[Mr.M]

Some interesting points made Woodcote, thank you for a balanced view. I was also enjoying Brian's original article until the usual anti Hornby bias appeared in the last couple of paragraphs.

As Woodcote pointed out, surely there are enough performance oriented brands to keep the speed fans and tinkerers happy. And I was surprised to see the lap times comparison shown with a Hornby faster than a Slot-it. At Bolwextric's MDF/copper tape track (which is also on the South Coast - I wonder if we have an extraordinary talent pool down here   ) we race all sorts of cars and, while we wouldn't see a Hornby beating a performance brand, they still give great racing. An NSR sorted by our most-crowned racer will lap in the low 9-second ball park, where a standard Hornby of the modern design will manage high 10s. So 20% quicker for 50% more spend, but how do you quantify the drop in modelling level of the more expensive car.

I don't think the YouTube video of the new Hornby Sierras has been shown on SlotRacer Online so I will leave that here for you to make up your own minds.



These were prepared for racing by Nick Garton of the Farnham club and the only change of component was the use of Slot-it tyres. As you can see from the tailslides they hadn't made a huge difference, but were probably better than the stock ones, which I do admit need improving. 

Something that I don't think has been mentioned before is that not only do magnets have no effect on the Home Farm track, it is also not wired for brakes and this footage is taken from a Farnham versus Bolwextric team meeting so the drivers are not racing on their home track.