slot car club

Last racing night of the year tonight, and something completely different !

The 1/24th Sports class has become a firm favourite already and it was decided to run a Team race with a Speedway style scoring system using these cars. Teams of 2 drawn at random with each of the 4 teams racing against each other on pairs of lanes, with the reverse for the second half gave us 12 x 3 minute races in all. Scoring was based on finishing position in the race with 5 points for 1st, 3 points for 2nd, 2 points for 3rd and nothing for 4th. This meant that ‘draws’ were quite possible.

With, perhaps, the “dream team” of Bob and Woody coming out of the hat first it looked like a forgone conclusion where the winners would come from. Not necessarily so. Racing was fast, furious and competitive and the outcome wasn’t finalised until the last race. Going into the last two races, Woody and Bob were leading but Chris and Christopher could overtake them with a win and a 2nd or 3rd. As it turned out it finished 5 points all so Woody and Bob held on. The last race had a similar scenario with Trev and Kev needing a win and a 2nd or 3rd against Gavin and Mick to pip them. Despite their best efforts Gavin went flat out for the win and got it. Kev and Trev took 2nd and 3rd to level the points and just fall short.

So, after some fierce competition Bob and Woody duly ran out winners, but by only 1 point from Chris and Christopher and Kev and Trev were 1 point behind them in 3rd. Gav drove brilliantly all night but Mick’s car wasn’t quite on the pace but they were only 3 points back in 4th place.

This format means that you race for position, not just to accumulate laps and this was probably summed up perfectly by a comment from Gavin - “just did a 42.75 and only came 3rd” !!

Also, these cars level the playing field as far as lanes are concerned. Sub 4 second laps were recorded on all 4 lanes and surprisingly the fastest lap of the night came from Yellow lane with Blue second fastest, White 3rd and the usually fancied Red lane was actually the slowest of the fast laps.

A very successful conclusion to the year’s racing and I’m sure this format will become a firm contender next time we have a spare week in the month. Back to 1/32nd Sports next week.