One Hundredth, Then Daylight

Chapman and Batt set the early standard as Mini Masters Season 3 gets underway at Robertsbridge

Mini Masters Season 3, Round 1 — Robertsbridge Community College, hosted by Eastbourne Electric Car Club — Saturday 24 October 2026

One hundredth of a second.

After three rounds of qualifying at Robertsbridge, that was all that separated Mike Chapman from Neil Diver at the front of Mini Sport. Both had completed 24 laps. Chapman stopped the clock at 5:09.88. Diver at 5:09.89.

It looked like the beginning of an afternoon that might be decided by millimetres.

It wasn’t.

That hundredth of a second was as close as anyone got to Chapman all day.

From pole, he won the first A-final by more than seven seconds. He stretched that to more than eight in leg two. By the third, the gap was a lap.

TQ. Three final wins. 100 championship points.

And, perhaps more significantly, a reminder that the championship story we thought we understood before the season started may need rewriting already.

The title fight will have to wait

Our Season 3 preview naturally concentrated on Ollie Payne and Matthew Smithson.

Smithson is the defending champion. Payne won the warm-up at ACS Egham and looked ready to carry that form into the championship.

Robertsbridge was supposed to give us the first proper look at that fight.

Instead, Payne was in Belgium racing at the Masters of Foam and Smithson endured the sort of opening round champions would rather quietly remove from the record.

Chapman stepped straight through the gap.

That should not really have been a surprise. He finished joint runner-up in last season’s Brushless championship, level on points with Samuel Richardson behind Smithson. He didn’t suddenly become a contender at Robertsbridge.

What changed was his position in the story.

He arrived as one of several very quick racers capable of winning a round. He left as the only Mini Sport driver with 100 points and a perfect set of finals behind him.

The championship hasn’t been decided.

Its centre of gravity may have shifted.

Qualifying promised one race. The finals delivered another.

For Neil Diver, that one-hundredth qualifying deficit must have looked like the beginning of a proper fight.

The finals were less kind.

While Chapman disappeared at the front, the positions behind him moved around constantly.

Stephen Davies built second overall from second and third in the opening two legs, surviving a sixth in the last because only the best two results count.

Daniel Burks went the other way. Sixth in A1 was hardly an ideal start, but second in A2 and fourth in A3 recovered third overall.

Diver, so nearly the fastest driver in qualifying, eventually finished fourth despite taking second in the final leg.

It was a useful demonstration of what the Mini Masters format does rather well.

Qualifying gets you a place on the grid.

Then you have to race.

And sometimes being one hundredth away from pole eventually means finishing fourth.

The champion has a score to forget

Matthew Smithson’s defence started from a very different place.

He arrived as the reigning champion and top seed, but spent much of the meeting fighting further down the order than anyone expected.

Seventh in A1 became tenth in A2 and ninth in A3.

Ninth overall.

One bad meeting need not define a six-round championship in which only four scores count. Smithson can effectively throw Robertsbridge away if the rest of his season delivers.

But that is the useful thing about an opening round: it changes the pressure.

Smithson now knows he has a result he would rather drop.

Payne’s absence costs him nothing yet either. With four scores from six required, he can still build a complete championship from the remaining five meetings. It simply means there is less room for another missed round later.

And while the two drivers we expected to frame the title race reset, Chapman already has his first maximum.

At Crewe, he gets the opportunity to make it two.

A new class gets its first benchmark

If Chapman changed the expected story in Mini Sport, Shaun Batt did something slightly different in Mini Clubman.

He established the standard.

Season 3 is the first championship campaign for the new Clubman class, and somebody had to become its first reference point.

At Robertsbridge, Batt left little doubt about who that was.

He took TQ with 22 laps in 5:00.03, Aiden Monk the only other driver to make 22 laps but 10.75 seconds further back.

Then the gap grew.

Batt won all three A-final legs by a lap.

Behind him, the finishing order possessed almost comic consistency.

Monk: second, second, second.

Noah Smithson: third, third, third.

Batt therefore becomes the first Mini Clubman championship leader on 100 points, Monk starts on 99 and Smithson — who also leads the Juniors — takes 98.

Wayne Meade, who had won the Clubman final at the Egham warm-up, finished sixth.

One meeting is far too early to call anything inevitable.

But every new championship needs somebody for everyone else to chase.

Batt volunteered.

One bad race doesn’t have to ruin your day

The Clubman B-final offered almost the exact opposite story.

Jake Sheldon began his finals with tenth place.

In a single-final format, that can destroy an afternoon.

Mini Masters gives you another go.

Sheldon won A2.

Then he won A3.

Best two from three turned a dreadful opening leg into an overall B-final victory.

Jimmy Cuthbert had won the first leg and followed it with two second places, leaving him runner-up overall, while Kevin Appleby took third.

It was probably the clearest demonstration of the format all day.

A mistake matters.

It doesn’t necessarily have to define you.

The closest racing wasn’t at the front

Chapman’s winning margins became increasingly comfortable, but further down the Mini Sport field there was rather less breathing space.

Paul Ash won the opening B-final by just 0.38 seconds.

Robert Roy responded by winning leg two.

Then Ash took the decider by only 0.20 seconds.

Two tenths after five minutes of racing.

That is the sort of margin that makes the earlier hundredth of a second in qualifying feel positively generous.

Ash took the B-final overall from Roy and Mark Smith.

The C-final produced another recovery. Jamie Meade was second in the opener before winning the next two, while Jason Cartwright went in the other direction — eighth, fourth, second — getting quicker every time the car went onto the track.

Luke Anthony won the opening two legs of the D-final. Ian Pullen recovered from sixth in his first E-final to win the next two. Tony Johnstone swept all three legs of the two-car F-final from Mark Preddy.

Different finals. Same useful lesson.

The first result is not necessarily the final word.

Moving up

There was another story buried a little further down the Mini Sport results.

Craig Hook won last season’s Brushed championship. With that class replaced by Clubman for Season 3, he chose to move up into Mini Sport.

At his first championship meeting in the faster class, he made the A-final and finished seventh overall.

Jen Garrett has made the same move. She qualified sixth in the B-final and finished ninth there.

Neither result is likely to dominate the headlines from Robertsbridge.

Both matter.

A racing series works best when it does more than identify who is quickest. It should give people somewhere to progress to, another challenge once the previous one has been mastered.

Hook has gone from champion to seventh.

That sounds like a backwards step only if the finishing position is the only thing you measure.

Smithson and Davies lead the age-group battles

The Juniors and Masters championships run across both Mini Sport and Mini Clubman, creating another race within the race.

Both tables rank drivers by where they finished in their own class, then award 100, 99, 98 and so on down the list. That puts Mini Clubman’s Noah Smithson top of the Juniors on 100, ahead of Fraser Fautley on 99 and Sam Carson on 98.

The Mini Sport juniors sit seventh to ninth: Luke Anthony, who won the Sport D-final, on 94; Chloe Snashall, who took the opening leg of the Sport E-final, on 93; and Bradley Johnstone on 92.

In the over-50s Masters category, Stephen Davies’s Mini Sport A-final runner-up finish gives him the early lead on 100. Bernie Hook is second on 99 and Mark Barford third on 98.

Again, it is one round.

But everybody now has a number beside their name.

That changes things.

Robertsbridge changed the question

Before Round 1, the obvious Mini Sport question was whether Ollie Payne could take the championship fight to Matthew Smithson.

We still want the answer.

Robertsbridge simply gave us another question first.

What if Mike Chapman is the man they both have to catch?

He could arrive at Crewe with the opportunity to put a second maximum on the board before, on current entries, Payne has even started his championship campaign.

Smithson gets his first opportunity to respond.

Diver has already proved he can match Chapman over qualifying pace.

Davies leaves with 99 points. Burks with 98.

There is a very long way to go.

That is rather the point.

In Clubman, the question is simpler. Batt has established the benchmark; now somebody needs to reach it.

Round 1 didn’t tell us who will win Mini Masters Season 3.

It did something more useful.

It told us that the season might not be about who we thought it was.

Championship after Round 1

Championship	1st	2nd	3rd
Mini Sport	Mike Chapman — 100	Stephen Davies — 99	Daniel Burks — 98
Mini Clubman	Shaun Batt — 100	Aiden Monk — 99	Noah Smithson — 98
Juniors	Noah Smithson — 100	Fraser Fautley — 99	Sam Carson — 98
Masters	Stephen Davies — 100	Bernie Hook — 99	Mark Barford — 98

Full championship standings for Mini Sport, Mini Clubman, Juniors and Masters: rcvision.co.uk/championships

Final results

Final	Winner	Second	Third
Mini Sport A	Mike Chapman	Stephen Davies	Daniel Burks
Mini Sport B	Paul Ash	Robert Roy	Mark Smith
Mini Sport C	Jamie Meade	Bernie Hook	Jason Cartwright
Mini Sport D	Luke Anthony	Ben Webb	Mike Batte
Mini Sport E	Ian Pullen	Peter Hitchins	Ryan Webber
Mini Sport F	Tony Johnstone	Mark Preddy	—
Mini Clubman A	Shaun Batt	Aiden Monk	Noah Smithson
Mini Clubman B	Jake Sheldon	Jimmy Cuthbert	Kevin Appleby
Mini Clubman C	Alfie-Jack Cartwright	Derek Snashall	—

Complete Round 1 timing and results: RC Results, meeting 21725

Next: Crewe

Round 2 heads to Crewe Model Car Club on Saturday 14 November.

Chapman has the early lead. Batt has set the Clubman standard. Smithson has a score he will want to replace.

And the championship rivalry we expected before Robertsbridge?

It hasn’t disappeared.

It just has more people in it now.