Author: Race Director

Just an old slot car racer and Race Director at Stewart Raceway.

Race Report: 2022 IROC Championship Series – Round 1

Round 1 of this exciting new series kicked off Saturday, October 1, 2022 with just five drivers but a competitive bunch for sure. We ran exclusively on the SR3 “straight” road course and with a 4-race format instead of 6. New driver, Eric Lane, joined in for his first “official” race at Stewart Raceway. Eric raced 1/32 cars back in the day and looks to be getting back into slot car racing with a large collection of HO-scale cars.

Round 1 Overall Results
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 265 55 2561.742
2 Jerry Pearson 248 39 2577.19
3 Kevin Webster 243 32 2573.008
4 Eric Lane 229 25 2558.784
5 Steve Stewart 268 61 2540.275
Race 1: Retro Vipers (12.5v)

We started the day with the challenging Retro Viper platforms and decided to run three lanes so we could allocate a couple of drivers to marshaling, which worked out well for this class.

The Retro Vipers are really better suited for oval track racing but it was surprising how well everyone adapted to the cars. Of course, the seasoned Fray/T-Jet drivers dominated this one. The big story here was that Jerry Pearson bagged the final podium spot in this one, only four laps off the pace of 1st and 2nd, and won his final heat. Impressive driving for a guy who seemed to prefer L4 Vipers. (Details)

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 60 16 636.668
2 George Peters 60 13 668.988
3 Jerry Pearson 56 11 722.443
4 Kevin Webster 51 7 660.196
5 Eric Lane 46 6 676.079
Race 2: Tyco-Jets (12.5v)

Another “loose” but much easier to drive platform. This race debuted two new cars for the SR3 IROC set. Both without weighted front-ends for the orange and green lanes. While one weighted FE car won two of the five heats, the two unweighted cars won three.  And, both Jerry Pearson and Eric Lane won heats in this one–nice! (Details)

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 59 16 637.996
2 George Peters 59 13 647.849
3 Jerry Pearson 55 11 614.09
4 Kevin Webster 54 7 684.675
5 Eric Lane 50 6 630.976
Race 3: MegaG+ 1.7 Camaros and Mustangs (15v)

The usual suspects battled it out in this race utilizing Kevin Webster’s nicely prepared set of MegaG+ 1.7 cars. Most of us have driven these cars before and they are very smooth and predictable. Jerry Pearson won the final heat of this fuel race with some nice fuel management tactics. Jerry is well on his way to a 2022 Rookie of the Year award. (Details)

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Steve Stewart 75 16 758.092
2 George Peters 71 13 732.61
3 Kevin Webster 70 11 716.082
4 Eric Lane 68 7 724.382
5 Jerry Pearson 66 6 727.872
Race 4: Jag Hobbies TR-3 “Augorans” (15v)

The TR-3 is an amazing car. An inline 6-ohm chassis that fits old-school screw-on bodies, including JL, AW, Aurora, MM and Dash. Still, it’s a blazingly fast magnet car with superb handling and driveability.

2022 NASCAR MADness Series winner, George Peters, dominated this final race of the day by winning all of his heats. Jerry Pearson took the final podium spot with two second-place heat finishes. (Details)

Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 75 16 512.295
2 Steve Stewart 74 13 507.519
3 Jerry Pearson 71 11 512.785
4 Kevin Webster 68 7 512.055
5 Eric Lane 65 6 527.347
2022 Series Points Standings After Round 1
Sportsman Class
Place Name Points Total Time
1 Jerry Pearson 39 2577.19
2 Kevin Webster 32 2573.008
3 Eric Lane 25 2558.784
Expert Class
Place Name Points Total Time
1 George Peters 55 2561.742
2 Steve Stewart 61 2540.275

Round 2 is tentatively slated for October 29, 2022. Stay tuned for details.

Okay, shut up and drive!

Video Might Be Nice

Well, I’ve had the equipment for well over a year now so I decided to play around with video recording races. At the moment, I’m trying it out on SR2, which is easier and more comfortable to test and dink around with this stuff.

I’m using cheap CCP 4K cameras, which are not ever going to produce professional looking video, but they are cheap. Right now I’m just focusing on capturing the whole track for the duration of a race. The issue with video is storage, just one heat of a short race can be as much as 10GB of data, depending on the length of the race.

H.O. scale racing adds another complexity in that the cars are the smallest and require the best possible capture resolution, which adds to the storage and video quality problems.

Anyway, this is my first crack at it. I need to work with my lighting director and improve in that area but it looks like–with a bit more tweaking–we can record a full race and be able to replay it, not only for posterity, but for entertainment and forensic evaluation afterwards.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAA9HaAAiE8[/embedyt]

Theoretically, I could also include the RMS screen (SlotTrak or RC) in the video, that would be way cool. I’ll work on the that soon.  After that, it’s going higher frame rates and producing good slo-mo action of crashes, starts, and finishes.

Please let me know what you think and any ideas you may have to make this more beneficial to us and our massive race fans.

Okay, shut up and drive!

Stewart Raceway II’s Clone

Yes, SR2 has a clone. After Dan Cronin of Viper Scale Racing finished building SR2, he quickly made another version. The only difference I can see is that he spaced out the pit and start/finish gantries to make fuel races a bit easier than the original version of SR2.

The original SR2 was designed by me but with a whole lot of input from local racers who own routed tracks and have raced on some of the most magnificent racing tracks ever built.

SR2-2 is no longer in Utah at Viper’s facility but it is still in use. In fact, the last time I saw it was at Musgrave Racing’s shop in Riverside, CA.

Right-click and open the image in a new tab to see a larger image.

SR2-1 is still alive and well in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We haven’t raced on it in a while but I recently did a whole bunch of laps on it building two new Tyco-Jets for my IROC fleet. It is a very cool layout and the fact that it has multiple layouts, as well as converts to an oval, is very special.

Time To Start Racing Again!

Yea, it’s been too long!

Again, congrats to George Peters on dominating the 2022 NASCAR MADness Series that ended August 6. George has likely completed his media tour and press appearances by now so it’s time to kickoff another series and start racing again. What we do next will depend a lot on interest and driver availability.

One series that I’d like to do before the end of the 2022 season is an ALL IROC Championship series. The first round of the IROC series is currently slated for October 1, 2022 and will consist of four events, four individual races each event, and will include oval and road courses, sometimes on the same race day. The total points winners of the series will take home mondo trophies for being the best Sportsman and Expert “drivers” competing in the series. This series may be run contiguously or  not.

Another series I’m interested in is a weeknight oval course program that could include any type of car we currently run. The racing format will be a bit different than what we’ve been doing. Only one platform (car) will be run at each event. The nightly schedule will include:

    1. Qualifying (best average time of three laps)
    2. Scratch Race 1
    3. Scratch Race 2
    4. Scratch Race 3
    5. “B” Main
    6. “Last Chance”
    7. “A” Main

The twist in this series is that all races after qualifying are reverse staggered starts. This means, if you are the fastest qualifier, you start in the last staggered position in the first Scratch race. If you win the first Scratch race, you again, start in the last staggered position in the second Scratch race, and so on. If you qualify for the “A” Main after the three Scratch races, you start the “A” Main in a reverse staggered position relative to those drivers who who qualified behind you.

Yes, you can sandbag if you’d like. But doing so will cost you valuable points. This series accumulates points from each heat, meaning sandbagging may garner you a better start position in the next race, but you’ll also lose points doing so. You decide how and where you’ll get your points but points are the name of the game in this series.

The primary intent of this racing format is to make things as competitive as possible between all skill levels on race days. Heat/segment points are combined on race days but overall event points are scored separately between Expert and Sportsman drivers–two trophies awarded at the end of the series.

We’ll dial-down the laps for all races to make race nights short and sweet and only one car contested at each event.

Please let us know your thoughts and opinions on these two ideas for our next racing adventures. We’re open to any and all ideas, suggestions, and any comments you may have, of course.

Okay, shut up and drive!

Introducing the “Super Stock” Class

While I’m not sure of the interest level in this class, several drivers have expressed interest in a slightly more advanced set of rules to enable more tuning and flexibility in building cars.

Our Super Stock class is based on the 2022 HOPRA SUPER STOCK rules but has two key differences:

    1. HOPRA restricts motor and traction magnets to stock Ceramic-only material and does not allow Compression-molded Polymer (Level 4) magnets in this class. We allow standard V-SPEC Level-4 magnets.
    2. HOPRA does not, however, have any restrictions on armature bushings, gearing, axles, or wheels and tires. This means HOPRA rules allow dual-compound tires, we don’t. Only silicon slip-on tires are permitted.

Kevin Webster has a bunch of HOPRA-legal Super Stock cars, which he and I tested extensively. The general consensus was that the HOPRA car was not significantly different than our current Viper V-SPEC (SPEC-RACER) class and forcing interested drivers to purchase expensive ceramic-grade magnets for these platforms would be a burden to many of our drivers.

Due to the cost of dual-compound tires and the lack of interest in purchasing them, we decided against allowing dual-compound tires—for now. In our testing, dual-compound tires produced about a half-second faster lap times.

So, why setup and race a Super Stock car? Well, one reason is that there are a few more tuning options available in this class:

      • Open gearing choices, unrestricted.
      • Adjustable brush tension (on brush-barrel type chassis’)
      • Any material for armature bushings, except ball-bearings.
      • Many competitive chassis options: BSRT G3/G3R/G3RS/G3RSB, Mattel/Tyco 440-X2, Micro Speedworks T+, Slottech T1/T2/T3
        and T1X, Wizzard-Patriot P2/P3/Scorpion/Storm/Storm CH22/Fusion, Viper V1 (V-SPEC).

Bottom line, this class provides a bit more speed and tuning flexibility to those drivers interested in moving up a notch or two in tuning ability and options.

We’ll see where this class goes. Right now, only a couple of active drivers have these cars ready to race. That said, you can actually just run a good stock Viper V-SPEC and do fine on most tracks. The gearing options are pretty simple, all you need are a couple of spare rear axle assemblies with lower or higher gearing and swap them out to see what works best on the particular course you’re running on.

The other tuning options are a bit more nuanced but also very useful.

Feel free to comment on this new class here or on my Slot Car MeWe page here.

Okay, shut up and drive!