Category: Events

No “official” racing this weekend at Stewart Raceway but a few of us were heading up to Roseville to participate in a reasonably rare Saturday race at Roseville Raceway.

The track is owned and operated by Shaun Lee, the owner of another famous track called Shaunadega that once resided here in the Bay Area.

Friday’s open track session was mostly intended for those of us heading to Roseville to race to prepare cars for Saturday’s race. But Team Maddox had other goals for the day.

Abe Maddox, showed up first with his sister, Grace, and Mom, Shaylin. All of whom have raced here before and wanted to get some track time and have some fun. As usual, after a bunch of practice laps, Abe wanted to race. And Mom and Grace were not hard to convince to join in.

So we ended up doing nine races, two of which Shaylin and I sat out to marshal for Grace and Abe. In the end, Abe dominated the day with eight wins! Grace won one of the races, besting Abe by just one lap, and Shaylin and me by 5 and 7 respectively.

Overall Results

Now it wasn’t exactly a level playing field since Abe was running a Viper V-SPEC, Level 4 car, and Shaylin and Grace were running AFX SuperG+ cars.

The amazing thing about it was that the kids wanted to race and they stayed extremely focused in each of the ~25-lap Dash races. Some we did with fuel, which is also amazing for such young kids to manage successfully. Yes, they’d run out of fuel and overshoot the pits now and then, but then so did Shaylin and I.

Getting smoked by juniors didn’t do much for my confidence going into the next day’s Roseville race but it was very cool to see our neighborhood junior drivers and parents enjoying this old hobby of ours so much.

Way fun day!

The plan was just open track for the big kids but hot-shoe junior driver, Abe Maddox, showed up with his awesome Mom, Shaylin, sister Grace, and some delicious snacks to cut some laps with us.

Grace did a bunch of laps with Abe while Shaylin marshaled the practice session. Jerry Pearson, always interested in more track time, shared the track with Abe and Grace while the rest of us worked on cars.

As usual, after Grace got bored with hot lapping, Abe wanted to do some racing. Abe is a guy who likes fast cars so he wanted to race Level 4 Vipers.

Well, nobody objected, so we clicked off three Dash format races and one team race.

Abe didn’t podium any of the races on the day but he did cut several of the fastest laps and was never very far off the pace. Abe is only 6 years old so it’s pretty amazing that he remains focused and competitive with the big kids at that age. In fact, Abe does fuel races also and manages to stay in the hunt every race.

The bigger story on this day, however, was his Mom, Shaylin, who raced three of the four races, including the final team race. We can see why Abe is so talented, his Mom is too!

Shaylin won one of the team race heats and was only two laps off the leader’s pace in the end. Abe was also amazing, only six laps down on the leader.

What an awesome day and a spectacular showing by Team Maddox. In fact, Shaylin and Kevin Webster won the team race, 149 laps to 133 for Abe and I.

Very fun day and cool to see the young guns racing and their parents enjoying the same. Seems to me, Abe and Shaylin are very capable slot car racers and are welcome to race with the big kids anytime.

The SR3 track is open this Friday from 11:00 to ~3:45 for open practice.

Okay, shut up and drive!

Wow! We don’t often report on open track days but this one was noteworthy.

Having to postpone Round 4 of the 2023 50/50 Series resulted in a big day for junior drivers and parents. We had three junior drivers show up for some track time with parents. Almost everybody ended up participating in our first-ever Teams race event (8 drivers).

It was just a fun race to check out the software and get some experience running team races. We had ten drivers on the day and ended with a four-team elimination race. Not exactly a fair setup but we broke it into three brackets, and the winner takes all.

The highlights were junior driver, Abe Maddox, taking his first heat race win in the first heat of the first team race. Then, another junior driver, Harper Hutchinson, bagged two heat race wins in the second team race. Very impressive driving!

The junior drivers were awesome on the day with Abe Maddox (substitute driving for Home Cook’n) and Sportsman driver, Kevin Webster, of team Unforgiven, storming to victory in the finale against a veteran team (The Pickleheads), Jerry Pearson and Eric “Fastlane” Lane.

Yet another junior driver, Carrie Sandahl, clinched the practice sessions with 329 laps over second place with 270 laps.

A way fun day and great to try something new and have parents and kids racing together. Can’t wait to try some more team racing!

Thank you all for showing up and supporting Stewart Raceway!

Okay, shut up and drive!

Wow! I think we broke records for attendance at Stewart Raceway yesterday.

What a great turnout of junior drivers, parents, and club drivers preparing for next Saturday’s 50/50 Series opening round.

Thank you to all our friends and parents who brought their kids to the track Saturday. It was fantastic to see all lanes busy, parents helping and coaching the kids, marshaling crashes, and supporting all the young drivers as they clicked off hundreds of laps. That was cool!

Yea, it was a bit crazy at times but what do you expect when you hand over control of a little car capable of doing 600 (scale) miles per hour? The kids like to go fast but they also like their total lap counts, which seemed to be the focus of the day.

Once again, the top junior driver was Abe Maddox. Abe clicked off the most laps in both “kids” sessions and wasn’t shy about it either.  That was his goal and he nailed it. Madeline Johnson was next best in terms of total laps in both sessions running on the outside Yellow lane. Yes, there were faster young drivers in the field today but Abe and Madeline seemed to understand the “Turtle and the Hare” story better than most. Dax Schwartz hung in there for both sessions and was a close third in total laps running in the other outside lane (Red), which is definitely not the ideal lane for total laps.

It wasn’t an “official” race but all the kids were very keen on keeping track of their lap counts and making sure their car was quickly placed in the slot after crashes. I’m amazed at the focus and attention they gave to driving these little cars for so long, totally cool.

Okay, it is clear that the kids enjoy this stuff just as much as we older “kids.” That said, I think we should have another “official” junior race soon. However, I think it might be more fun if the parents team up with the kids and do some sort of “teams” event. Anyway, I’ll look into it and see if the software we use can support it.

Thanks also to the veteran drivers who helped the kids while they patiently waited for access to the busy track. The kids eventually got bored with little cars and moved on to other things and the older kids got to get some track time in also. All in all, a great day playing with little cars.

Okay, stay tuned for details on a future parents/kids race day and get-together. Until then, next Saturday, February 4, kicks off the 2023 50/50 Racing Series. This is a “big kid” race event involving driver/owner-prepared Viper V-SPEC cars, the new Mega-G+ class, and two IROC class races. Register here. Mega-G+ car prep videos here.

Okay, shut up and drive!