[Mike174]

Well that was my second ever proxy and I really enjoyed it. This time with running the Facebook group I was even more involved so that added another level.
I started this hobby to race at clubs originally, i’m Lucky I have 2 within 15 miles of my house. But with covid I have yet to attend. Proxy racing has really got under my skin and this time having the wife and brother also racing’s has made it fun at home to share. I currently race on a budget (all 3 teams were put together for around £20 each) we were off the pace but I am learning all the time.
Thanks to Graham for organising and to all the hosts for making it the fun and exciting event it was. Really enjoyed it even from the back. Aiming for mid table mediocrity next time! 
Mike (and Aimee and Chris, not Colin as on the results sheet!)

[Scuderia_Turini]

Really great to see feedback from the entrants.  Thank you for letting me play with your cars. In all slot-car proxy events there tends to be gap between those who enter to win and those who enter for a bit of fun. I fall into the latter category and never have any sleepless nights because my car was last!
Its difficult to balance between treating the cars with respect and pushing hard to cut the lap times. Thankfully no cars came to any real harm.

Leo

[Mazda]

I would like to thank Graham for organising this great event and all the guys who looked after our cars and raced them, also the sponsors for their support.
I was very please with the performance of my entries, they did very well .Especially considering that I don’t have a track to test them on. The Ninco Audi did very well considering that it had not been on a track for many years since Mussel Bay club moved away from Kings Lynn, all I did was to give it a clean up a little lubrication and prep the tyres. The Scalextric Ferrari was a cheap car that I got from a car boot sale for £5.

[Nonfractal]

Can I make a plea for the kessel run cars to be returned asap?
The megane has to be prepped for an australia proxy. 
The capri has to be refitted for upcoming club racing.

Alan

[Graham]

 Good Morning folks, and many thanks for all your kind comments, it is very much appreciated by all the Hosts and admin involved.

Firstly I taken note of Alans request for a quick turnaround for his cars  and hopefully if they arrive back here today, they will be the first down to the post office.

On my own observations, I think it went extraordinarily well. As I only first become remotely interested in Proxy racing in the Autumn of last year, to becoming an organiser this year, was perhaps an adventurous enterprise, but it has been extremely rewarding for me and I hope my associated hosts mostly whom only tried this for the first time.

Initially I completely underestimated the appeal of the event, at one time was thinking at best this would be something limited to a few slot racing enthusiasts exchanging cars to run at on each others tracks. Getting involved with the Rally Sprint in January fronted by Andy Player of course somewhat changed my perspective on what  could be done, and I am very grateful for his direct and often indirect involvement and guidance. I certainly feel at home on this forum compared to the alternatives.

Things I might have done better,
the number of entered cars was probably too many for some hosts, it could be struggle to make it happen in the time frame if your also holding down a full time job. For others like me as I am retired it was a welcome distraction from the boredom of being a captive prisoner at home during this difficult year under Covid restrictions.
But yes 69 cars was abit over subscribed and I would do better to limit the number of cars in future earlier than did.

Also the classes,
here I think there was alot of overlap, it had started as a modern Proxy Road race event initially with only Class A & B, then to attract a wider audience I introduced Class C Historical Theme. So retrospectively it would have been better to have structured the classes better so that the same cars, or same era cars were running in their own classes. On the otherhand I felt the Class A scalextric class only worked really well

The cars,
in regard to the types of cars entered obviously there was always going to be the faster brand cars like the NSR's and Slot it types, but again with hindsight structuring the classes better would have enabled the cars to have been separated, especially with regard to the Historic Class I can now see how this could have worked better. All of us wanted to see the like of the 60's Triumph TR4, Ford Cortina, and Galexie's fighting it out but perhaps better to have been in a separate Class than the NSR GT40's etc.
I have taken that on board.

The hosts,
I think this went really well, it could be difficult for me at times at collator, to see all the results when they were posted upside down, sideways, just too many digits in the timings    or just knowing exactly when the host was going to run the cars. So communications could have been improved but I can't fault the dedication and care taken by the hosts shown in running their stages. 

I will post abit more in a moment regarding some of the comments made on here, after a coffee.

[Mazda]

Thanks again Graham for the hard work. I am hopefully looking forward to the next event.
Of course this is in between my proxy drag racing at Brighton and the continued drag racing in America.

[Graham]

The tracks,
the intension was always to have a diverse range of tracks or track surfaces for the Roadrace, and we certainly had that, the Scalextric Sport track is relatively smooth compared to the older classic SCX or Scalextric track, the Carrera track on mine is even smoother, and the Policar tracks are definately grippier as was the Ninco tracks.
The only one of the 12 tracks I would have reservations about running again would be the painted Carrera track of Leo's.  I hope Leo won't be offended but the results on this were quite strange compared to the norm and I know that surfaces with silica or talc may well have given some difficulties with cars run on some tyres,  out of proportion with the other track surfaces.

Class winners, Team points scoring, Concours etc
I liked most of this aspect, although it did become apparent that of course one Team could have won all the classes and team Trophy, so perhaps limiting the number of classes an entrant can enter would be a better way to go in the future, so that no one entrant could potentially win all the classes. The team points system was fair I think, almost all the teams did win some points, but perhaps having fewer runners in each class (eg max 15 or 20) would enabled more of the entrants to have gained points or more points. The concours I cannot think of an obvious way to improve.

Another break

[Graham]

Host advantage
another perhaps "elephant in the room" topic, yes it was certainly apparent that Host cars ran better in the main on their own tracks Stages than during other stages, which of course is not surprising as they modelled their cars around their tracks, so apart from the Stage 3 "MYST Raceway" which was run by a host not running a car in the competition there is an argument for finding some formula which could be used to factor to dampen down this advantagious effect when using individual hosts with competing cars. I will be looking at all the data I have, and try a couple of ideas just to see how this might have changed the eventual outcome, if at all. But it is worth considering for any new event, although there maybe the opportunity to use some track club tracks in future where again the "driver" of the cars might not be running any cars themselves.

Fees
Although I set out the £8 fee as hopefully covering the inter host transport costs and cost of the Trophy etc, it would have fallen short if it was not for the generosity of the entrants who paid by cash with cars, these 8 entrants all paid £10 each even when one at least was only entering one car. This ended up with a small surplus to which I was (with abit of discount buy the Trophy winners slot car). All the other prizes and medal being supplied by our generous sponsors to which I am extremely grateful.
So I think again retrospectively the fee should have been £10 for each entrant and maybe with return postal fee added if we limit the number of entrants to a more manageable size  (as fewer entrants means less overall fees but still with the same transport costs)

Another break

[Graham]

And finally the comments made by you all,

Qman
I agree that the winners cars should be scrutineered for their hidden secrets and I will make a point of getting my magnifier glass out and even do some photos (as I want to know myself)   when the cars come back hopefully if DHL are on form this afternoon.

There are some general points though
Tyres are fundamental  requirement for keeping cars on the tracks, and some cars had tyres which were very uneven, or so hard that they were probably only good for the track the car was normally used on. And one in particular the Elise was too narrow (although perfectly in scale), it was good for a couple of laps but collected dust from the track very easily which disrupted it longer running times performance compared to almost all the other cars.
Guides needed to appropriate choice for the plastic tracks they were used on, shallow slot rails and narrow slot rail widths (even so on the modern Scalextric Sport track), meant that cars fitted with thick, long deep wood guides just were at times impossible to get round.
Braids need to appropriate to the guide being used, obviously with such a shallow slot for the classic SCX/scalex tracks, older Scalextric cars fitted with the blue guides where disadvantaged if fitted with the original wire braids, as they were only 5mm deep anyway, the wire took another 1mm off the depth. Those few which used the blue guides but changed the original wire braids for copper soft braids faired much better as the copper braids are much thinner allowing a greater depth of the guide in the slot.
Ballast - some cars entered had no ballast fitted at all, and consequently struggled more so on the Hill climb type more bumpy type tracks than other cars. Others if they did have ballast, certainly was no where near enough for these more difficult tracks.

As for why the Beamers did so badly, contact Paul Cooper his Honda Civic ran very well and they essentially are much the same car, in fact these BTCC scalex cars had the advantage of having the slot motor slightly recessed lower on the chassis on these cars, which as scrutineer I perhaps should have not allowed as they were of marginally lower track clearance than the 2mm allowed compared to other scalex models, but abit of discretion was used as these Scalex cars were fixed chassis.

one more post to come

[Scuderia_Turini]

...
Firstly I taken note of Alans request for a quick turnaround for his cars  and hopefully if they arrive back here today, they will be the first down to the post office.
 ...

As planned, the cars left here this morning (11:15) so will arrive back at base tomorrow (Thursday).

Unfortunately I didn't see Alan's request until the box had been picked up.

Leo