Slot Car Racing - Intro

I have searched the web for slot car news and tricks and have found quite a lot when you look hard enough. I have struggled to find certain things pertaining to our specific classes of racing. So I have decided to start my own blog telling about what we race and setting up of cars etc. So let me begin, we are called the East London Slot Car Club in East London, South Africa. We are one of the oldest clubs in the country as well as the biggest club, in terms of members, in the country. The sport of Slot Cars has not been that popular in the country for a while. This is due to a lot of factors, cost, time but the biggest cause in my opinion is people. People can be real assholes at times and the politics in clubs have seen many members stop because of this. Our club is probably the best although not perfect.

We race on a 4 lane super wood track that is about 30 odd meters of track length with an 18 meter straight (very fast). The track is a favorite of many of the top drivers around the country due to the speed of the track. We race every Thursday evening and have an average of about 11 guys racing, sometimes more occasionally less.
We race a total of 6 classes throughout the year: 1/32 production, 1/32 sport, S32, Historic, 1/24 production and GT12. The current lap record in the GT12 class is 4.7 seconds. (I will look at all the classes in detail later on, this is just an introduction). We alternate racing, 3 classes one week and the other 3 the next week. This gives you the chance to ride all the classes and enough time to work on the cars that are not being raced that week.

The racing is quite close and sometimes drivers end on the same lap separated by segments. For those that don’t know: drivers all race and at the end the driver with the most laps wins that class and so on. For drivers that end on the same lap the track is divided up into 100 equal segments and that determines who wins.

The most important thing in this sport is consistency IE. Not going off (car coming out of the slot). When you go off you lose time and momentum and sometimes the marshal struggles to get your car back on. The top drivers have the balance of speed and handling with which they are able to do fast laps consistently.

So that is just a taste of what the sport is all about. I will be going into detail about each class, the track, setting up of cars and tips on going fast.