3.5cc
Dave Hole took the win today in 3.5 ahead of Dave Marles in 2nd and Dean Lord in 3rd.
Some great racing with the lead changing hand several times. Dave Hole got a good start and led until lap 9 when he was passed by Dave Marles, who went on to control the race until lap 80 when he was overtaken by his young Padawan Dean Lord after a stop. This was short-lived however, and Dave Hole retook the lead on lap 82 after Dean stopped and he went on to win the race with 97 laps.
Not too much drama in 3.5, but I did manage to capture This Video of Richard flipping in Armens wash.
Best Lap – Dave Marles – 15.413

Keith Burgess goes for a dip

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
A switch around for the Hillsteads saw Mikey running 7.5cc today with dad Martin running in 15cc with Mark Wraights old Tornado. Mikey got a good start and led every lap bar one until lap 58 when a stop allowed both Mick Fields and Nigel Smith to pass and relegate him to 3rd, which is how it remained until the hooter. Dave Marles put in some blistering laps with his new Drakkon, setting 9 out of 10 of the fastest laps.
Best Lap – Dave Marles – 13.674

7.5cc Boats – Click and Scroll

7.5cc Podium

15cc
An unfortunate early clash between Vladimir Getov and Dave Marles put an end to their race. Dave soldiered on but it was clear he had control problems and he brought the boat in to find a large split in the radio box had let in water, forcing him to retire after 8 laps.
Only 3 boats made it past lap 41 – James Taylor was on a mission to grab the win and £100 cash prize after a disappointing 27cc run. James set all the fastest laps, reaching a Brentwood record total of 120 laps, with Nigel Smith and Mike Holliday left for dust.
Best Lap – James – 13.550

27cc
Only 3 boats ran in 27cc after several drop-outs – 2 of them didn’t bother letting anyone know they weren’t coming. James Taylor lost a lot of time after several stops due a cooling tube disconnecting and flooding the motor.
Mick Pain took the win, with James 2nd and Terry Holmes in 3rd.
Best lap – James 13.425

Highest Laps
James Taylor wins the cash prize with a Brentwood record of 120 laps!

3.5cc
Whilst there is general agreement that the ‘Best of 5’ was a good thing in determining the wildcard GB Team place, most people don’t think that the whole Drivers Championship should have also been decided this way as it detracts from the consistency required to win the title which is normally best 8 out of 9. There is no real reason why the 2 things should be linked anyway and we expect this will be debated more fully at the AGM.
Keith Burgess took the win today in 3.5 ahead of Dave Hole in 2nd. On a ‘Best of 5’ basis, Keith takes both the GB Team wildcard place and the Drivers Championship, despite Dave Hole scoring more points on the traditional 8 out of 9 system.
We had hoped for a full 12 boat 3.5 race today but 3 dropouts and an unfortunate engine breakage for Robert Daniel meant we were down to 8.
Best Lap – Keith Burgess – 16.398

All the 3.5cc boats – Click and scroll

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
And so we come to the main event. With a coveted place in the GB Team at stake, this promised to produce fireworks. These two protagonists need very little introduction so I’ll give you a really long one.
In the red face corner, fighting out of Horsham Sussex, standing 8 feet tall (On his wallet), holder of the world record for fastest haircut and 2 time National Drivers Champion….Julian “Bee Man” Wauuuuuumsleeey.
In the green corner fighting out of Bridlington Yorkshire, standing 6 foot 2 bah’t at, pitted by the only northern lass to be constantly mardy about t’cold, former Drivers Champion and FSR-World Silver Medalist, Robert ‘Put wood int ole’ Daaaaniellllll.
Heat 1 – It’s not looking good for Julian as his boat is constantly bogging. Robert wins the heat and puts himself in pole on 71 laps after Geoff gets a minus one penalty.
Heat 2 – For the most part of the race there were only 3 boats on the water. Julian had mostly sorted the bogging and so we had a straight fight and the first round scores would almost certainly be bettered with far less traffic. Robert led the race until lap 56, when Julian managed to slip by on bottom left after a near collision. He was then able to use his marginally better straight line speed to control the race with Lauren urging dad on with words she’s thankfully not been on the receiving end of (Push!!!! Push!!!!).
So Julian takes the win, the title and the team place. Robert pushes Julian in the lake and throws his boat in on his head (That last bit is not true at all) Best Lap -Julian – 14.237

All the 7.5cc boats – Click and scroll

7.5cc Podium

15cc
James Taylor finishes the season off with another win for a total of 5, scoring the maximum possible points to claim the GB Team place and Drivers Championship title. That’s a record 12 Drivers titles to his name, putting some distance between himself and his nearest challenger Mark Wraight on 7. Not quite so dominant today though, with Terry Holmes hot on his heels in 2nd and Mike Gelson in 3rd. This is purely the writers opinion, but the 15cc and 27cc classes are fast heavy boats that can cause a lot of damage in collisions. I do wonder whether these classes should be the correct choice (Or even permissible) choice for beginners. Best Lap – James – 13.174

All the 15cc boats

15cc Podium

27cc
James Taylor finishes the season off with another win for a total of 6, scoring the maximum possible points to claim the GB Team place and Drivers Championship title. Hang on, is there an echo in here? Nope. James dominates the 27cc class in 2019, with only a couple of rare mechanical problems, plus an inspired drive by Ian Folkson in his farewell race preventing a clean sweep. Untouchable and always assured of the GB Team spot. Mick Pain took 2nd place just 1 lap in front of Terry Holmes. Best lap – James 13.728

All the 27cc boats

27cc Podium

3.5cc

Round 1 Heat 1
Unsurprisingly, the early 3.5 heats were relatively low-scoring as the windy conditions made life difficult for the small and lightweight boats. Richard den Hartog of the Netherlands lead the way in heat 1 with 49 laps with Dave Clay his only serious challenger. Best lap – Keith Burgess (GB) 21.023

3.5cc Final

A closely fought final saw Zack Humphries (GB) finish just 7 seconds in front of Christian Hof (DE), with Richard den Hartog (NL) in 3rd. Zack has pretty much dominated the 3.5cc class for the last 4 years and whilst the result was not really surprising, it was good to see him pushed by Chris right up to the final lap. Keith Burgess (GB) could only manage 5th place, but this is enough to assure him of the best 5 results in the Drivers Championship and a GB Team place for iMBRA 2020 in Italy, as Dave Hole trails Keith by 15 (Best 5) and can only make a 13 point net gain at Brentwood even if Keith has a DNS. A lesson to learn from this race is that fair communication of race position should be made available to all racers. Best lap – Zack Humphries 17.766

3.5cc podium – 1st Zack Humphries (GB), 2nd Christian Hof (DE), 3rd Richard den Hartog (NL)

Top Junior, Thomas

7.5cc

Round 1 Heat 1
Mick Fields (GB) brought along his new Jekyll, the 2nd version of the hull designed by son Martin, and just edged out Ludo Smeets from Belgium on the same lap for the heat win. Not bad for his first race with the new boat! Ludo drives his own design hull. Best lap – Andrew Aykroyd (GB) 18.370

7.5cc Final

A fast start from Dave Marles (GB) saw him lead the first 5 laps until he was passed by Martin Fields (GB). A good battle followed between Dave and Martin – Dave passed Martin at lap 23 but then had a spin, allowing Martin to extended his lead. Martin looked nailed on for the win until he stopped and was overtaken by eventual winner Mark van Ieperen (NL) on lap 72. Mark finished with 91 laps, 4 clear of Ludo Smeets (BE) in 2nd and 10 laps clear of Mick Fields (GB) in 3rd. A lot of attrition in the final meant only 4 boats finished the race. Julian Waumsley finished as 4th placed Brit, which gave him a net 17 point gain in the Drivers Championship over Robert Daniel, which means the GB Team Place is going down to the wire at Brentwood on 29th. Fastest lap – Dave Marles 17.048 | Positions by lap

7.5cc podium – 1st Mark van Ieperen, 2nd Ludo Smeets, 3rd Mick Fields

15cc

Round 1 Heat 1
Phill Fields (GB) got his usual lightning start and led from hooter to hooter, finishing on 66 laps which earned him top qualifying spot for the final. An unfortunate engine breakage for Dave Marles (GB) on lap 16 allowed Richard den Hartog to gain 2nd place and keep it to the end Richard would go on to improve his score by one lap in round 2. Best lap – Dave Marles 16.287

.

.

15cc Final

15cc podium – 1st Evert de Ronde Jr, 2nd Zack Humphries, 3rd Dieter Smeets

27cc

The 27cc class was run as 2 finals, best score to count.
Final 1
Mick Pain (GB) drove steadily in the windy conditions to win the first final with 80 laps, 2 in front of Mark van Ieperen (NL). Sunday was predicted to be much better weather and this score would most likely be beaten.
Best lap – James Taylor 15.881

.

Final 2
Christian Hof (DE) led the whole race almost from the start and only an agonisingly late stop on lap 96, handed James Taylor (GB) the win by 1 lap and the overall 27cc win. Christian was understandably upset, especially since this apparently wasn’t the first time this had happened. At least I had the opportunity to learn some new German swear words!
Best lap – Mark van Ieperen (NE) 16.067

.

27cc podium – 1st James Taylor, 2nd Christian Hof, 3rd Terry Holmes

Summary

We saw some great performances by MPBA members with 2 wins and 5 overall podium places out of a possible 12. The racing was excellent over the 2 days and was superbly organised by the committee.

3.5cc
Not the best day for the usual suspects in 3.5cc. Erstwhile Championship leader Keith Burgess was away on holiday, and 2018 3.5cc Drivers Champion Dave Hole leapfrogs Keith and tops the 3.5cc Drivers Championship with 2 races to go. Thanks Dave for pointing out my error in the points allocated!
But congratulations to stalwart Grahame Morgan, a 3-time 3.5cc National Drivers Champion, who returned to the top step of the podium after what seems like a long wait! Colin Croxford has a lot of speed (And revs!) with his Nova Mephisto and grabbed 2nd place
Recent double International podium placer Phill Fields was minding his own business running an engine in when someone ran over the top of him, putting a hole in his radio bay which pretty much ended his day.
The top 6 places were all separated by 1 lap respectively – A better rate of full-runs than we usually get. It makes sense to have a full race rather than split, the racing is better and we’ll only do this when it’s really necessary in future. Our thanks to Tony Ball, who flew in from Portugal to support his Club’s race. Best Lap – Colin Croxford – 17.674

All the 3.5cc boats – Click and scroll

Andrew Aykroyd and Grahame Morgan

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
I can’t recall seeing this in recent years – The top 5 all finishing within 2 laps. The racing in the UK is often characterised by attrition and ‘racing incidents’, the latter no doubt a consequence of the small-ish lakes we have to run on over here. But today we saw some of the best racing of the year. More of this please! Andrew Aykyoyd tells it like this “I put on a masterclass show of driving in the 7.5 with amazing overtaking manoeuvres”. Do any of the rest of you remember this? Please reply in the comments section.
Dave Marles brought his latest 7.5cc design called “Drakkon” to the race. This boat was so new, the paint was still wet! It looks like the must-have 7.5 boat for 2020, being fast and stable and a step up from the Pegasus Evo. Dave might have had the win today were it not for a fuelling miscalculation causing him to stop with over 40 seconds remaining. At an average lap time of 15 seconds, this would have given him close to 3 extra laps and may have topped Drew. Not bad for the first time on the water!
The race for the GB Team qualifying spot is hotting up, with Julian Waumsley moving ominously close to Robert Daniel after today. An unfortunate coming together of these 2 protagonists allowed Julian to close on Robert by 13 points. Julian admitted it was his fault, and with no judgement given on time-penalties or even disqualification, Julian took 2nd place and 35 points. With 80 available in the last 2 races, Julian could theoretically finish on 190 points with 2 wins and Robert a max theoretical 185. Don’t count out Dave Pillman (Well maybe count him out) or Andrew Aykroyd though. Dave and Andrew have said they are not going to Italy, but a couple of wins for either of them will give them 200+ points and force Robert and Julian to eliminate. Best Lap – Drew – 14.687

Julian and Robert clash – Full sequence

All the 7.5cc boats – Click and scroll

7.5cc Podium

15cc
A tale of 2 Mikes. One last minute drop-out still left us with a reasonable 7 boat race, at least in the first round. Damage or electing not to race meant the 2nd round was contested by just 4 boats. In the end Mikey Hillstead just edged it by 1 lap from Mike Lawson, with Sam Lincoln taking 3rd. It’s great fun to watch Mikey’s Potenza – It’s right on the edge and he drives it super-aggressively. Ross doesn’t hold much back either and we could have done with Mark Wraight and James Taylor to spice it up even further. Both Mark and James’ boats are currently down for maintenance. Best Lap – Mikey – 14.528

Sam goes a bit tight trying to catch Mikey

All the 15cc boats

Mikey and Mike battle

15cc Podium

27cc
Well would you believe it, after an absence of a few years, Steve Whenham storms to a win with his brand new Torando 7.4 / Tiger King combination. It looked a completely different boat to its first outing at Elmbridge 2 weeks ago. Fast and stable. Mick Pain was hot on Steve’s heels in 2nd, but characteristically backed out of any potential crash situations and ended up 3 laps down.
James Taylor was trying out a new carburettor and not having much luck, so he switched to the old one for the second round but was still having issues. James thinks he may have bent a rod and the squish had changed. His 4 wins so far make him untouchable and assured of the GB Team spot. Best lap and fastest of the day – Dave Marles 14.127

All the 27cc boats

27cc Podium

3.5cc
Due to the lack of numbers available for pitting / rescue duties, we had to split the 3.5cc into 2 heats of 5. Not ideal, but with only 18 racers in total, we were left with no choice. Obviously this resulted in less exciting races as the usual attrition meant we were often left with just a couple of boats on the water.
Keith Burgess put in another full run, a remarkable turnaround in reliability from recent seasons and he leapfrogs 2018 3.5cc Drivers Champion Dave Hole to take top spot in the Championship and pole position for the iMBRA 2020 qualifying spot. However, he was not quite quick enough to beat Julian Waumsley who has stepped up a gear since buying Leon Morgan’s Falcon 1. Geoff took 3rd place, but what has happened to Dave Clay who was tied for 1st place in the championship with Andrew Aykroyd after round 3? 2 7th place finishes in a row has put Dave on the back foot. Best Lap – Zack – 18.365

All the 3.5cc boats – Click and scroll

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
A single 7-boat 7.5cc heat produced some of the best racing of the day, with Julian Waumsley, Martin Fields and Ross Waumsley neck and neck at one point. It was good to see Martin finally get a full run in with his Jeykll and this shows perseverance pays off! Martin also set all 20 of the fastest laps!
Martins Story
Not quite enough to topple Julian though, who is in great form following his podium in Oudenaarde. No change at the top of the 7.5cc Drivers Championship with Robert Daniel still the clear leader and in pole position for the iMBRA 2020 spot. Best Lap – Martin – 16.872

All the 7.5cc boats – Click and scroll

7.5cc Podium

15cc
Only 2 15cc boats turned up so we combined them with the 27cc. Zack and Ross were just here with their 15cc boats to tick off one of the 2 domestic races required for GB Team qualification. Ross beat Zack. Best Lap – Zack – 16.145

Both 15cc boats

15cc Podium

27cc
A welcome win for perennial bridesmaid Mick Pain! James Taylor, had an interesting day with the tube inside his fuel tank disintegrating, prompting an unorthodox repair involving a metal tent peg! James was also struggling with engine setup due to water temperature and a couple of stops in each heat meant he could only get to within 4 laps of Mick. Mike Broad took 3rd place, well adrift of Mick and James after several stops. Steve Whenham’s new 27cc has some pace, but he’ll need to spend a bit more time on setup and trimming before it’s fully race-ready. Best lap and fastest of the day – James 16.12

All the 27cc boats

27cc Podium

James Taylor had built a new 27cc Tornado 7.4 in a record 2 days and was racing it for the first time with limited testing. Surely this was not going to work was it? Wrong. You don’t win the first 3 rounds with maximum points if you don’t know what you’re doing! James’ build album on Facebook

3.5cc
Dave Marles wins today, ending a string of poor results in the first 3 rounds. Both Dave Clay and Dave Hole now sit 1-2 in the table having leapfrogged previous championship leader Keith Burgess who did not attend today.
Andrew Aykroyds assessment of his own performance: “Me in 3.5 found more speed than last time out, but that meant more boat out of the water and with the back wash from the tyre bank came unstuck a few times. Dave Marles in 3.5 drove a good race. So much so that when I came to pass him, he moved over uncharacteristically and let me past. He must have wanted to get his hands on a trophy again”

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
Robert Daniel tops the table with a strong 2nd place today to 2018 7.5cc Champion Andrew Aykroyd. Robert is looking a decent bet for the 1st qualification spot in 7.5cc with the total from the best 5 results during the season determining the place. Gary Wraight will however want a say in this and grabs 3rd place today, 1 lap behind Robert with the 1st run of his newly #dptuned CMB 45.
Andrew Aykroyd’s factual assessment of Gary’s race weekend: “Gary spun numerous times in 7.5. Taking Nigel out and spinning again almost taking Robert out, his snail speed in the second heat was 10 laps slower. Gary’s first heat was hampered by bogging, lap after lap it continued.”

7.5cc Podium

15cc
It’s 4 out of 4 for James Taylor and a shoe-in for the first GB Team spot for the 2020 World Championships. James’ points haul of 160 is now nearly 3 times Mike Gelson in 2nd place!
Andrew Aykroyd’s factual assessment of Dave’s race weekend: “Dave in 15 was balls out as usual. Not throttling at Brid with a fast 15 is suicide and he came unstuck a few times”

15cc Podium

27cc
James Taylor builds a new 27 from scratch in 2 days, then wins with it first time out. Ok, the numbers were a bit on the low side, but James’ total of 93 laps would unlikely to have been equalled even with full heats.
Maximum points from the first 4 races and another shoe-in for the first qualification spot.
Andrew Aykroyd’s comments “Mike Lawson in 27 sheared off the end of his shaft for no reason at all while trying to keep up with James”

27cc Podium

Back to this weekends racing at Brentwood – Numbers were fairly good – 13 x 3.5cc, 9 x 7.5cc, 11 x 15cc and 6 x 27cc. First outings of the season for Vladimir Getov’s ex-Phill Fields Tornado and Luciano Pini in 27cc.

3.5cc
Going into the weekend, Dave Clay was tied for 1st place in the championship with Andrew Aykroyd. Andrew was unable to attend this weekend, so a good chance for Dave to steal a march. Unfortunately, Dave could only manage 5th this time and was leapfrogged by Keith Burgess who has discovered reliability to go with his speed this season, with a 6th, 2nd and 1st in the first 3 races. Dave Pillman set the fastest 3.5cc lap of the day with his super-lightweight Ikarus 2.3 finally making an appearance. Dave could only manage overall 6th as a few setup and reliability issues typical with a new boat, but even more typical with Mr Pillman, put paid to his chances. 2018 3.5cc Drivers Champion Dave Hole took 2nd place 4 laps behind Keith and Richard Sewell grabbed an impressive 3rd place including the fastest 2 laps in heat 2. Next job – get those fast laps consistent.

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
A single 9-boat 7.5cc heat produced some of the best racing of the day, with all the boats being reliable and keeping a permanently busy course. That’s how it should be and we’ll take a step back in future before deciding to split a class as attrition can often produce boring races.

When it’s working properly, few can match Dave Pillmans Pegasus. It’s fast and stable. A Championship Winning Boat with the application of good strategy. Unfortunately, Dave’s strategy is ‘Go as fast as I can and what will be, will be.’ Commendable, but not often a winning strategy. However, it worked out for Dave today, taking the win by 1 lap from Gary Wraight, whose rejuvenated 8-Ball is getting better every race. Nigel Smith grabbed 3rd place. Dave now leads the 7.5cc Championship, 1 point ahead of Robert Daniel who did not attend today. Robert will be looking to reverse this at his home race at Bridlington on the 12th May.

7.5cc Podium

15cc
We split the 15cc into 2 groups, but should have left it as one, as one by one, the racers dropped out. James Taylor maintains his 100% record with his 3rd win of the season. James must be odds-on to take the title and the first qualifying spot on the GB Team. Phill Fields ran James close with a 2nd round score of 82, just 2 shy of James’ winning 84 laps. James also took fastest lap of the day with an incredible 12.884 seconds. The first time we have seen a genuine sub-13 second lap at Brentwood. Mark Wraight took 3rd place and is slowly creeping up the table, but James’ points haul of 120 is almost double the chasing pack.

15cc Podium

27cc
Another win for James Taylor, dominating the 2 largest classes again. Could he possibly win every race this season? We wouldn’t bet against it as both his Tornados are fast and reliable. Paul Adams is close on speed, but James’ consistently low lap times are hard to beat. With Ian Folkson leaving the UK, we don’t see any genuine challenge to James’ grip on this class. Paul Adams took 2nd place, with Mick Pain grabbing 3rd

27cc Podium

Next the 7.5cc race. Heat One, Group One. Due to Robert Daniel’s and Andrew Aykroyd’s crash the transponder lines were broken. We paused the race as we have always done. As usual the screen does not retain the laps or timings when paused so we have no way of recording these. When we restarted the race, instead of starting from the paused point, the lap counters suddenly became aware that the program had restarted the race from the beginning so had no choice but to stop the race. Mick Szebeko and Keith Burgess both tried to retrieve the original information but this proved impossible so we had to re run the race after the second group. In the afternoon, the computer then ran the groups in the changed order which unfortunately we didn’t pick up until after the race started.

Then we have the 15cc race with Mark Wraight’s transponder not working consistently in both heats and Mike Holliday’s not working in the second heat. With 11 boats all coming round at the start of a race this is always difficult to manage but this was made far worse because the lap counters were hardly able to see the boats passing due to people walking in front of the caravan and standing at the corner of the pits. Perhaps we can assign a duty to all those people who want to pick up rubbish to stand by the corner of the caravan and stop people getting in our way.

It has been said in the past that we will not count boats whose transponder is not working but we have always felt that this can be a bit harsh at club/national level especially if people have new transponders and are not sure if they are going to work.

In addition to all this we were not able to print the results of the races, that was why we had to hand write the results to put in the window. This was because when we went to print the first set of results of the 3.5cc class the computer asked for permission to ‘change a programme’. We remembered that when we did this last year the computer subsequently stopped working during a race. We didn’t want to risk this again so decided it was best to hand write the results. Not easy when we had no break during the whole day.

3.5cc
Dave Pillman dropped out of the 3.5cc class after a string of disasters during testing, starting Friday with water in his fuel, culminating in a Super Saturday leaving his transmitter at home followed by getting water in the radio and breaking a 3.5 engine. It couldn’t get any worse could it? Just wait till the 7.5cc class!. The other non starter was Mark Wraight who had sold his Falcon 1 to Armen Boldy
The first 3.5cc heat in round 1 produced some exciting racing with Dave Clay, Keith Burgess and Andrew Aykroyd all vying for the win. Dave Clay was flying and took the win from Keith after Andrew rolled out with minutes to go. The 2nd heat was much lower scoring with considerable attrition. All the juniors did well, with Thomas scoring higher than several ‘Big Names’. Come on Steve, build him a faster boat!
In round 2, Phill Fields made up for an uncharacteristic error in the first round by putting in a clean run, securing 3rd place, on the same lap but just 4 seconds behind Keith Burgess in overall 2nd. Dave Clay takes the overall win plus fastest 3.5cc lap of the day, a lap up on 2nd and 3rd. Dave is definitely going for the title this year and says he has built an even faster Ikarus.

3.5cc Podium

7.5cc
14 entrants in the 7.5cc class meant we had to split this into 2 heats which is quite rare. In the end, this became slightly farcical as the amount of attrition meant that the 2nd round heats were contested by just a few boats. Additionally, unplanned stoppages may have distorted the scores slightly.
Geoff Parmenter now has a #dptuned CMB 45 and he put it to good use with an unassailable 70 laps in Round 1. Robert Daniel may feel a little hard done by, as he was affected by the stoppage in Round 2, suffering a problematic restart and surely would have bettered his 2nd place 68 laps after grabbing a clean sweep of all 10 of the fastest laps in Round 2.
Martin Fields took 9 out of 10 of the fastest laps in Round 1 with his self-designed Jekyll. This boat is now starting to show it’s potential and Martin said he was convinced it was the right way forward for him.
The highlight of the 7.5cc racing was this spectacular crash sequence involving Andrew Aykroyd and Robert Daniel:

7.5cc Podium

15cc
With 11 boats in one race in the 15cc class, we were expecting fireworks and while there were a couple of minor crashes, it was nowhere near the carnage we had been expecting. For the most part, the drivers kept their cool.
The 2nd round produced a really exciting race between James Taylor, Mikey Hillstead and Mark Wraight. Mikey had his Potenza flying and was driving super aggressively. Unfortunately, that aggression probably cost him the win in the end as he missed 2 or 3 buoys with the resultant loss of laps relegating him to 3rd place.
Mike Holliday must have felt like crying when his brand new Seljak was involved in a first buoy incident, but fortunately the damage was light and Mike eventually put in a respectable 44 laps.
With the top 3 all with 2 laps, James Taylor took the win from Mark Wraight and Mikey

15cc Podium

27cc
James Taylor smashed the competition to dominate the 27cc class. Who can stop James’ relentless march towards an 11th title? With Ian Folkson and Dave Marles not running, could Paul Adams, Terry Holmes or Steve Baxter take the fight to James? Not today. James cruised to victory with a 14 lap winning margin.
Paul Adams took 2nd place with Terry Holmes in 3rd

The highlight of the 27cc racing was this spectacular crash between Mick Pain (Pink and Blue) and Paul Adams

27cc Podium

3.5cc – 2018 champion Dave Hole

The 3.5cc class offers the most competition, with several potential winners. If he has the motivation for 2019, then 2017 3.5 NDC winner Mark Wraight is both fast and reliable. Alongside Mark, we would consider 2018 Champion Dave Hole, Andrew Aykroyd and Dave Pillman, who has a brand new ultra-light Ikarus 2.3 which will undoubtedly be very fast, but will it be reliable?. We’d probably make Andrew the favourite this time if he goes to most of the meetings. We have also heard that Phill Fields has a 3.5 boat for 2019, but he’ll probably stick to the Internationals and maybe the 2 big domestic events. Battle for the King of Speed will probably be fought out between Dave Marles and Dave Pillman, but as usual, those last few km/h of speed usually come at the expense of occasional reliability issues. Last year, only 1 driver (Zack Humphries) managed to win more than one race.

7.5cc – 2018 champion Andrew Aykroyd

Dave Pillman will be desparate to atone for the disastrous 1-point Championship loss to Andrew Aykroyd in the final race last year. Dave knows the Championship was his for the taking with one of the best 7.5 boats we’ve seen for years, right up there with Dave Marles own Pegasus. If only Dave could match his speed with race strategy! We expect the 2019 title to be fought out between Andrew and Dave.

15cc – 2018 champion James Taylor


James Taylor may have done a clean sweep in 2018 in 15cc and 27cc, but that was less important to him than the 2018 World Championships where he came away disappointed feeling he hadn’t performed to his full capabilities. We’d normally say James was nailed-on for another 15cc title in 2019, but he is intending to do a lot of internationals so this may let in other drivers. Mark Wraight will be looking to rack up some wins with his Seljak design 15cc boat, if he can contain the red-mist that descends on him in 15cc, but stangely not in 3.5cc. Paul Adams is very fast now and could trouble the top 2.

27cc – 2018 champion James Taylor

27cc would be another win for James Taylor if he does enough races. The other contenders would be Paul Adams and Mick Pain who is ultra reliable, but not quite on the pace. Last year, James led the Championship from round 3 and was not troubled for the rest of the season.