The venue for the second leg of the six-round, radio-controlled 1:12 scale LMP12 British Championship season is the gym hall at Lord Lawson of Beamish Academy, near Newcastle.
Hospitality is a broken vending machine and Bernie Ecclestone is a slightly younger chap called Peter Winton with less hair but all of it his own.
I can’t laugh, though, because many of the road cars I’ve just parked my old nail among on arrival are serious pieces of kit, including a 65-reg BMW X5 M50d, a 17-reg Golf R and a 67-reg Mercedes-AMG C63. Unlike me, these guys aren’t here on a tight budget.
What they are here for is to race. That much is clear in the ‘garage’ (the Academy’s games hall), where around 70 blokes (there are only one or two female racers) of all ages, but most of them in their thirties, occupy rows of tables piled high with voltmeters, soldering guns, electric screwdrivers, pliers, rolls of insulation tape, brightly coloured plastic car bodies and half-finished cans of Fanta.
One chap is lovingly wiping his car’s plastic body with a bright yellow duster. Another is testing his car’s electrical connections with fierce concentration. In the corner, a group of grown men are expertly turning small tyres on three miniature lathes, grinding down the rubber to reduce its thickness so the small electric racing cars slide more easily.
Lewis Hamilton cut his teeth in radio-controlled car racing after his father, Anthony, gave him one when he was six years old. Hamilton came second in the BRCA national championship the following year.
Surprisingly, the multi-millionaire Formula 1 champion has better things to do today than cheer on his erstwhile rivals. No matter, there’s ample compensation in no less a figure than 14-time European and five-time World LMP champion, Dave Spashett. He’s been racing for 36 years – almost since the LMP class, one of the oldest RC racing classes in existence, started in 1976, in fact. He cuts a modest figure.
“There’s no secret to winning,” Spashett says as he makes last-minute adjustments to the upturned racer in the palm of his hand. “It’s about making the most of the car you have and constantly adapting your style to the way it behaves on the track.”
This level of remote control might sound far-fetched but the cars Spashett and his fellow RC enthusiasts are racing today are the most advanced electric models on the planet. Features include regenerative braking, a programmable EV motor whose frequency and timing can be varied across the rev range, heat sinks on the speed controller (effectively the ECU) and the motor to keep race temperatures down to 70deg C, and multi-adjustable suspension. They’re powered by lithium ion polymer batteries, such as you find in mobile phones and laptops. Just one is powerful enough to start a radio-controlled car.
Join the debate
Add your comment
great stuff
A short video clip would have been great! :)