Pitlane Review
In general I am very pleased with our first attempt at a Grand Prix, very much more difficult to plan than the Road Race because of the diversity of the construction of the cars through the era's and how that relates to scale models. Also very difficult to get the balance right regarding comparative running performance of a mixture of slimline and S-Bell type motors. But so far they look quite evenly matched, so we shall see what happens over the series. A little disappointed that there was fewer entrants this time, but I have set a target that as long we get 10 or above entrants it is worth putting the event on. I think I did not space these events out well, and that meant that entrants perhaps felt "taken by surprise" in regard to having the Road Race & Grand Prix following on so soon afterwards. Obviously the next one in the series will be later in October, so there is time for a breather before then. In regard to the classes and technical specs, again I am fairly happy with them, apart from the Class D Track width, which on reflection should be wider (not sure now why it ended up at 62mm, as I thought I had measured similar cars to the ones presented which were within that range}. So whether it was a straightforward error or not I can't remember now.
Hopefully as we see how the series pans out it will provide us with some close results again and be interested for all the entrants and audience to follow. We have 3 new Tracks to run on, so that will provide us with that additional dimension of uncertainty.
Good luck to all the entrants!
There was some cars which needed attention before I started, The engine had popped out of the chassis on the Renault R28 which I have hot melt glued in. The Tyrell 008 had an issue with the Crown gear not fully in contact with the pinion, so i have added a thin spacer between the gear and the wheel bush. otherwise I think after a couple of rounds the nylon pinion would have been destroyed. The braids on several of the cars were not making good contact with the track contact rail, which needed attention.
The Shadow has a rear wing that tends to become detached, so I have put a little blue tack on the location holes. My own Mercedes W196 became fatally damaged with the flimsy chassis/ slot it pod set up, so I substituted an original Cartrix chassis back onto the car and transferred all the working parts over to it.
And finally the Dallara was full of rubber in both the crown and pinion gears, although I did not realise this at the time of making the timed run, afterwards I opened it up and cleaned it out before sending it on for the next round.
I decided to use the total 20 lap run time as the primary measurement on this Proxy, with "Fastest Lap" as the secondary measurement, which I think is a better measurement of the cars all round handling abilities.
There was a few surprises, in particular I was impressed with both Team Cubes Scarab & Williams FW40 handling, for different reasons. The Scarab is a resin body car and actually kept up with the Cartrix Mercs quite well. And the Scalextric very long wheelbase Williams looks like a standard car but seemed to be very competitive on my smallish bendy Carrera track. The Mclaren MP4/13 is another out of the Courtney Sport stable of super running Proxy cars, so not too surprised this ran very well. Just waiting for his Cooper Climax to eventually arrive, which will give me some headaches in the Class B class I think.
And finally although not so competitive, it was indeed a great pleasure to run the beautifully prepared cars of Rokers Roar and RNLI in the Classic classes, I hope all the hosts will really look after these cars well, they deserve to be treated carefully during the series and I am delighted they were entered which gives us the opportunity to admire them.
So we are off to Goldrock next, the cars have been collected and should arrive there tomorrow (fingers crossed)
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