The AWS 2023 Series. End of series report. This is what went down!
Well ths is years AWS series has been nothing but a blast. Attendance from the series has been fantastic throughout the series as well which is fantastic.
The first round of this years series was on the 16th October 2022 at NDOR (Notts & Derby Off Road). It was a bit of a cold start to the morning but we soon got underway and cracked on with the racing.
Entries were good for the time of year and it wasn't the warmest weekend either. All drivers had a cracking days racing with many little battles between friends and rivals going on as well. However we had to have a winner.
The top 3 for Truggy were:
1st - Daniel Thorne
2nd - Matt Bridge
3rd - Chris Carlise
The top spots in Buggy were:
1st - Graham Alsop
2nd - Daniel Austin
3rd - Jonathan Skidmore
Well done to the top 3 from each class plus well done to all drivers that attended for making a great start to the series.
The second round the series travelled up north to the popular northern circuit North West Nitro on the 13th November 2022.
It was another very cold start to the morning with many of the drivers from the first round along with many local drivers making up the numbers. The track was challenging but fast. The drivers enjoying the circuit and many battles for the top spots going on throughout the meeting.
The top 3 for Truggy in this meeting were:
1st - Wez Jolly
2nd - Matt Bridge
3rd - Andy Beaumont
It was also fantastic to see many Truggy drivers attending this round as well!
The top 3 for Buggy were:
1st - Daniel Austin
2nd - Jake Knight
3rd - Chris Ely
Again well done to everyone throughout the meeting and thank you to those who helped as well. Big thanks to Nicole and Nicole's Mum for catering the event. So sorry i've forgotten your name. (i'm shocking with peoples names)
Round 3 which took place in December went to my home club Deerdale Off Road on the 4th
Entries were good for this round with the numbers holding consistent as well, which was fantastic.
The track was very frosty first thing in the morning but as soon as we started racing it thawed out rather nicely.
We had a nice entry for Truggys again with enough for their own heat which is great. In the Truggy class the top 3 were:
1st - Wez Jolly
2nd - Daniel Thorne
3rd - Chris Carlise
You can obviously tell that Wez and Chris had a great race with their poses in this photo
In the Buggy class the top 3 were:
1st - Graham Alsop
2nd - Dan Austin
3rd - Liam Brocklehurst
Well done to all drivers yet again for attending the meeting and thank you so much for the support with marshalling towards the end of the meeting to help some other drivers out, Great sportsmanship!
Round 4 of the series went down to a club way down south. Being South Coast Nitro, And wow what an interesting weekend it turned out to be. My partner and I travelled down on the Friday afternoon. Woke up on Saurday morning, looked out the caravan door to find out we had a moat of water around the caravan. Wow that was a lot of water!
After we rescued ourselves and Millie (the cat) that was stranded on the piece of high ground surrounded by water with no where to go, our attention turned to the track itself. What we saw was madness.
Believe it not theres a track under there. Most drivers including myself started to think about different classes we cound race around that. Maybe a electic/nitro hybrid hover craft would be a good starting point.
With this greeting us on saturday morning practice was obviously cancelled. The club committee and many local drivers did their upmost throughout the whole day to clear the water off the track. It took over 10 hours and a burnt out pump to get it all sorted. Massive shout out to the team who worked their arses off to get this sorted for us. The meeting ran smoothly on the Sunday until we had a major downpour around 2pm were there was sadly puddles starting to form on the track in places. Many drivers at that point at the end of qualifying decided to call it a day and not race anymore. However there were enough brave/crazy souls that wanted to continue racing with my self being one of them. So we ran the two finals and we saw Daniel Thorne take the win with his Truggy, Chris Carlise in second place and Jason Hocking take third place.
It was a tad slippy out on the track but we made it work
In the Buggy class we had some interesting racing and some interesting lines. Even with myself falling off the top of the burm and landing the car in roughly 3 foot of water. But the car was rescued, Shook and put back on the track. But in the end we saw Daniel Thorne take the win with Alex Leo in second place and William Paul in third place.
Well done to all drivers even My Sophie who decided to make this meeting her first meeting to enter with an 8th car. Top job!
After finishing the race Sophie and I packed away all our race kit, Had something to eat. By the time we had done that it was getting a little late to make the 200+ mile drive home with the caravan so we decided to stay until Monday morning. Well what a bad idea that was. Around 1am or so the heavens opened and what we could hear on the top of the caravan roof was nothing short of deaffing. We looked at each other and said "F**K SAKE"
What we got up to Monday morning was worse than Saturday morning. The track was almost completley underwater. The car park area where we were was under water.
As you can see in this photo I am walking about with my phone doing a live stream to Facebook. You can check this out on the AWS Facebook page. There were so much water on the track and around the area the porta loos were actually floating!
This is what the track looked like too!
I can't thank the team at South Coast for all their help getting us racing. Massive effort!
The fifth and final round the series went to Ledbury Model Car Club, which has always been a popular venue on the AWS circuit. The attendance was good and one of the highest this series.
Racing was great. The track was great and very grippy. Lap times were fast and consistent throughout the day.
The top 3 Truggys were
1st - Chris Carlise
2nd - Daniel Thorne
3rd - Wasim Iqbal
Top 3 Buggys were
1st - Ben Billing
2nd - George Chamberlian
3rd - Daniel Austin
What a fantastic meeting to end the series on!! Couldn't have hoped for anything better.
With this being the final round of the series, It was trophy time!
No expenses are spared when it comes to trophies for the drivers that make up the series!
There were trophies for the top 3 in the Truggy class and top 5 in the Buggy class. This was because there were more buggys that competed compared to Truggy.
We started with the Truggy Class.
3rd place went to Tim Lucas
Second place overall went to Chris Carlise
Finally first place in the Truggy class went to Daniel Thorne
After this the Buggy class trophies were handed out.
5th place went to Chris Ely who couldn't be with us this weekend
4th place went to Jack Knight an AWS Regular
3rd place went to Mark Upton
2nd place went to George Chamberlian
The winner of the Buggy class went to Daniel Austin
Then it was time for the two Race Directors Awards
These awards are something that I came up with many years ago which is basically to show a driver that their help, support. Sportsmanship, dedication and so on hadn't gone unnoticed.
With the amount of rain fall that we had at South Coast Nitro there were 3 people that worked tirelessly to get the track driveable for us. One of said people wasn't even a committee member at the track but mucked in and got things sorted. These people spent over 10 hours on the track with brushes, shop vacs and pumps clearing the water. After all that time and many soaked through shoes and wet socks the track was in a good enough condition to race on. One of the team even went as far as coming early on Sunday morning to finish off what needed to be done and then go off to a shop to buy another pump because the original one burnt out then went on to pit for his son who was racing both classes which he had done throughout the whole series. So because of the massive effort, Their dedication and enthusiasm for the sport to get us racing that weekend. The two Race Directors awards went to:
Marus & Daniel Thorne.
Chris Carlise
Thank you and well done again for your hard work that weekend.
But that wasn't it!
To show my gratitude for all the drivers that supported the series by doing 3 or more rounds. I presented all those drivers with a shot glass engraved with the AWS Logo just as a token for doing the series.
All the meeting and series results are on the Deerdale website. Click Here to visit that.
I would like to thank everyone who raced in the series and for all those that did multiple rounds. You are all aces in my book. Well done to our winners and well done to all other drivers for making it another fantastic series. The AWS 2024 will be annouced as soon as I have all the information
I will hopefully see most of you during the year at some point. I hope most of you enter the E-Buggy Nationals this year.
But until AWS 2024. This is Chris J Signing off until then!
Keep racing everyone!
Photo credits to my wonderful partner Sophie Clarke! Concentrating hard on her race here! Love it!
