motor racing
Going sideways. Sipping champagne.
I don’t understand the rules of competitive drifting, but I do love the spectacle of it*. I also appreciate the humour an No-Fucks-Given attitude of many of the participants. Particularly when the result is something like this stealth black Rolls Royce drift car, built for a pro drifter as part of a TV documentary.
What I always wanted to see was a chopped, sectioned and channelled Roller, kustom style. The nearest I’m going to get to that is building one as a kit. I started one based upon one of these Minicraft Silver Cloud IIs, but butchered it. I need to buy another and have a go again.
*Motorsport could be considered a guilty pleasure for a Green. I don’t care.
Mad Max going sideways
Gotta love a good drift video.
via Battlestance
Sideways on the back lot
Lunacy in Hollywood from Ken Block.
You can do Gymkhana style driving in the latest game from the Dirt series.
Dutch bangers do it backwards
I’m guessing at Dutch, I could easily be wrong. I welcome any clarification.
I turned the sound off because it started with some cheesey music, and carried on listening to the Rolling Stones.
Found in the comments of this post at Jalopnik.
1:76th Rover 100 banger
This was the project I set myself after watching all those banger racing videos on Tuesday. Build an old school banger to sit in a corner of some model railway layout just waiting to go out in metal rending glory.
This is what I started with. A 1:76th (OO) Rover 100 by Base-Toys. Their not the most detailed models out there, but the Base-Toys vehicles have the advantage of being held together with screws rather than rivets. This makes taking them apart to work on so much easier. Oxford Diecasts do this as well, and the Corgi Trackside cars I picked up this week, it makes modding them so much easier.
See what I mean.
The first job was the interior. Like any racing car the Rover would have had its interior stripped out and a roll cage added. Seats were removed with a saw, though the driver’s was glued back in after having masking tape seatbelts added. In future I’ll use a Sharpie to make the tape black before doing this. The roll cage was made from solder, bent to shape and super-glued down. After this picture was taken I added some more detail, a gear lever and fire extinguisher. Looking at my pictures from the banger racing I should have added a fuel tank. Another thing to remember for next time.
Before painting I took my rotary tool to the body to remove details like the radiator grille and door handles and also to gouge a few dents and pre-existing bangs. I forgot to take a picture before painting the body. Citadel foundation colours were used, red and blue, whilst the wheels got some matt black.
My small selection of transfers supplied variations on number 32, so that’s what the car became.
Ready to rumble. One day I may make a whole race meeting worth of bangers, but for now this one can be yours.
May Bank Holiday Banger and Stock Car racing
These pictures have been sitting for a while, but the banger nostalgia post reminded me to get round to uploading them. A bunch of photos taken at the banger racing and stock cars at Belle Vue at the end of May.
We were promised hearses versus limos but ended up getting just two hearses, one of which was slower than the other. So we didn’t get the mayhem we’d hoped for from that race.
For the first time I went for a walk in the pit area and got a few photos between races. The full set is on Flickr.
Banger racing nostalgia 1
Figure of eight banger racing from World of Sport, back in the days when Grandstand on the BBC had all the dull stuff like football and ITV tried to compete with stuff which was cheaper and generally more fun. Things like this and wrestling with Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy (“Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom was said to be a fan of Big Daddy, as was then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is said to have quoted him several times during union negotiations in 1983 regarding the long-term unemployed.”???!!!!)
Pre-’68 banger racing from last year.
Heavy Metal Classic from earlier this year at Standlake Arena. The banger racing and stock cars at Belle Vue are fun, but it looks like we’ll have to go further afield for the really spectacular stuff.
Thunderpix has banger racing pictures. I think I’m going to turn a Base-Toys Rover 100 into a banger. Where’s my Dremel?
One careful owner
One careful owner, originally uploaded by spinneyhead.
And this is one of the less battered bangers at Belle Vue tonight. Mind you, I don’t think it’s been in a race yet.
Drifting at the Trafford Centre
It may be wrong for an eco-worrier such as I to enjoy motorsport, but I do. I’ve been fascinated by drifting for a while. I blame Need For Speed
Motorsport doesn’t often come this close to the centre of Manchester. That the course could be laid out with mini cones on the Trafford Centre’s overflow carpark must have helped. Practice was on the Saturday, but I went for the racing on the Sunday. There was other entertainment laid on- a monster truck and motocross stunts- and a number of interesting cars in the car park. By the end of the day I was covered in flecks of tyre rubber, a side effect of standing on the apex of the corners. There are more pictures in the Drifting at the Trafford Centre set.
The Racing 70s
A site dedicated to British moor racing in the seventies.
Old school rallying footage
via Jalopnik
Nothing like a bit of classic footage of Escorts, Quattros and the rest on a Bank Holiday. This reminds me of the times we’d go to watch a stage of the RAC rally in the forests beside Bassenthwaite. We always seemed to pick the same spot. It gave us a great view of an uphill hairpin. We never got to see anyone being quite as loony as this lot, but it was good.
Legend has it that, long before we moved in, the RAC one year passed along the road beside my parents house. One car missed the 90 degree bend at the end of the drive and demolished the gate. I want this to be a true story and, given the number of normal drivers every year who do the same thing less specatcularly, it’s entirely plausible.
Drifting 101
Some hints on how not to drift a car around a corner. As we now have Need for Speed Pro Street we should take notes.
1/64 Rally Car Collection Colin McRae Memorial Box 1
Available from Hobby Link Japan, part one of a tribute to Colin McRae.
This is a beautiful set of rally cars dedicated to the memory of rally race ace Colin McRae, who tragically died along with his five-year-old son and two family friends in a helicopter accident in September 2007. Box 1 consists of the cars illustrated below, chronicling part of McRae’s stellar career from 1992 to 1998. Each highly detailed 1/64-scale car comes mounted on a black plastic base with inscriptions. A fitting tribute to one of rally car racing’s most famous and beloved drivers.
Technorati tag: Scale Models
Scooter racing
Scooter racing. I wanted bulldozer racing, but this was the best I could get.