the leader led to damage and limping home, could Sam catch and pass for the win, the answer was no and Darren held on for the win, Sam second and John Crone (Schumacher) took third.
Last race of the day was the 2wd A final, poleman Abe Lyons (Associated) led the field away with he and Ellis Stafford (Schumacher) beginning to gap the field… then on lap 5 Abe made an error and lost the lead. Eventually Ellis would take up the lead after both Rich Miller and Karl Jackson had held onto it themselves for a few laps. Ellis (Schumacher) would hold on for a comfortable victory ahead of Rich Miller (Schumacher) and a recovering Abe Lyons (Associated) in third. All in all a great start to our series, with Ellis and Darren leading their respective classes at this early stage with wins for Schumacher/Tekin and LC Racing/Orca. Thanks to our series sponsors X-Factory UK and DMS Racing.
Round 2 of the series takes place on February 4th.
Source: DMS Model Car Club [Facebook]
