My Adventure
It started on the thursday afternoon, picking up my pit man Ben Kennett on route up to Neo in Telford. The journey was a long 5 hr's drive which was very slow and painful, but the excitement of the next 4 days was keeping me going and awake at the wheel. We pulled up at around 8:45pm and collected our room key and meet up with a few fellow mates. And then swiftly decided to head to the bar and chat and meet up with everyone else. After a few hours of drinking and it being about 1ish, it was time to hit the sack with a early 8am start.
Friday:
Friday consists of 1 round of Un-timed practice and then 2 round's of timed practice. Practice one was a solid run from me, and was very happy with tyre choice and how the car felt, P2 And 3 went ok, not as good as P1-Which unfortunately was not timed!! But then it was best 3 consecutive laps-would then place us into out Quali Heats.
Saturday:
Saturday was 3 rounds of quail, setup wise I decided to leave the car the same but move the rear shocks out on the arm to get a bit more lateral side bite which helped. 1 run I got a 38 second 1st lap to then have no throttle movement after the straight. Unfortunately my servo horn nut had come loose so that was Q1 out. Q2 Was a solid 10 lapper, missing out on a 11 lapper-which would be needed by 0.21 seconds, and Q3 was a slow 10 lapper it was interesting to see how dirty some of the racing in the heats was. It was very bad in my view considering the caliber of driver's at the event. Maybe the European's have a different attitude to racing than us brits-Who knows?
Sunday:
Sunday consists of 3 more rounds of quail with only having think x2 10 lapper's and 1 DNF it was crucial I needed to get atleast x2 11 lapper's to sit myself above the Cut off point for monday. Q4 Went ok, with another 10 lapper missing a 11 by a few seconds. Its a very tought track to be super consistent, and with some-Not so polite driving costing people. I was side swiped just coming onto the straight, hoping the car got a warning but nothing was done. And was hit another x2 times by the same car just that Quali round. Q5 Was ok I managed to get a 11 lapper but not by much, making a few silly mistakes and being clipped a few times too. Q6 was make or break for me and I unfortunately only got a 10 lapper, with some error's and trying to get around a train of 4 driver's for a few laps.
I was then on the border of making it into monday, thankfully I qualied 162 which cut off was 170 something if I remember correctly. My main goal for Neo was to finish top 130 but that was out of the window by sunday morning. So I my main goal was to make it too monday.
Monday:
Myself and a fellow buddy were out at 8am in the 1/256 A I decided to go out on some new M3 holeshot's which instantly felt better than my JConcepts Doube Dees. Starting in 6th I was in the Danger zone at the start. Was used as a slowing down device coming into turn 1. Luckily managed to get control of the car and keep it tight on the pipe. And avoiding a large pile up, and coming into about 4th or 5th. I then put my head down, and drove a good and consistent race getting up into 2nd place for a good 60% of the race trying to hunt down Milan-who was on fire with a good 1/2 lap lead. After some light abuse on the mic from Tony T I came in 2nd about 1/2 a lap down from Milan. So I then bumped up into the 1/128 A. Starting off in 13th it was going to be a hard race with a few big A final driver's in there started off ok, but made some silly error's which cost me, so I just played it safe and kept out of the leader's way and came in 10th place overall I finished 154 our of 225 I think in total.
Overall I was very happy with how my new Agama A8 went considering its only my 5th meeting with it. I feel more and more confident with it each meeting and really love driving it. Was great fun having loads of mates there to have some great banter and meet some new friends and talk and race with some of the best drivers in the world. I cannot wait to Neo 2012 it is the best RC event I have ever been too and now I know why there is such a fuss about Neo.
Big thanks to all the DXR crew for building a fantastic track this year and everyone else involved. And big thanks to all my mates there for some great banter and all the Nemo team for there support over the Neo event. And big props to my super start pit man Garry Barlow lol
ALL PICS COURTESY OF NEOBUGGY.NET
Until Next year!
Jamie Kerr
