Man made rain delays start of qualifying

Man made rain has delayed the start to qualifying at the 2WD Offroad World Championships in Xiamen, China. With no rain in the area for almost a month, the Meteorological Authority conducted ‘cloud seeding’ which involved the launch of more than 30 missiles at clouds to induce rain.  Containing chemicals such as frozen carbon dioxide this helps bring on precipitation.  The process is common practice in China.  Unfortunately unaware that the Worlds best RC drivers are in town, the effects of the process took effect in the early hours of this morning with drivers waking to rain. Luckily however race organisers had covered the track overnight so the track was largely protected from the rain.  With the rain eventually stopping around 11:00 local time, the process of pumping the water off the tarpaulins began. The knock on effect is that the third round of controlled practice, which was only to determine the starting order of the heats which were already decided by the best time of CP 1 & 2, has been scrapped and replaced by a round of free practice. The delayed start also means that instead of 4 qualifiers today with the fifth tomorrow, there will now only be 3 rounds with Q4 moved to finals day.

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