Chris Boots describes Elliott's bad luck at fourth round of BRCA championship

Qualifying

As per normal we had 5 rounds of qualifying, 4 rounds on Saturday and one round on Sunday. Elliott was able to set a good pace in practice and headed into qualifying with Darren Bloomfield close on his heels. Throughout qualifying the weather stayed fair where we thought we may have some rain. Elliott was able to TQ 2 rounds with Darren TQing 2 rounds. At the end of the day they were on equal points going into Sunday morning for the last round, which would be a showdown to who could get to TQ and take the overall. Arriving back at the track Sunday morning the weather had taken a turn for the worse and started raining. We knew we would be in for a wet run and made a few changes to the car – tyres and shocks – as the track was looking really slippery. As we waited for our run as we were in Heat 8 and Darren in Heat 9, the track had dried quite well as it had stopped raining but was still damp for Elliott’s run – he was able to put in a really fast time with the slippery conditions. Darren then went out for his run and now the sun had come out and the wind was blowing so the track was drying very quickly. Darren was able to find a few more seconds as the grip was coming back and he took the overall TQ by a few seconds from Elliott.

Semi Finals

Elliott was in the B Semi on pole position – the sun was shining and weather looking great and his Kyosho MP9 TKI3 was looking absolutely stunning after his 10 minute warm-up where he was setting some blistering lap times. The car was outstanding and was very excited to get the car into the Main A Final and challenge for the overall win. Elliott was able to lead the pack off. His Reds R7 Evoke Engine was running perfectly all weekend and gave him the power that he wanted to be able to take the semi final victory and with his time being quicker than Darren Bloomfield’s gave him pole position for the Main A Final and looking good for getting closer to the National Championship victory.

Main A Final

This was going to be a bit of a tense final as, I think, Elliott taking pole for the main had upset Darren a little and he was looking agitated so Elliott had to be careful for the first few laps. Unfortunately on the first lap, and he had only passed 3 corners, he was hit from behind and was knocked off the track but was able to clamber back on in third place but then to be collected by the following pack of cars which pushed him onto his roof again and he was dead last. Elliott had to then drive very hard and we were a little concerned about fuel consumption as we know from the past that Elliott would be getting his head down and driving the car as fast as he could to make up time. Elliott was making good ground throughout the final with no problems until unfortunately on a very fast part of the track he hit a slower driver while breaking, which  put that car off the track. Elliott being the courteous driver he is waited for the car to be marshalled and then proceeded on with his race but then received a 10 second stop and go which was a shame as we felt he had already done the right thing by waiting. This set Elliott back even further but with some fantastic driving and fast laps was able to get into 4th place towards the end of the race and chasing 3rd for valuable championship points but landed off of one of the big jumps and the front gear box broke and he was not able to continue. This has really cost us badly as now first in the Championship has gone for 2014 with one round left we can recover possibly to 2nd place which is a shame as the car and package have been great all season.

The next stop is Electric National Championship this weekend last round then we have the last round of the Nitro National Championship and then off to the World Championships in Messina in Italy where we hope to have a good result.