“If you can already drive a model car, it’s not a step up, more a step across,” says Orman when I ask how easy the Touring Cars are to drive. “With a Tamiya, you have an electric motor, whereas here you have a clutch to engage.
But it’s fundamentally an RC car, so you can use sticks or a steering wheel control just like anything else on the market. What’s trickier is learning how to set up the car. Fuel and tyre management, engine tuning, castor, camber, roll bar thickness and positioning… You can get very lost very quickly. Most people who get into the sport have someone they know already doing it.”
The youngest competitor today is Sonny King, aged 15, who has travelled almost 300 miles from Kent. His dad got him into racing smaller, cheaper Tamiya models at Crystal Palace when he was just 10, and he’s since graduated through the 4WD Minis and into 2WD Touring Cars.
“There are people here triple my age,” he admits. “It feels like an achievement beating people with so much more experience. But it’s one big family. I see everyone here as my friends.”
Chairman Russell admits competitors typically fall either side of their twenties – keen to compete in their teenage years when they discover the sport before typically disappearing until they’ve settled down in their thirties (or beyond) and begun to crave a hobby again.
But hobby culture – and its myriad benefits for mental health – has clearly led a minor resurgence in paddock sizes and diversity. And next summer the European Championship for the Can-Am racer-esque 1:8-scale Circuit Cars will come to Halifax for a five-day extravaganza.
Those are the devices that will beat a full-size electric car to 60mph on their way to an 80mph maximum. Crikey.
Back to today and the clouds have rolled over, rain starting to plip-plop on the smooth surface and sending even the 4WD Minis into minor oblivion; the marshals are busier than ever plonking them back into place.
