People's thoughts on 2013 racing at The Falcon Raceway

Hello Michael

I posted a few ideas on a different thread a few weeks back. I suppose the main change I'd like to see is racing alternate weeks instead of just the 2nd and 4th Thursday. This would be a good way of increasing the number of race meets over the year without making things difficult for those who can't do this every week.

As for the race classes, I think variety is important. The LMP/GT class is by far my favourite of the classes we run, but I also enjoy running the NASCARs on the Oval as this offers something completely different. I think if you're going to add/change one of the classes we need something that's going to maintain that same level of variety. Is it maybe running cars from a manufacturer other than Scalextric or SCX? You've previously suggested the Racer Sideways Daytona cars as a possible class - I like that idea, and wouldn't be opposed to adding one of these to my collection. Would everyone else be prepared to splash out on one of these?

What are the other alternatives? Slot.it Group C cars? That could be fun. Carerra or SCX DTMs? F1?

As I mentioned to you before, my slot car tastes are pretty broad (to be honest, the only type of slot car which wasn't included in my collection before I started racing a Falcon was NASCAR, and that's changed now I've got my SCX Impala), so I'm open to racing most types of car!

The only other thing I'd suggest is that we run each class as a championship so we have 3 or 4 different championships running over the course of the year. What does everyone think about that?

Cheers
Steve

Slot.it Oxygen sounds good - something I'm keen to learn more about too for when I decide what to have on my own track when I eventually start to build it!

Imagine 20 cars running on the GT track! Happy to get my own controller for this, but would need some guidance on what to buy as I don't know anything about these really.

Michael - having driven your Racer Sideways Daytona car before, it really shifts. You did mention what you'd done to the car by way of modifications, but I can't remember what exactly what you said. Is the motor what came with the car or did you change this for something else? Are they DPR or do you need to get the drill and soldering iron out? What tyres did you have on it?

Lee - when you say 'cars with precision parts', I'm assuming you mean Slot.it or NSR? Again, more than happy to put my vote to something like this.

Cheers
Steve

So, the consensus seems to be drifting towards adding more classes rather than losing one. I'm happy with that. Although I said earlier that I wasn't fussed if we dropped the Muscle Cars, we have only run these once so I suppose it's a bit harsh to drop them so quickly.

So, does adding two classes work? One club class and one with our own cars? The club class could be - as George suggests - run with Michael's cars if he's OK with that. The other class could be anything, I suppose. Lot's of suggestions out there so far. 60s touring cars sounds like another nice idea - and this pretty much covers everything from Mustangs to Minis. Not sure what other models there are out there which would be right for this though. Scalextric have done a Mark 1 Escort which would fit in this class. What else is there (apart from Mustangs and Minis)? I have a Revel Lotus Cortina, and this is probably the worst handling car I have. It doesn't so much crash at the corners, more like it just falls over onto its side!

What other cars did you have in mind, George?

I understand the reasons why we need to have the majority of the races on the oval rather than the GT track. How often do you think the GT track should be used? Does bi-monthly work? I suppose this would work out roughly as 1 in 4 races on the GT track. So, 6 times a year, plus any special events that you might organise. That sounds fair enough to me, but I'm not the one working out the finances!

As I've said before, I'm pretty open-minded about what we run. LMP/GT is by far my favourite class, but as long as we're running a variety of other classes I'm happy!

Pretty easy when it comes to race formats too. I don't have any ideas or suggestions for this, but again, I suppose variety is the spice of life. One thing which has become clear during my brief racing career is that short sprint races seem to just end up as a crash fest! Everything else we've tried seems to work pretty well.

Cheers
Steve

QUOTE NASCAR Championship is a 100 lap race with current numbers this does leave a little spare time at end of evening as a race takes about 8 minuets in this class and with no need to ID cars etc it moves along nicely so each heat is completed and swapped over in 10 minuets so we are done in under an hour and a half

This leaves us with possibility of a class on the end. I would say let's have the muscle cars here. Race format could be
A 40 lap race but with fuel, but very minimal power loss for a full tank but a tank Flat out would only do 25 laps maximum
Thus if you drive carefully you could stretch that to race distance or do you stop? But let's slow down the refuelling so you loose a few laps? Will your speed gain be enough?

I like this suggestion. I like it a lot.

QUOTE At the moment I have drawn up a callender for next year.
I have allowed 4 american muscle (oval)
4 scx nascars (oval)
8 scalextric (nascar championship) (oval)
5 lmp/gt (hall)
5 tba (hall)

So based on this suggested calendar from Lee, there's actually 8 championship sessions at which we could fit in a separate class at the end of the evening. So, we could run the muscle cars at all of these, or just half and then use the other four for something else. This would also free up the four whole evening sessions Lee has set aside for the muscle cars for something else too.