[woodcote]

Depends on the car, how familiar I am with the brand and/or layout of the car - and where I'm going to race it.

I tend to work with a check list of my usual steps (based on Gary's DiSCA tutorial) and the rules I am building the car to. Making a note of what I do definitely helps! The first thing I always do is to give the car a good look over and a couple of gentle laps to make sure it works and there's nothing obviously wrong.

If it's a standard Scalextric car, there are things I always do - running in the motor, taking the car apart and removing any flashing left from the moulding process. I check everything is straight and nothing is binding when I put the car back together again. I lightly true the wheels to remove any moulding flaws. I lightly true and then varnish the front tyres. I remove any body-holding lugs from the body/chassis and lightly sand the edges of the chassis to allow body roll. I spend a bit of time removing the vertical travel of the guide blade. And I fit copper braid. I just get all that done before testing.

Those things done - and probably some Slot.it P6s added (good on Sport track and no need for truing or gluing) - it is time to tweak on the test track. Adding weight is probably the most important thing. I start with a just a little - over the guide and in front of the rear wheels. A really heavy car might go well on a home track, but not on a big club layout with long straights and big braking zones. Lap times on a small home track can be deceptive  - especially if the club track surface is different. All it can do is give me some indication that the car is straight and solid. Most of my tweaking will take place between race events (if I didn't have responsibilities running the races, I might do some tweaking there). And it is important to change just one thing at a time.

   

One example is my WHO/digital Trans-Am - a Scalextric AMC Javelin. Over two years (eleven races), Ash and me have developed it to be one of the better cars on the grid - but it certainly wasn't to begin with. I ended up adding more weight, moving the weight around and eventually taking some out. I now tend to use tungsten putty as it is easy to add, remove and move. The car worked better on some tracks than others, so it was about making it a better all-rounder and also learning how to adjust our driving. It was a lengthy development process, but worth it with two wins last season and pole position ten days ago.