The season has finally started and LMRacing have taken their first win of the year. With Leon’s 1st in Peterborough

 

 

 

“Get in, winning both the heats proves I was good enough, better than all the rest (in a tina turner tune!).

The boat was going well, I was happy I drove two consistent races, and glad that the competition hasn’t caught up over the winter!

Hopefully I can continue the good form at the next race in Brentwood, do it, do it!”

The other team members fared slightly differently...

Martin suffered a small technical difficulty in race 1 and a bit of bad luck in race 2.

“I feared the worst, I thought the pace had gone, but schoolboy error, I hadn’t checked the throttle position!

Once i’d realised it was set at half open all was fine until the boating gods struck me down with swift vengeance for my poor preparation and the coupling broke.

The new boat is on its way and the deck, radio, tank cover are all in place. Some more time off and it’ll be joined and ready to roll for brentwood, hopefully!”

Phill suffered two major ‘driver errors’...

“I was so nervous in race one and just let it get to me, smacking bottom left wasn’t the plan whilst leading by a country mile! But the boat was fast.

Race 2 was supposed to be about tugging around, which I was (in first place). smacking bottom left wasn’t the plan whilst leading by a country mile! But the boat was fast...!”

 

 

 

“I was feeling quite well prepared for the first race and looking forward to it. Keith made an awesome start from the furthest end of the pits and I reached the buoy first. I noticed that my throttle servo was not working as it should and on the third lap I was not able to throttle on top right and hit a boats wash which spun me over. After the boat was recovered I established the servo had died on me, so that was my early retirement from Heat 1. Although I set the fastest lap of the heat on Lap 2, this setback put the pressure on for the second heat.

 

Race 2 the servo had been replaced and I was starting from the pit closest to the buoy. I was not feeling confident at all as I was the last 15cc heat of the day and all of the lap scores had been down on the previous day’s scores.

I got a good start and led till the end. I new I had to push to make it to the A-final and so I just got my head down. After a great race a finished top qualifier which I was extremely happy with but means there is a lot to live up to in the final.

 

The Final came and I was quite nervous as the start approached. Keith started very fast as usual but as he launched the boat, the propeller caught the stand and both blades were destroyed. The boat just lay motionless after hitting the water first!!!

After the boat drifted closer we recovered it from the waters edge with thanks to my Dad Grahame and Phill, changed the propeller and got going into the race.

After this awful start I was 3 laps down on the leaders but just concentrated hard on making up the gap.

After many, many great overtaking moves and crowd cheering moments I took the lead from Erich Costa with 6 minutes remaining and after pulling out a comfortable lead began to ease off until the checkered flag.

 

After a soaking in the lake and having my poor boat defaced we began to celebrate and collected the wonderful Trophy, we all got very drunk, happily ever after!!!”

...well! As some of you may know we didn’t get on too well in Hannover this year. Not making a final is something none of us are happy with.

 

Well we can now reveal the full reason for our disappointing performance. After much technical analysis of our boats, engines and radio equipment. Coupled with an exhaustive look at our travel arrangements, eating and most importantly, drinking habits we have made the following conclusion...

 

Andrew Ackroyd: you are a jonah!!!

 

 

 

 

“After a strong pre-Belgium test, you can imagine how down I felt when testing on Saturday morning was finished. Not only could I not get the engine to pick up, but when I started to strip the engine to find the problem, a huge crack in the crankcase wasn’t what I wanted!

 

Having no spare to fall back on meant the offer from Mike Broad to run his spare evo2 was a godsend (thank you again Mike!). And what an engine it turned out to be. The start of the first heat was a flier from martin and the engine revved and picked up perfectly, what a relief!!! I settled into a cruisey race, happily leading and not risking the boat or a guaranteed ticket into a final. But as always with these things it wasn’t meant to be, and a wayward back-marker ended my race with five minutes to go, bummer!

 

So heat 2 was going to have to do it, and the trademark first in the water start from my bro was a great way to go about it. But this time the engine had other ideas, a couple of slow pickups and it stopped. Luckily it didn’t take too long to get it back and we just started it, threw it in, and it was fine. I knew I didn’t have anything to lose so I just relaxed and tried as hard as I could but I wasn’t enough, and no finals for me.

 

I guess sometimes things just aren’t meant to be and Oudenaarde 07 was a perfect example of that. At least Leon gave us all something to cheer about! Well done chief.”

“From a personal point of view the 7.5cc was going OK from what I could remember. I’d put all the running gear back into the boat I ran last year- LMR Wraith, and made a few improvements in terms of now running a straight through shaft with no coupling. The down side of doing this was that I’d not had the chance to test the boat!!!”

 

All the team members of LMRacing were planning to have a shake down test on the Friday, but this was not to be as a rather loud SG powered tugboat run by Steve Whenham cause a visit from the police and a stop to proceedings. This meant that for the majority of people the heats on Saturday would be the first time the boats had run longer than 10 minutes. Bugger!!!”

 

The first heat almost went to plan; a good start from Phizzle was just what I needed and he delivered, but the first buoy highlighted a major problem.  I had way too much left rudder and not enough right.  I felt like I was driving like junior that had too much sugar & E numbers! Eventually I settled in and adjusted my driving, but I couldn’t drive as hard as I liked. The result of which was 52 laps, good but not good enough to guarantee the A Final.

 

In the second heat I pushed in the pipe 5mm to see if I could get a little more pace. I got the pace but the boat wouldn’t pick up out of the corners. We had a good start and got to the first buoy before anyone else, but by the end of the first lap I was struggling with the pickup of the boat. I decided to come in and pull the pipe out again, I also thought that I might as well change to another prop to see how it would go as I knew I could not beat last times score. The B Final was almost guaranteed so this was probably a good time to get a race set up for tomorrow.

 

As we thought the B Final had my name all over it! The boat was ready and so was I. As we had the warm up Phill did make a small school boy error, trying to start the boat backwards which was noted for future reference. We had a good start again, but the boat still was struggling out of the corners. I leaned it up a fraction to see if this made a difference and it didn’t, then I went richer and the problem was solved and the boat was flying. I lost about 2 laps with the slow pick up and focused on driving hard to get into the top 3. I felt like the boat and I was in harmony and we started making our way up the order. With around 5 minutes to go we were safely in second and the end was in sight. The problem was that although I’d been praying to the boating Gods, they decided to smite me down and remove the glow from my glow plug! The boat stopped on bottom right and my chances of the final with it. From looking at the plug it seems that going lean earlier in the race may have weakened it, with the piston and head picking up all the little pieces

 

I know that everyone in Oudenaarde has said it and fairly soon he’s going to need Richard Branson to fly his inflated ego, but Mr Leon Morgan we salute you. What a drive, the downside is that you’ve now set a precedent that you have to keep to can we don’t want to hear any rubbish excuses when things go wrong! Long live LMRacing”