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After all the recent discussion about these motors and their use, it seemed like a good time to try Scalextric's new Ford GT GTE as the only modern GT car in its range to be fitted with the slimline 'FF' motor. So here we go...
The 1:1 Car
The Ford GT GTE shouldn't exist by all the laws that govern modern endurance racing. It's not in production, its homologation papers are thinner than the paint on a 1970s Lancia and reports on how the handful of road cars behave vary between 'foul' and 'abominable'.
Yet there the GT GTE was, sitting on the grid at Le Mans in 2016 to mark 50 years since Detroit opened up a can of whoop-ass on Ferrari at the world's greatest motor race. And they did it again, as Ferrari's turbocharged 488s, Porsche's redoubtable 911s and the shouty V8 bruisers of Aston Martin and Corvette all failed to keep up with a Ford that was more sophisticated than many of the sports-prototypes in the field.
Since then the mighty Ford has been moderated by the Balance of Performance rules that try to level the playing field between diverse cars in endurance racing - it matters little to Ford, however, as the car's legend is already written.
The Slot Car
Scalextric is around a year behind Carrera in bringing out a 1/32 slot car of the Ford GT GTE (and several months behind 3D print enthusiasts The Area 71). This means that already on the market are a well-detailed and well-mannered model for home racers and a rough-hewn version for open competition use. So where does the Scalextric one fit?
On first sight the Scalextric model looks rather less bulky and stumpy than the Carrera offering, and would have made a very strong impression indeed were it not for the fact that, sitting beside it in the box, was a broken radio aerial. It seems that Scalextric has fitted this car with four solid, brittle plastic pylons compared with the crash-resistant rubbery bits that we've become used to.
![Car Land vehicle Wheel Tire Vehicle]()
Pick it up and - whoa! - this is a very light car. Its body and chassis feel gossamer thin and likely to shatter if they are looked at too hard. A quick trip to the scales reveals that straight from the box with a magnet inside the Ford weighs a mere 78 grams... the chassis alone of Scaley's old Aston DBR9 weighed more than that!
Leaving aside the questionable motor choice made in Margate (and the rather daft argument that Scalextric cars work perfectly well on proprietary track with the magnets in place), there seems to be considerable potential in a lightweight car like this. So let's put it on the track...
The Track
![Green Race track Urban design Asphalt Grass]()
Farnham's permanent 4-lane track is made of Ninco sections using DS power supply and timing equipment. It's twistier than most club tracks and because of its age and the change in elevations, not to mention the fact that it's mounted on milk crates, it's got more than a few lumps and bumps.
As an extra element of randomness, Farnham races with the brakes switched off for all classes except Trucks and FF motor Classic F1 cars, so for this test the brakes would be off.
The final joker in the pack is that the Yellow Lane, which is on the outside for most of the corners, has been given extra 'juice'. Because it is a longer lap and because it traditionally has much less grip, we set the output at 15 volts compared to 12 volts on the three other lanes to try and give drivers a fighting chance of staying on terms with the rest of the pack.
The fastest lap ever recorded around its 110-foot length is 6.811 seconds, set by a Scalextric Renault R26 F1 car with the magnet in place and NSR Ultragrip tyres on (brakes off). In the 'any make' Modern GT class, which is also run with magnets, the fastest lap so far is a 7.608 second lap performed by a Fly Viper, also with no brakes.
The Scalextric Modern GT class is run without magnets or brakes. A fast car in this class would be something like the BMW Z4 running with around 5g of ballast in the chassis to stop it bouncing out of the slot and NSR or Slot.It tyres on. With this setup you would be looking at a lap time of 11 seconds or just under.
And so, how did the Ford get on?
Test 1: Box Standard
In fairness to Scalextric and those who don't tune their cars, I ran the first track test without touching a thing on the car for two 10-lap sessions on Green Lane, which has neither the tightest or the widest of bends to contend with and has 12 volts of power. Most home racers will run on standard curves and these make up virtually all of Green Lane's features.
It was a horrible experience. For one thing the Ford suffers from an old Scalextric bugbear that the front wheels lever the guide out of the slot if there is any kind of bump in the track. This issue was probably compounded by the traction magnet, which in such a light car would seem to be pulling the nose up slightly from the rails.
Fast magnet racing means trusting that you know how much downforce there is and going for it: nailing the throttle as you apex a corner and watching with wonder as the car whips round in defiance of Isaac Newton. Scalextric used to fit great magnets for this purpose but the Ford's slender example is less able to cope.
In many ways it felt like a Carrera car, which gives very little feedback to the driver on when it is on the limit. If the front end wasn't bouncing out of the slot, the rear was trying to overtake it. Not fun. Not fun at all.
So much for the handling, what about the power? It's an FF motor, and that means a distinct lack torque to pull out of corners. When the power kicks in it's with a frenzy and then there is absolutely nothing in the way of braking that comes when you let go of the throttle.
The standard FF driving style is therefore short stabs on the power followed by long periods of coasting down to what you hope is a speed that will get you round the corner. This is categorically not fun.
Eventually a handful of clean laps were completed with a best time of 8.656 seconds. As a magnet racer for the open GT class, therefore, the Scalextric Ford GTE is roughly a second per lap slower than the age-old Fly Viper, and a good seven-tenths of a second slower than the Scalextric Aston DBR9 and TVR T400R that are the Viper's closest competitors.
Just for fun (!) I put the Ford into the Yellow Lane to run it at 15 volts. Interestingly it became a little bit more predictable and the guide remained in the slot considerably more often as the less acute corners went easier on the guide. A fastest lap of 8.755 seconds was the result, with far fewer excursions to the barrier.
Test 2: Slot.It tyres
![Wheel Car Tire Vehicle Hood]()
As a modern Scalextric car, the Ford GTE is fitted with hubs that will accept 'Euro Standard' tyres for 15.8mm front wheels and 16.5mm rears, as used by Slot.It and NSR. I slipped on a set of low profile zero grips up front and some N22 rears designed for Ninco's specific track type and went back for another run in both lanes.
The chassis was now transformed. No more would the tyres lever the guide out of the slot on even the most vigorous of bumps. The magnet remained thoroughly unreliable in terms of how much downforce it was prepared to serve up, but the softer rubber smoothed things out to a point and more consistent laps could be achieved.
The only downside to this was that the accidents, when they happened, were significantly more violent. In one such shunt the Ford flipped onto its roof and skated merrily along, removing the three remaining radio aerials in one fell swoop. The lap times were chopped down by half a second - 8.175 seconds on Green Lane and, rather excitingly, 8.083 seconds on the 15-volt Yellow Lane.
As a magnet racer, the Ford GTE is clearly not a threat to the prehistoric Fly Vipers, which still run rings around any Slot It or NSR GT car with the magnets in. Potentially it can be made to get close to the lap times of Scalextric's old front-motor Aston and TVR but it lacks any of their driver feedback, 'super magnet' grip or the docile handling that can help drivers complete consistent runs at racing speed.
Test 3: Non-magnet
It was with some trepidation that I went over to the bench and removed the magnet (which, unlike other recent Scalextric releases, slides out easily from its pocket without having to surgically remove the retaining tabs). Overall the chassis is pleasantly simple, flat and unfussy, with two screws up front and one at the rear.
In the light of the radio aerial massacre, you might at this stage be wondering about the rear wing. I can say that it sits loosely (very loosely) in two slots cut into the chassis and is designed to break free (but not break) in the event of an impact.
I daresay that it will make a mayfly look durable in the hands of an enthusiastic child, but actually for club racing this shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully there will be plenty of spares available from your preferred stockist, anyway.
I put the car back together with the body screws slack and found a pleasing amount of body rock straight away - unlike Scalextric's McLaren MP4/12C, for example, which requires a fair bit of surgery to separate the body and chassis. There was no point at all in putting Scalextric's own tyres back on without a magnet in so off we went back to Green Lane to see how things went…
Well that was a surprise! The chassis, freed from its rather stifling embrace of the body, performed in the way that any decent flat chassis should. Adding the Slot.It rubber simply made cornering a pleasure.
The problem was getting to the corners. Once again, the only way to drive the FF motor is to blip the throttle and coast, blip and coast, blip and coast… etc.
There was rather too much work to do for me to check lap times whilst driving, so it was only after the run was complete that I was able to check the times and… 11.195 seconds was the best lap. That's not bad at all for a Scalextric Modern GT to our rules, although getting it was the result of living on the edge.
Once again the Ford went onto the Yellow Lane, this time without the magnet, and again there was no opportunity to steal a glimpse at the timing until all 10 laps were complete. The result was a rather slithery 12.14 seconds - a second per lap slower than on Green Lane to all intents and purposes - almost a lap over the course of a 10-lap race.
Conclusions
![Land vehicle Car Vehicle Wheel Tire]()
For an FF motored car, the Scalextric Ford GTE is not that bad. Its feathery lightness and sensible chassis work very well with Slot.It rubber fitted - but it is still hobbled, in standard form, both by its front wheels fouling the guide and by its curiously inconsistent magnet. Some may choose to change the guide for a Sloting Plus or similar, but frankly this is a lot of time, money and effort that customers shouldn't have to make.
The only thing left to do, meanwhile, is put it on the grid alongside Scalextric's other recent GT cars in a racing situation. I'll prep it with a little bit of weight for a run next week alongside sundry Porsches, McLarens, Mercedes and BMWs and we'll see whether or not this could be an FF-motored car that can keep pace with the Mabuchis.
Findings will follow shortly afterwards...
The 1:1 Car
The Ford GT GTE shouldn't exist by all the laws that govern modern endurance racing. It's not in production, its homologation papers are thinner than the paint on a 1970s Lancia and reports on how the handful of road cars behave vary between 'foul' and 'abominable'.
Yet there the GT GTE was, sitting on the grid at Le Mans in 2016 to mark 50 years since Detroit opened up a can of whoop-ass on Ferrari at the world's greatest motor race. And they did it again, as Ferrari's turbocharged 488s, Porsche's redoubtable 911s and the shouty V8 bruisers of Aston Martin and Corvette all failed to keep up with a Ford that was more sophisticated than many of the sports-prototypes in the field.
Since then the mighty Ford has been moderated by the Balance of Performance rules that try to level the playing field between diverse cars in endurance racing - it matters little to Ford, however, as the car's legend is already written.
The Slot Car
Scalextric is around a year behind Carrera in bringing out a 1/32 slot car of the Ford GT GTE (and several months behind 3D print enthusiasts The Area 71). This means that already on the market are a well-detailed and well-mannered model for home racers and a rough-hewn version for open competition use. So where does the Scalextric one fit?
On first sight the Scalextric model looks rather less bulky and stumpy than the Carrera offering, and would have made a very strong impression indeed were it not for the fact that, sitting beside it in the box, was a broken radio aerial. It seems that Scalextric has fitted this car with four solid, brittle plastic pylons compared with the crash-resistant rubbery bits that we've become used to.
Pick it up and - whoa! - this is a very light car. Its body and chassis feel gossamer thin and likely to shatter if they are looked at too hard. A quick trip to the scales reveals that straight from the box with a magnet inside the Ford weighs a mere 78 grams... the chassis alone of Scaley's old Aston DBR9 weighed more than that!
Leaving aside the questionable motor choice made in Margate (and the rather daft argument that Scalextric cars work perfectly well on proprietary track with the magnets in place), there seems to be considerable potential in a lightweight car like this. So let's put it on the track...
The Track
Farnham's permanent 4-lane track is made of Ninco sections using DS power supply and timing equipment. It's twistier than most club tracks and because of its age and the change in elevations, not to mention the fact that it's mounted on milk crates, it's got more than a few lumps and bumps.
As an extra element of randomness, Farnham races with the brakes switched off for all classes except Trucks and FF motor Classic F1 cars, so for this test the brakes would be off.
The final joker in the pack is that the Yellow Lane, which is on the outside for most of the corners, has been given extra 'juice'. Because it is a longer lap and because it traditionally has much less grip, we set the output at 15 volts compared to 12 volts on the three other lanes to try and give drivers a fighting chance of staying on terms with the rest of the pack.
The fastest lap ever recorded around its 110-foot length is 6.811 seconds, set by a Scalextric Renault R26 F1 car with the magnet in place and NSR Ultragrip tyres on (brakes off). In the 'any make' Modern GT class, which is also run with magnets, the fastest lap so far is a 7.608 second lap performed by a Fly Viper, also with no brakes.
The Scalextric Modern GT class is run without magnets or brakes. A fast car in this class would be something like the BMW Z4 running with around 5g of ballast in the chassis to stop it bouncing out of the slot and NSR or Slot.It tyres on. With this setup you would be looking at a lap time of 11 seconds or just under.
And so, how did the Ford get on?
Test 1: Box Standard
In fairness to Scalextric and those who don't tune their cars, I ran the first track test without touching a thing on the car for two 10-lap sessions on Green Lane, which has neither the tightest or the widest of bends to contend with and has 12 volts of power. Most home racers will run on standard curves and these make up virtually all of Green Lane's features.
It was a horrible experience. For one thing the Ford suffers from an old Scalextric bugbear that the front wheels lever the guide out of the slot if there is any kind of bump in the track. This issue was probably compounded by the traction magnet, which in such a light car would seem to be pulling the nose up slightly from the rails.
Fast magnet racing means trusting that you know how much downforce there is and going for it: nailing the throttle as you apex a corner and watching with wonder as the car whips round in defiance of Isaac Newton. Scalextric used to fit great magnets for this purpose but the Ford's slender example is less able to cope.
In many ways it felt like a Carrera car, which gives very little feedback to the driver on when it is on the limit. If the front end wasn't bouncing out of the slot, the rear was trying to overtake it. Not fun. Not fun at all.
So much for the handling, what about the power? It's an FF motor, and that means a distinct lack torque to pull out of corners. When the power kicks in it's with a frenzy and then there is absolutely nothing in the way of braking that comes when you let go of the throttle.
The standard FF driving style is therefore short stabs on the power followed by long periods of coasting down to what you hope is a speed that will get you round the corner. This is categorically not fun.
Eventually a handful of clean laps were completed with a best time of 8.656 seconds. As a magnet racer for the open GT class, therefore, the Scalextric Ford GTE is roughly a second per lap slower than the age-old Fly Viper, and a good seven-tenths of a second slower than the Scalextric Aston DBR9 and TVR T400R that are the Viper's closest competitors.
Just for fun (!) I put the Ford into the Yellow Lane to run it at 15 volts. Interestingly it became a little bit more predictable and the guide remained in the slot considerably more often as the less acute corners went easier on the guide. A fastest lap of 8.755 seconds was the result, with far fewer excursions to the barrier.
Test 2: Slot.It tyres
As a modern Scalextric car, the Ford GTE is fitted with hubs that will accept 'Euro Standard' tyres for 15.8mm front wheels and 16.5mm rears, as used by Slot.It and NSR. I slipped on a set of low profile zero grips up front and some N22 rears designed for Ninco's specific track type and went back for another run in both lanes.
The chassis was now transformed. No more would the tyres lever the guide out of the slot on even the most vigorous of bumps. The magnet remained thoroughly unreliable in terms of how much downforce it was prepared to serve up, but the softer rubber smoothed things out to a point and more consistent laps could be achieved.
The only downside to this was that the accidents, when they happened, were significantly more violent. In one such shunt the Ford flipped onto its roof and skated merrily along, removing the three remaining radio aerials in one fell swoop. The lap times were chopped down by half a second - 8.175 seconds on Green Lane and, rather excitingly, 8.083 seconds on the 15-volt Yellow Lane.
As a magnet racer, the Ford GTE is clearly not a threat to the prehistoric Fly Vipers, which still run rings around any Slot It or NSR GT car with the magnets in. Potentially it can be made to get close to the lap times of Scalextric's old front-motor Aston and TVR but it lacks any of their driver feedback, 'super magnet' grip or the docile handling that can help drivers complete consistent runs at racing speed.
Test 3: Non-magnet
It was with some trepidation that I went over to the bench and removed the magnet (which, unlike other recent Scalextric releases, slides out easily from its pocket without having to surgically remove the retaining tabs). Overall the chassis is pleasantly simple, flat and unfussy, with two screws up front and one at the rear.
In the light of the radio aerial massacre, you might at this stage be wondering about the rear wing. I can say that it sits loosely (very loosely) in two slots cut into the chassis and is designed to break free (but not break) in the event of an impact.
I daresay that it will make a mayfly look durable in the hands of an enthusiastic child, but actually for club racing this shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully there will be plenty of spares available from your preferred stockist, anyway.
I put the car back together with the body screws slack and found a pleasing amount of body rock straight away - unlike Scalextric's McLaren MP4/12C, for example, which requires a fair bit of surgery to separate the body and chassis. There was no point at all in putting Scalextric's own tyres back on without a magnet in so off we went back to Green Lane to see how things went…
Well that was a surprise! The chassis, freed from its rather stifling embrace of the body, performed in the way that any decent flat chassis should. Adding the Slot.It rubber simply made cornering a pleasure.
The problem was getting to the corners. Once again, the only way to drive the FF motor is to blip the throttle and coast, blip and coast, blip and coast… etc.
There was rather too much work to do for me to check lap times whilst driving, so it was only after the run was complete that I was able to check the times and… 11.195 seconds was the best lap. That's not bad at all for a Scalextric Modern GT to our rules, although getting it was the result of living on the edge.
Once again the Ford went onto the Yellow Lane, this time without the magnet, and again there was no opportunity to steal a glimpse at the timing until all 10 laps were complete. The result was a rather slithery 12.14 seconds - a second per lap slower than on Green Lane to all intents and purposes - almost a lap over the course of a 10-lap race.
Conclusions
For an FF motored car, the Scalextric Ford GTE is not that bad. Its feathery lightness and sensible chassis work very well with Slot.It rubber fitted - but it is still hobbled, in standard form, both by its front wheels fouling the guide and by its curiously inconsistent magnet. Some may choose to change the guide for a Sloting Plus or similar, but frankly this is a lot of time, money and effort that customers shouldn't have to make.
The only thing left to do, meanwhile, is put it on the grid alongside Scalextric's other recent GT cars in a racing situation. I'll prep it with a little bit of weight for a run next week alongside sundry Porsches, McLarens, Mercedes and BMWs and we'll see whether or not this could be an FF-motored car that can keep pace with the Mabuchis.
Findings will follow shortly afterwards...
