Contemporary Slot Car Racing Association :)

1575 Views 10 Replies 9 Participants Last post by montoya1, Oct 5, 2011

Coopdevil

Discussion Starter · Oct 5, 2011

I'm thinking aloud here and also testing the waters a little bit.

Would there be any interest in a meeting run to CSCRA-type regs for modern cars?

(By modern, I mean probably sports/prototype/GT from say, Group C to the current day. In other words, large prototype-type cars and contemporary GTs. Porsche 956s to Audi R18s, Porsche 930s to Porsche 997s etc.)

My thinking behind this is that CSCRA is an excellent and successful set of rules, mainly because they are so minimal - effectively only dimensional regulations and the insistence upon hard bodies and rubber tyres. They are "free chassis" - hinged/not-hinged, steel, brass, plastic. Motors, gears, again all free.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no similar "nationwide" scene for modern-style cars - The Slot.It challenge is almost a spec series and CSCRA events are all a bit Goodwood revival in that they have an arbitary cut-off date and that will remain frozen in amber until the Day of Judgement or until baby boomer racers are all too senile to remember what to do with their thumbs (whichever comes first).

The downside of CSCRA (and by extension similar types of regs such as Wolverhampton) is that there is something of an incongruous discord between the 1:1 cars and their slotcar forms. We have fantastically engineered modern chassis in play but under old bodyshells. Something in this irritates me

Why don't we do the same chassis but with modern LMPs and GTs and in doing so, model something much closer to motorsport as it is practised in the real world right now and indeed go back somewhat to the spirit of 60s slotracing in that contemporary bodyshells are used with free chassis regs.

There's 40 years of motorsport being ignored here which I'm not sure is an entirely healthy state of affairs for slotracing to be in. It would be nice for there to be a slotracing scene for open-design chassis but without the somewhat artificial constraints of slavish devotion to a period that seems to be picked mainly in order to appeal to the baby boomer demographic.

Coop

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tifosi

· #2 · Oct 5, 2011

Excellent food for thought.
Certainly making the chassis (badly) is a part of the appeal of retro racing to CSRCA rules...

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Julian_Boolean

· #3 · Oct 5, 2011

I think that's a good idea.

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justDave

· #4 · Oct 5, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

Contemporary Slot Car Racing Association - oooo, Owen, you cheeky man!

Of course the rules do cater for Group C and Group 5 cars nowadays - so it's only 20 years we are ignoring!

And the dates are not arbitrary - Mick Kerr has put a lot of thought into the cut-off points, as you can see if you check out the CSCRA Racing Car Time Lines document on the Car Standards page of the CSCRA site.

But I for one would love an opportunity to run 1990's GT cars such as the CLK GTR and 911 GT1...

David

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lowrider

· #5 · Oct 5, 2011

Sounds good to me too.
I'd bring it up to date with current LMP and GT1 bodies, and employing modern slot motors as well.

Let's do it!
L.

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justDave

· #6 · Oct 5, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

Low, there's no restriction in CSCRA rules re motors (except for orientation in chassis in some classes) - and there's plenty of evidence in current events of the use of modern flexi and Eurosport-type chassis - together with proslot and falcon motors. The only real constraint is, can you get the power down? All that's really required here is the definition of which years a class would cover to group suitable cars together, and then acceptable wheel sizes and ground clearances.

David

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scaleslotcars

· #7 · Oct 5, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

No problem with having contemporary classes, personally I would not enter a rally or saloon class meeting (if I wanna see hatchbacks I can stand at the end of my drive!)
but anything else is ok for me.
My favourite would be the eighties turbo F1 cars (although I think these are already actually catered for) with a minimum rpm, 40K?, motor rule so they would be overpowered, just like the real thing

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Coopdevil

Discussion Starter · #8 · Oct 5, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

Phil reminds me of my pipe dreams for a 1970s F1 meet with a minimum tyre width and bonus laps awarded for indulging in James Hunt-like drunken sexual misadventures on the night before the race (admittedly if being hosted in Smethwick or Wolverhampton this wouldn't prove to be too difficult).

I should empathise that I'm not actually looking to create CSCRA Class N - Sports-cars 1992-present or anything similar, in fact upon reflection I think I'd be tempted to dispense with a stated period all together. Imagine if at club level the class was just "Sports-cars" or "Le Mans-type cars" and left at that. I'd imagine that that would produce an entry of Group C, modern GTs, the odd late 60s or early 70s car and a majority of cars from the LMP1 and LMP2 classes. The competitive boys would migrate to the widest, lowest, longest cars and that's probably the modern LMP.

As it happens, CSCRA Sports-car class 8 is probably where I'd start for such a meeting with a 65mm width. In reality this might be a bit too wide - the current ACO regs mandate a maximum 'footprint' of 4650mm x 2000mm. The Audi R18 is spot-on for both dimensions (are they slotracers in Ingolstadt?), which would work out to be a scale 62.5mm wide. The old ECRA standard of 2.5" (still present in BSCRA) is 63.5mm which would allow for all manner of obsolete BSCRA chassis to be used as a basis (and IIRC, the TSRF car) so I'd round it up to the nearest mil and go for 64mm. 1.5mm ground clearance to avoid track damage.

As regards modern F1, well it's never been popular because the cars are too fragile and if you don't have an SCX F1/87 there's no point turning up and saloons aren't real racing cars (showing my prejudices there but don't care).

I'm just fishing for interest really - CSCRA regs but without the book-ended periods allowing for all those modern bodyshells to be used on top of pretty much "formula libre" chassis engineering. Something I think is missing from the UK slotracing scene.

Coop

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Hobby

· #9 · Oct 5, 2011

Hi Coop.
As David has said, the later CSCRA classes are already close to 'modern', bringing them right up to date and using the same rules would be fine.
The issue would be tyres. On the vast majority of 'normal' slot racing club tracks (non BSCRA) you would be lucky indeed to build a model quicker than a well developed NSR or Slot It. Rubber tyres would mean a maximum of about 14 mm width for later Can Am models, and in some cases, you would get more problems from too much grip!
Super specialised hi Tech modern metal chassis are fantastic, particularly when used with sponges and goop on big fast BSCRA tracks, but in the main, even these chassis would struggle on smaller tighter tracks against modern plastic race chassis.
So...what would be the point??
Cheers Bill.

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LMP

· #10 · Oct 5, 2011

Yeah, I aggree, and I think it'd be cool. But I don't see the need to create anything unless there's an event for it.

"Right boys, we've got the rules. Now what? Tea time.."

For reference, 65mm is fine, and by going by your Audi reference works as scale width +/- 3mm, which is about ballpark for most RTR cars.

For modern F1, I feel the Scalextric Start cars are a good place to begin. OK, we missed out the twenty years between 1990 and 2010, but there aren't any decent shells out there anyway. The Start F1s are pretty much 1-peice, durable, lightweight, and representative of current F1.

I'd do a modern GP for Start-based cars. I'd also do whatever your planning with Le Mans cars. I wouldn't touch anything to do with WTC because its pants, but DTM or GT racing would be cool, except for the fact theres only 2 cars in DTM...

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montoya1

· #11 · Oct 5, 2011

About to be three in DTM.

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