20th Anniversary of Slot Rally GB - Printable Version

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20th Anniversary of Slot Rally GB - Scott - 23rd-Sep-26

This week marks 20 years since the Slot Rally GB, a mad idea cooked up between Gareth Jex and me on the drive back from a slot rally in Abergavenny.


We had seen pictures of the great big Spanish events, rooms filled with slot car tracks, and decided to try to create the same thing here in the Britain.
I arranged the use of the Toyota offices (and more importantly, the facilities staff to help build and manage it) while Gareth did everything else.  His contacts from the exhibition stand business were called upon and invitations went out through the national slot car club (NSCC) asking for entries and, crucially, tracks and stages.  In the end we had 20 unique tracks, some made from track pieces others custom built.

Two notable tracks built for the event were the water splash and the hillclimb, a one-storey high track which was even used on the Toyota stand at Goodwood Festival of Speed.

We had 100 entries running over two days, the winners going home weighed down with boxes and boxes of slot car goodies donated as prizes by most of the slot car makers such as Scalextric.

It was a one off event, but it gave rise to the Slot Rally GB championship which is run at slot car clubs across the country to this day.  Appropriately, it is the Abergavenny round this weekend.

There's a nice summary and some of Gareth's pictures here: 2006 Slot Rally GB

And a 50min chat with Gareth about the background and making of the event : Slot Rally GB - how it all began

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