Category: News

General news and information

New Website Features

Right-click image and open in new window to view the actual size.

While I’ve been “self-quarantined” I’ve been hacking on the Stewart Raceway website even more than previously announced.

Last week I added a new Forums service with a bit of a different twist. The new Forum is also available to the larger slot car community. We’ll see how that goes but anybody can create an account and post to the forums. Currently, Roseville Raceway and Thunder Road Raceway have their own forum categories, which they can manage. We’ll see if there is any interest from these track owners in taking advantage of forums to communicate with their communities. Their members/subscribers can also use most of the services available to Stewart Raceway members.

Native Private Messaging service. This is the primary and recommended PM service to use.

In addition to the forum features, I also added Private Messaging, Group Messaging, and Member/Subscriber Profile capabilities to the site. The basic idea behind these services is to allow members/subscribers to message each other directly or in a group fashion, and keep their member profiles updated with the most current info.

Yea, so what? I know, most of you could care less about these features. But one very useful aspect of profiles is having Stewart Raceway member profile information accessible to the Race Director. Right now the profile is pretty basic, consisting of contact info, scale interests, and classes currently competing in. The profile also includes driver availability for racing and/or track events. All of this helps track owners plan and organize racing and track events.

So, for now, the CALL TO ACTION is to simply log in to the site when you get a chance. This will automatically register you to the new profile and messaging features. All of these features, including the Forums, are only available to logged-in users.

Standalone PM service. Still evaluating but feel free to try it out and compare to the standard PM service. I may restrict this one to Race Director use-only, we’ll see.

Feel free to edit/update your profile while you’re logged in, only takes a few minutes.

NOTE: Right now there are two Private Messaging services. One is an integral component of your site account, which is accessible on your account/profile page after log in. The other is a stand-alone private messaging app accessible from the Member Resources page. Both are fine to use but each has its own interface and functionality.  

If there seems to be interest in these new services, I’ll post additional user information and maybe a video or two on how to use them, we’ll see.

Open Track Day next Saturday! Register now!

Round 1 of the new 2023 50/50 Series goes green February 3, 2023. Register Now!

Okay, shut up and drive!

 

 

 

 

The 2022 Racing Season Is In The Books

Given the holiday hustle & bustle, it’s not likely we’ll be able to pull off another race day event this year. As such, our season officially ended after the 2022 IROC Championship finale on December 10.

First off, I’d like to thank all of you who stuck with our program and attended as many races/events as you could. Kathy and I really appreciate your loyalty, interest, and friendship.

We’ve had a wild ride this season, for sure. The season started out well but once we made the planned switch to HOPRA rules, we lost a few drivers. Not only that, we lost those drivers while we were trying to bring a new 6-lane Brad Bowman track online. Nothing is more impactful than losing participation when you’re increasing racing capacity by 50 percent.

In spite of that setback, we also added a few new drivers to the group in 2022. These new drivers are entering a program that is very well-positioned to both encourage and cultivate new participants in this great hobby we all have loved for most of our lives.

So, again, I really appreciate those of you who stuck with the program and made it as successful as it has been. We’ve done a whole lot of different types of racing, with all kinds of different types of cars, body styles, racing formats, etc. And through it all, the competition has been extremely close and the racing super exciting and–most important–fun.

So who were the top dogs in the two different driver classifications we currently offer?

2022 Sportsman Class Standings
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 Kevin Webster 6861 454 55303.45
2 Jordan Walker 5483 315 47097.53
3 Jerry Pearson 1949 167 21366.55
4 Eric Lane 915 69 7651.906
5 Gabe Maddox 35 29 218.53
6 Kathy Stewart 120 16 394.248
7 Martha Elderon 204 9 1020.019
8 Jared Johnson 122 7 1576.468
9 Madeline Johnson 105 5 1650.493
2022 Expert Class Standings
Place Name Laps Points Total Time
1 George Peters 9674 862 69452.86
2 Greg Kondrek 4490 379 19191.5
3 Ian Douglass 3530 344 15465.58
4 Brad Sandahl 3157 265 25463.15
5 Russ Toy 3180 197 15957.58
6 Randy Cook 136 13 1566.557
7 Steve Stewart 10607 1182 70235.96

Again, congratulations to Kevin and George. They love racing these little cars and it clearly shows in the results they’ve achieved.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 2022 Stewart Raceway season and certainly hope all of you return for the 2023 season. We’re going to stick to our rule set and overall program in the hopes of growing our ranks by making it easier, more affordable, and more competitive–for more racers.

Stay tuned for the 2023 racing schedule and a couple of exciting additions to the program. Happy Holidays to all of you!

Okay, shut up and drive!

 

 

 

2022 I.R.O.C. Champs Enshrined

After a grueling four-event racing series, on both road and oval courses, the best “drivers” have emerged.

IROC racing removes the advantage of a particular type or build of car and determines the best overall driver by pure driving and adapting abilities.

In IROC racing each driver has to drive a fixed car on each lane for a set number of laps or rotations. The driver is not allowed to change the car other than clean the tires and pickup shoes between each segment.

In the Stewart Raceway IROC series, all kinds of different cars, courses, and race formats were utilized to determine which drivers best adapted to the varied conditions and scored the most points in four different race day events.

Today, the following drivers were enshrined on the Stewart Raceway “Wall of Fame” for outstanding achievement in a very competitive racing series:

      • Kevin Webster (Sportsman)
      • George Peters (Expert)

Congratulations, Gentlemen!

 

2022 IROC Championship Spoils

Left to right: Expert Champ trophy, Sportsman Champ trophy.

Sportsman and Expert trophies await their rightful owners. Will the series be decided this Saturday, December 10? Or will the expected weather and real-life stuff force us to reschedule the finale and just do a track day?

George Peters has the Expert class championship pretty much locked up, while the Sportsman class is still very close between the top three drivers; Kevin Webster, Jerry Pearson, and Eric Lane.

We’ll see who shows up and what the consensus is. In any case, we’re going to do some racing tomorrow and see what this “squeeze” lane section does to the action.

Okay, shut up and drive (safely)!

 

 

Slot Car Racing Video Is Nice!

Still pursuing video recording of races at Stewart Raceway. The initial goal was to display the whole SR2 track on-screen, which was possible using inexpensive cameras. The next goal was to get the Race Management screens/windows in the recordings so viewers could see what the heck is going on.

Thanks to Open Source software developers, and just plain incredible talent in that realm, displaying the race management computer’s screen is possible. In fact, you can even display windows and areas of another remote or local computer’s screen–way cool!

So this video is a 10-lap segment race, utilizing fuel and tire allocation settings of SlotTrak’s RMS. SlotTrak is an amazing race management system.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp0UH0ZbSdY[/embedyt]

Let me know your thoughts on this addition to the raceway. We can also do live streaming of race events with this setup. However, we have limits to how much data we can push to the Internet right now. That said, we could certainly live stream special events if warranted.

Okay, shut up and drive!