Events – Page 11 – Stewart Raceway

2022 NASCAR MADness Series Finale is August 6!

We’ll conclude the series on the SR3 road course Saturday, August 6, 2022.

George Peters currently leads the series with an unassailable points lead. George also leads the Concours d’ Elegance points and will very likely win that competition as well.

All eyes will be on the battle for the second spot on the coveted Stewart Raceway podium. Kevin Webster leads Jordan Walker by 25-points. Both drivers know that the second podium spot is within their reach. Both drivers will certainly be bringing their “A” game to the party.

	Name	Laps	Points	Total Time
1	George Peters	3088	297	26542.46
2	Kevin Webster	1899	151	16994.23
3	Jordan Walker	1903	126	19503.4
4	Jerry Pearson	1175	81	14225.5
1	Brad Sandahl ♦	900	55	3561.313
2	Steve Stewart ♦	3291	353	26011.41

Rookie Sportsman driver, Jerry Pearson, is tentative for the finale but has had some very impressive heat wins and lap records in previous rounds of the series.

Regardless of other drivers making an appearance in the final round, the top three spots on the Sportsman podium are pretty much spoken for.

If you haven’t already, please register for Round 5 by 10:00PM, Friday, August 5.

Okay, Shut up and drive!

2022 HOPRA Nats In The Books

HOPRA held their National Championships back in June. They had 0ver 100 drivers totaling over 500 entries in their various classes.

We run HOPRA rules at Stewart Raceway. We currently only run two platforms today that are almost always raced at the Nationals: the Viper V-SPEC Lexan car, aka: SPEC RACER; and the Viper-Jet Lexan car, aka: SPEC JET classes.

I suspect next year HOPRA will roll out OS3 TFX rules. No idea what those rules will look like. Hopefully, our TFX Modified class is in the ballpark.

HOPRA also runs a support race using the Mega G+ platforms at the NATS, employing BOX STOCK rules. We don’t run this car other than IROC but it’s a simple and good driving platform and one that all of us have a few of. Maybe we should consider adding it to our active platforms?

Full results and pics here.

Race Report: 2022 Summer Kids Race & Pool Party

So much for the pool party component. The kids focused mostly on driving little cars. Probably because the temps were actually very nice and the pool just didn’t attract as much attention.

We didn’t have any trouble filling the lanes for this event. We actually had eight drivers and eight marshals at the start of the event and six drivers and three marshals for the start of the race. As you can imagine, we needed more than three marshals for this event. However, many of the parents were busy interacting with neighbors they hadn’t met yet or hadn’t seen for quite a while, and missed much of the action-packed, mayhem-filled race.

This little guy at the lower left is a slot car natural!

Regardless, we started the kid’s race with a full slate of six racers, ages 3.5 to 12 years. Surprisingly, the younger kids were amazingly focused and did remarkably well considering they’d never even heard of a slot car until their sudden immersion on Saturday.

How’d they do? Well, they didn’t complete the entire race (only 4 out of 6 segments) but it was amazingly close with the top driver completing a total of 48 laps and the bottom driver clicking off 34 laps. That’s actually pretty close considering the age gaps and all the distractions they dealt with.

After the race and dinner, the kids wanted to run some more laps. Check out the lap count in the orange lane–amazing!

Unfortunately, the Race Director failed to disable the track call buttons, and the kids who knew about them thoroughly abused them. This made for a much longer race but actually worked out okay since we didn’t quite have enough marshals to cover all the crash action.

Thank goodness SR3 supports independent lane voltages. This allowed us to throttle down the younger kid’s cars, which helped them tremendously. But it was a lot of work manually changing voltages as the drivers rotated from lane to lane.

I must say I was impressed with the focus and driving skills that these kids displayed. Most of them never lost focus and completed an amazing amount of laps. And they were way competitive, always wanting to know what place they were in (and when the race ended :).

I must also say that marshaling a kid’s race is hard work! Six active lanes and mostly only two marshals are definitely ingredients for a fatiguing day. I’ll need to adjust the rules and make all drivers have to commit at least one parent to be a turn marshal.

All that said, I’m all in on doing it again. These wonderful kids are the future of slot car racing and our world in general. I’m happy to provide them with a fun family environment and to spend time with their great parents and my neighbors. Way fun!

Thank you all for helping make this event happen. I hope everybody enjoyed the get-together and we do it again soon!

Okay, shut up and drive!

2022 Summer Kid’s Race & Pool Party

Yea, I know, nobody in our club has any kids that qualify for this event.

Our neighbor’s kids and our grandsons will fill the field, and hopefully, a few more neighborhood kids also.

Just 20-lap segments, one rotation, on the SR3 straight road course. All participants receive a medal and valuable track time on SR3. Oh, and they get to swim all afternoon and enjoy a BBQ.

Now I need to find a bomb-proof IROC set to pull this off with…

Should be fun!

Okay, shut up and drive!

Round 3 Cancelled! (Postponed)

Sorry folks!

We lost Brad, George, Randy, Jared, and even Kevin could not commit by the 8:00 pm deadline. Sorry to Jerry, who was all-in on at least a few races. I’ll work on having an open track day soon.

Normally, I would have held the race with just three of us but my roofing tear-off uncovered a bunch of issues that need tending to. So I thought I’d better cancel this Saturday’s race and focus on that stuff. Hopefully done with the roof project by the next shot at Round 3.

Okay, shut-up and drive!