On the Grapevine – Chico

During my return journey from the 1:10 Electric Buggy World Championships in Chico, California, I was trying to gather together my thoughts for my latest column and I have to admit it was a struggle.  One would think that having just attended a World Championships the difficulty would be deciding what to leave out rather than what could I include that might make for somewhat interesting reading.  While the event was like the Frankfurt International Motor Show in terms of new buggy releases and appearances of prototypes, photos of which got quickly dissected by racers as they circled the globe via the interweb, there was actually very little else of interest coming out of the pits.  Perhaps it was the fact that the daily schedule left little time for chatting between runs, highlighted perfectly by Lee Martin eating a hamburger as though he was doing a challenge for the TV show ‘Man Versus Food’. Maybe it had something to do with many of the drivers appearing to have spent the week prior in Vegas perfecting their Poker Faces.  While the event ended with 5-minutes of racing that even Hollywood’s best script writers might have struggled to come up with in terms of drama and the final outcome, overall for me the event was missing that World Championship factor and it wasn’t for the lack of effort.

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