[Coopdevil]

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

 

[Coopdevil]

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