Category: Events

Wow, another mostly “racing” track day! We did about 300 laps of practice before the usual racing action broke out. So much for mentoring and driver development, this bunch just wants to race!

We also had a couple of new folks show up to check things out. Turns out Kevin (Webster Motorsports) ran into one of them at a hobby shop in San Leandro sometime last year as he was trying to fulfill his annual recruitment quota (just kidding). Anyway, he gave Joe our contact info and Joe finally touched base and wanted to swing by and scope things out.

Joe brought along his girlfriend, Oxana, who may not have been looking forward to driving a HO car for a couple of hours as they passed through the Santa Cruz Mountains. But they both jumped right into hot lapping and drove many of the various cars we run during practice.  Before long, some wanted to race and both Joe and Oxana were all good with that.

We started with an IROC set of MegaG+ 1.7 cars with “Paper” Whelen Modified bodies, which Joe and Oxana adapted to very quickly since they had run the same class during their practice sessions. Joe finished third in his very first segment in the Orange lane, which was very impressive. Oxana, however, would stun the paddock with a full six-lane rotation and only one segment finishing worse than 4th place. Oxana finished four segments in the top 3–amazing!

The good news is both Oxana and Joe had a great time. The bad news is that if Joe decides to get more into HO slot car racing, he’s going to need a box big enough to haul both his own AND Oxana’s equipment. The pair appear to be destined to dominate slot car racing very soon. Oxana and Joe didn’t have all day to play with little cars and had to depart shortly after our first race.

The other three races were pretty much the usual fast-and-furious events. The highlight of the day for me was the three female drivers in the mix. Oxana was amazing in her very first slot car race but we also had Aaron’s girlfriend, Olga Rosetta, and Team Johnson’s star Junior driver, Madeline Johnson in the mix. Olga and Madeline had a bunch of top 3 heat finishes throughout the day’s racing.

Not that I think there are any differences between male and female drivers when it comes to slot car racing, nevertheless I’m amazed at the caliber of female drivers we have participating in our program–way cool!

Next weekend will likely be another track day. Hopefully, Joe and Oxana will return for more driving experience and fun. The 2024 racing season will likely kick off on February 3rd with some sort of NASCAR series and an oval course event or two, we may even do more racing on SR2 this season. We’re upgrading the power control on SR2 to be the same as SR3.

Okay, shut up and drive!

Yeah, we thought we had enough to make it official but a couple of teams didn’t make the start. Nevertheless, four of us (and later three) made the best of the ready-to-go SR3 “Fast Esses” road course and clicked off seven “unofficial” races on the day!

I won’t bore you with the details but we stuck to magnet cars and had a blast racing until just after 7:00 PM.

All of these cars were awesome to race and only Kevin had a bad heat because of car/controller issues.  Racing was very close in all events and the two Sportsman drivers certainly gave Home Cook’n a run for his money all day.

Looking forward to the series and season finale!

Okay, shut up and drive!

For a holiday weekend, there sure wasn’t a shortage of racers available. Team Johnson showed up first and got in a bunch of laps before Team Maddox arrived to heat things even more.

Mostly hotlapping and practice with Madeline Johnson having the most laps in practice. As expected, the practice and hotlapping got a little boring and many wanted to do some actual racing. So we setup a race with all six drivers, full rotation, no fueling, and 20-lap heats.  

With juniors and adults in this one, it was going to be a team race between Team Johnson and Team Maddox. Racing with juniors is always interesting, especially with this bunch. Team Johnson had two junior drivers, Team Maddox had two junior drivers. So, one adult driver and two junior drivers for each team.

To make it fairer, we set the max lane voltage to 12v instead of 15v. The juniors could decide what voltage they wanted to run. The younger juniors settled on 9 or 10v. It was an IROC race using Jag Hobbies Augoran TR-3 cars, only slightly modified cars but fast and stuck.

With only one marshal to support the whole track, we had quite a few yellow flag situations but it worked out pretty well and everybody finished!

Superstar Junior driver, Abe Maddox bursted into the lead early on, leading the race for the first two heats with Jared Johnson a very close second. In the third of six heats, Jared took over the lead in the race and kept it from then on. In the fifth heat, Abe seemed to have trouble and would lose six laps to Jared. After the first two heats it looked like the boys were going to dominate things with Abe, Jared, and Mathew Johnson comfortably in the top three spots.

Shaylin Maddox was having none of that and fought hard to get into third place through heats 3 and 5 and looked like she was certain to hang on to the final podium spot. In an amazing performance, Madeline Johnson would win the fifth and the final sixth heat, catapulting her ahead of Shaylin and bagging the final podium spot in a very hard-fought and chaotic race.

Wow! A very impressive performance by everyone. Very cool to see the junior drivers focus so well and take advantage of opportunities to improve their results. 

In the end, even though he would finish the race with the hardest car and one of the hardest lanes (red), Jared remained focused on the task at hand and held onto his solid lead, taking the checkered flag ahead of hard-charging junior, Abe Maddox. Shaylin Maddox narrowly missed the podium by just one lap and one point.

Awesome track day! Thank you all for supporting Stewart Raceway, especially on a holiday weekend! 

Next Saturday is round 4 of the 2023 50/50 Xtreme Series. Right now I don’t have enough confirmed RSVPs for round 5, so round 4 could be the finale, we’ll see what happens.

Okay, shut up and drive!