Category: Announcements

General announcements and notices.

2024 Summer Extreme Series, Round 5 Finale

Well, it’s taken us into the Fall, but we’re one round away from completing this incredibly competitive series.

Here are the points standings after four rounds:

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 764 349 5127.071
2 Aaron Castro 651 289 3974.74
3 Jerry Pearson* 576 231 4063.124
4 Jordan Walker 302 133 2894.16
5 Eric Lane* 296 104 2939.946
6 Kevin Webster 174 89 996.869
7 Steve Stewart 793 403 5113.704

* Sportsman Driver

Remember, the rules are such that each driver is scored on their four best appearances, which means that if you missed a round, you’re not necessarily out of the hunt for the series win.

It’s a bit of work for the Race Director, but we’re taking the best points from the four best race results for each driver to calculate the series winner. And, yes, Sportsman and Experts are scored separately. There is a Sportsman series winner, an Expert series winner, and, of course, a Junior winner. Oh, and remember, Home Cook’n doesn’t get awards or trophies. If you somehow come in second to him, you’ve still won the series!

With our new racing format, you don’t earn points unless you make the main (Feature) event. So, if you don’t see your name above, you either missed the first couple of rounds or didn’t make the main in subsequent rounds. Junior driver points will be picked separately by combining Qualifier race and Last Chance Qualifier race points for up to four rounds attended.

The final round will be on the SR3 oval course. We’ll run our latest race format but longer segments since we’re on the oval. We’ll also run fuel allocation for the Last Chance Qualifier race and the Feature event. I think the LCQ race will have 30-lap segments, and the feature race will have 45-lap segments. Fuel allocation will be announced on race day.

The weather is expected to be ideal, so leave your expensive cooled driver suits at home. We’ll only need two marshals for each race event, but please invite guests to drive, marshal, or be the Race Director.

Stay tuned for more details, the invite, and the schedule. I think we’ll run MegaG+ “Lites” at 20V. Comments and suggestions are welcome, of course.

Operations Updates

SlotTrak Fuel Management Features Update

Many of you have suffered from the SlotTrak bug that can occur during a yellow flag situation. As power is cut to the lanes, the software does not detect or register that you have entered the pits. When the track goes green, your car doesn’t refuel. This is very frustrating, of course.

I haven’t fully tested the latest version of SlotTrak because the Fuel Management feature didn’t work with those versions. However, their update documentation indicates they may have fixed this problem in one of the latest versions. We tried to run the latest on SR2 and SR3 several times, but the software did not detect pit entries, rendering the feature useless.

We’re currently running version 16.24. I plan to upgrade both SR2 and SR3 to version 17.34, which is currently the latest version available.

Kevin and I figured out after the racing last Saturday that this issue was caused by the latest version install, which seems to corrupt the TrackConfig file by removing the Pit Detection setup. Once we realized this was happening, we updated the TrackConfig file, and Boom! All was good!

So, the bottom line is that we’ll test the fuel management features during a future racing event and see if the latest version solves that pesky refueling problem most of us have experienced in the past. Let’s hope so!

StewartRaceway.org Web Site Unsecure or Not Secure Notices

I didn’t realize this was causing people to stop using our site or become concerned that the site was somehow potentially harmful.

All this means is that keystroke data going to/from the site is not encrypted via SSL [SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and its successor, TLS (Transport Layer Security), are protocols for establishing secure links between networked computers.]

StewartRaceway.org is not an eCommerce site. To utilize it, you do not enter private or sensitive financial or other information anywhere on the site, and it does not collect or store that sort of information.

Unless you’re concerned about a remote possibility that somebody out there may be able to capture the keystrokes your computer sends to the site when leaving a comment on the site, for example, there is no threat to you or your computer/network. This is no different than any other site you use that doesn’t utilize expensive SSL/TLS technology.

StewartRaceway.org can conduct eCommerce activities, but we don’t sell or buy anything on the site today. No financial or personal/private information is collected. If that changes, of course we’d employ SSL/TLS technology to make sure those transactions and associated data was secure and protected.

So, please don’t fret about this message. I don’t think Russians, government agents, or other bad guys are snooping around StewartRaceway.org. And if they were, all they’d find out is that we’re having a lot of fun racing little cars for no money!

Okay, shut up and drive!

 

2024 Summer 50/50 Series, Round 1, July 6, 2024

That’s right, we’re going racing again on July 6. More details on the new series and the first event are here.

If you haven’t already secured your place on the starting grid, you can do that via the Google Calendar page here.

This will be a five (5) round series. You can miss one complete race day, best points total out of four events.

I’d also like to introduce at least one new car class in this series. I’m thinking of any of the following cool platforms:

I’m bullish on the Jag Hobbies platforms but open to anything the group considers a good choice. Please review the links above and let me know what platforms you’d be okay adding to the mix by completing the following survey.

New Platform Survey
Looking to add a new car class to our program soon. We currently run two predominant classes: the MG+ 1.7 "Lites" and "Modified" classes and the Viper V-SPEC "SPEC STOCK" Lexan class. I'm proposing one of the following platforms be added to our racing program.

Please review the choices below and select any platform that you feel might be a fun car to add to the mix.

Other than the Viper V-SPEC chassis at ~$50.00, all the others are relatively cheap. The Jag Hobbies TR-3, for example, is only $25.00 for a complete rolling chassis. In any case, expect to invest roughly $50 to $75 to procure any of these platforms with the appropriate body.

Jag Hobbies Platform Info

Stewart Raceway Wall Of Fame

The last 2023 Wall Of Fame plaques have been nailed and we’ve completed the season with seven (7) awards:

    • Junior Champion (Abe Maddox)
    • Sportsman Champion (Kevin Webster)
    • 50/50 Series Sportsman Champ (Jordan Walker)
    • 50/50 Series Expert Champ (George Peters)
    • 50/50 “Xtreme” Series Champ (Aaron Castro)
    • Most Improved Driver (Jerry Pearson)
    • Team of the Year (Team Maddox)

There was one additional plaque hung this season. Jerry Pearson won Rookie of the Year honors in 2022 and somehow we didn’t get that plaque up on the wall in 2022. Sorry, Jerry! It’s on the wall now.

One of the cool highlights of the 2023 season was the many female drivers that competed at Stewart Raceway.  We’ve been blessed by truly great and very competitive female drivers who love to race. The drivers listed below win races and are amazing drivers who are only going to get better and better:

    • Shaylin Maddox (Sportsman)
    • Martha Elderon (Sportsman)
    • Madeline Johnson (Junior)
    • Grace Maddox (Junior)

Next season we may consider separate awards for female drivers but I fully expect at least some of the above drivers to win awards outright. They are awesome!

Okay, shut up and drive!

Final Round of 2023 50/50 Xtreme Series Captured On Video

Yep, we video-recorded all four official races of Round 4. Could be a little boring since we didn’t have enough marshals to pull off a normal race, so there are a lot of yellow flags and other interruptions. However, you can fast forward, rewind, skip, whatever. The bottom line is you can learn a lot about reviewing how you did during a race.

Check out what’s here and let me know what you think. Lots to work out, including better lighting, presentation, and plenty of other improvements.

Okay, shut up and drive!