[woodcote]

The driving highlight of my visit to Ramsden last season was Nobby's Nightmare - a huge Ninco layout mounted on several boards and featuring elevations, a doughnut-loop and a fiendishly technical flat bit. Last time we did two 'laps', where a good time was sub-60 seconds. This year we were scheduled for three times round and aiming for sub-90 seconds...

   

We did have a couple of runs timed out at 120 seconds - not a lot of leeway there - but that 90-second mark was consistently challenged and broken. Again, I really enjoyed myself. Going last in the group, I had plenty of thinking time to prepare and I attacked the stage from the start - my SCX Abarth 124 Spyder managing a relatively good 101.92 seconds. The Ninco Porsche followed with an 86.73...

         

I then set 83.91 with the Lancia and finished - leaving absolutely nothing on the stage - with 82.31 for the Subaru...

         

Quickest again was Steve's Ferrari, with a sub-80 second time.

We moved on to the big Ninco 'Stage 7' - rather reminiscent of a typical Spanish slot rally tarmac stage - lots of hairpins and cross-overs to give the car an inside racing line through each...

   

No borders or barriers on those hairpins either!

We saw the WHO cars earlier, here are Colin's, Steve A's and Steve B's...

   

   

   

This was another stage where rhythm was absolutely crucial to a fast time. I went pretty well, but Mike - following me - went faster...

   

However, it was the Steves' Targa cars - the NSR Porsche and Policar Ferrari - that went fastest of all.

We ended on Ramsden Green, a routed track that I didn't enjoy last year and didn't much enjoy today either. Undoubtedly lots of practice would be helpful, but I forgo such things...

   

The joint between the two boards was lifting and deslotting some cars, so it was difficult to commit fully and, even then, random deslots were happening. Not the best end to my day, but I did have some good fortune - the right rear wheel of my Lancia fell off a lap or two after the end of its timed run!

As one of the last groups to finish, we didn't have long to wait for the results. As always, my memory of the exact results are a bit of a blur - but they will be published by the end of Tuesday. The highlights were that Mike got a second in Classic for his Porsche 914/6 GT and Steve B was runner-up in Targa Florio with the Policar Ferrari 312PB. Mike got three top 10 class finishes and (I think), both Steves and myself got two each, which was very pleasing!

   

We then hit the road around 5.30pm, the journey back significant less wet than the morning, but certainly not dry. It went pretty smoothly, thanks to ready supply of toffees and mint humbugs - and excellent conversation.

Huge thanks go to everyone at Oxford Scalextric Club for putting on a fabulous day on the stages and in the kitchen. Big thanks also to Phil, Seb and Alan for running the SRGB side of things. We're already planning the trip to Farnborough on Sunday 24 May - let us know if you want to join us, there might be a couple of cars going to this one. More details about the 2026 SRGB championship are here.