Race Report: 2022 IROC Championship Series – Round 2

Round 2 of the 2022 IROC Championship Series is in the Slot Car Racing books. The 4-race schedule commenced at 11:30ish Saturday, October 29 on the SR3 straight road course. We started slow and loose with Box-Stock OS3 TFX TransAm Camaros running at 18v and finished off the day with super-fast,  Super G+ Lexan F1/Indy cars running at 15v.

Short Story Round 2 Overall Results
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 369 50 3344.134
2 Brad Sandahl 360 42 3331.948
3 Kevin Webster 335 26 3394.977
4 Eric Lane 321 22 3408.631
5 Jerry Pearson 171 18 1842.371
6 Steve Stewart 378 64 3289.529
Race 1:  OS3 TFX “Box-Stock” Camaros (18.1v)

Starting slow and loose, the first race was OS3 TFX “Box-Stock” TransAm Camaros. These cars are way faster than the typical pancake car but still way loose compared to most cars we run.

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 80 16 938.946
2 George Peters 77 13 943.663
3 Jerry Pearson 76 11 1007.412
4 Brad Sandahl 74 7 919.638
5 Kevin Webster 70 6 980.669
6 Eric Lane 69 5 1015.717

This race was quite a surprise. Conventional thinking was that the more experienced TFX/T-Jet drivers would dominate this one. However, George Peters and Brad Sandahl would sit out the first heat, which gave rookie driver Jerry Pearson, an excellent opportunity to walk away with a nice win in the first heat. By the end of the race, George Peters would establish a solid second-place finish and Jerry Pearson would best 2021 ROTY, Brad Sandahl by just two points.  Very impressive racing by Jerry driving one of the most difficult-to-drive cars we run. (Details)

Race 2:  MegaG+ 1.7 “Box-Stock” Winged Super Modifieds (18v)

Race 2 was a bit faster utilizing stock MG+ long-wheelbase chassis’ with cool MTS 3D-printed winged Super Modified bodies. Typically fairly top-heavy, with traction magnets these cars actually go pretty well on a road course.

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 98 16 788.671
2 Brad Sandahl 97 13 783.274
3 George Peters 97 11 808.725
4 Jerry Pearson 95 7 834.959
5 Kevin Webster 91 6 788.261
6 Eric Lane 88 5 800.873

The Sportsman drivers seemed to really like these cars and Jerry Pearson, Kevin Webster, and Eric Lane would remain in the top three race leader positions up until the fourth heat. In the last two segments, experts, George Peters and Brad Sandahl would overtake them, finishing second and third overall. (Details)

Race 3:  Viper-Jets with Lexan CanAm Bodies (12v)

This one was pretty much a battle of the Experts but Sportsman drivers, Kevin Webster and Eric Lane put their marks on it with two second-place heat finishes while the three Expert drivers battle it out.

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 100 16 819.166
2 George Peters 98 13 830.954
3 Brad Sandahl 94 11 848.308
4 Kevin Webster 84 7 838.387
5 Eric Lane 77 6 810.143

In the end, it was Home Cook’n with the top spot, George Peters second, and Brad Sandahl in third. Very close racing at all levels. (Details)

Race 4: Super G+ with Lexan F1/Indy Bodies  (15v)

This race would be the fastest race of the day and a very competitive one at that. The big story was Kevin Webster leading the race after four segments, with a win in that segment and a second in the third segment–nice!

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 100 16 742.746
2 George Peters 97 13 760.792
3 Brad Sandahl 95 11 780.728
4 Kevin Webster 90 7 787.66
5 Eric Lane 87 6 781.898

In the end, only two laps separated George Peters in second and Brad Sandahl in third, and only three laps separated Sportsman drivers, Kevin Webster and Eric Lane. Close racing!  (Details)

Top to bottom: TR3 Augorans, Webster MG+ Camaros & Mustangs, Tyco-Jets, Retro Vipers

All in all, it was a fun day of racing, and great to see our Sportsman drivers breaking through the Expert ranks and not only winning heat segments but also the top podium spot in the OS3 TFX race. Good driving all around!

Kevin Webster and Jerry Pearson are neck & neck in the series Sportsman standings while George Peters has a very solid lead over Brad Sandhal in the Expert standings.

Remember: It’s the best total points of three of the four events.

IROC Championship Series Points Standings After Round 2
Sportsman Class
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Kevin Webster 578 58 5967.985
2 Jerry Pearson 419 57 4419.561
3 Eric Lane 550 47 5967.415
Expert Class
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 634 105 5905.876
2 Brad Sandahl 360 42 3331.948
3 Steve Stewart 646 125 5829.804

Round 3 of the series is tentatively slated for November 12, 2022 and will be contested on the SR3 Oval Course. Stay tuned for details on ROund 3 and, hopefully, some video of this last round on our Youtube channel.

Okay, shut up and drive!

SR3 Video Session: Qualifying Session with SlotTrak

First crack at video recording on SR3. It’s a bit larger track and difficult to get one shot of the whole course. This is a qualifying session with a Viper V-SPEC car using a typical Indy-style qual session.

YouTube player

Some lighting issues to resolve but might work for recording races. If not, will have to do dual cameras to break the track into two sections and get a better capture of the action.

MegaG/Jag Brush Barrel Continuity Issues

Those of us who have raced the MG/MG+ cars know of this problem all too well. Now that we’re racing Jag Hobbies platforms, this issue has come to the fore once again.

Some of you may have experienced a Mega-G or Jag Hobbies car suddenly stop, stutter, or otherwise display intermittent rail contact issues.

This is a well-known problem and actually has several solutions. The easiest of which is to simply change the bend profile of the shoe. Another is to install shunt wires or Tyco dual-lever shoe springs.

This bulletin provides some detail on addressing this problem by changing the shoe bend profile, which is probably the simplest and certainly the cheapest and quickest method to resolve.

The following link provides detail on how to modify the shoes to overcome this issue and maintain pick-up shoe continuity.

Courtesy of WHOSCAR ICT Facebook pages and author, Mike Linkous, who has done a great job of both illustrating and describing how to solve this issue.

WHOSCAR is a very active HO-scale slot car racing organization in Wichita, Kansas dedicated to the hobby of building and racing h.o. scale slot cars.

Thanks, Mike!

 

2022 Season Points Standings

Points leader, Sir George, accepting the 2022 NASCAR MADness Series trophy.

Well, it’s a little late but here are the current points standings for the 2022 racing season.

Veteran Sportsman driver, Kevin Webster, is currently leading the Sportsman Class points chase. Kevin has done very well in nearly all of the 2022 season events and is well positioned to take top honors.

2021 Junior of the Year driver, Jordan Walker, isn’t too far behind Kevin and certainly has a shot at the points championship and the 2022 Junior of the Year award.

The Rookie of the Year points battle is between Jerry Pearson and Eric Lane. Both drivers entered the season fairly late but have demonstrated outstanding driving abilities and amazing success against much more experienced drivers, including “Home Cook’n”.

Sportsman Class
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Kevin Webster 5024 328 40787.13
2 Jordan Walker 4420 262 40542.1
3 Russ Toy 2403 146 11253.26
4 Jerry Pearson 1423 120 16802.69
5 Eric Lane 229 25 2558.784

In the Expert ranks, the battle for top honors is pretty much a moot point. No driver can catch the 2022 NASCAR MADness Series Champ, George Peters, providing he makes appearances in at least one of the remaining events. 2021 ROTY champ, Brad Sandahl, has a shot at the podium in the season points chase but he’ll need to make dominant appearances at every event remaining this season.

Expert Class
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 7719 672 55081.97
2 Greg Kondrek 3657 307 14456.61
3 Ian Douglass 2674 256 10887.75
4 Brad Sandahl 1496 99 11627.83
5 Steve Stewart* 8299 861 53878.37

* Home Cook’n

There are three more events in the current 2022 IROC Championship Series. That series will likely be the last series of the 2022 season. Don’t miss any of the final three events if you like big hardware in your trophy room.

Okay, shut up and drive!

 

Slot Car Racing Video Is Nice!

Still pursuing video recording of races at Stewart Raceway. The initial goal was to display the whole SR2 track on-screen, which was possible using inexpensive cameras. The next goal was to get the Race Management screens/windows in the recordings so viewers could see what the heck is going on.

Thanks to Open Source software developers, and just plain incredible talent in that realm, displaying the race management computer’s screen is possible. In fact, you can even display windows and areas of another remote or local computer’s screen–way cool!

So this video is a 10-lap segment race, utilizing fuel and tire allocation settings of SlotTrak’s RMS. SlotTrak is an amazing race management system.

YouTube player

Let me know your thoughts on this addition to the raceway. We can also do live streaming of race events with this setup. However, we have limits to how much data we can push to the Internet right now. That said, we could certainly live stream special events if warranted.

Okay, shut up and drive!