Welcome to April’s first Digest…
It’s that time of the year when much of what you read has to be taken with a pinch of salt. We can safely discount Scalextric’s announcement of a new “British Road Chase” box set – complete with pot holes, roadworks and speed cameras. Airfix have also joined in with the jolly japes, announcing a 1/24 scale Avro Lancaster with a wingspan of 1.2m. We think everything else in this week’s Digest is legit…
Slot Cars
- Pioneer Legends Two new Ford Coupes are on their way from Pioneer this week. These join a very colourful grid of Ford, Chevy and Dodge Legend racers that are huge fun to drive and a little bit different for home and club racing.
- Racer Sideways Aston Martin Vantage GT3 The latest of the planned Racer Sideways GT3 cars to break cover is the Aston Martin Vantage. The white kit is due to arrive in the next week or so.
- AFX Ford MkIV Le Mans 1967 Following the huge success of their first ’67 Sebring model, four more Ford MkIV releases will follow from AFX this year. These are the quartet of cars that raced at Le Mans in 1967, starting with the gold #3 car of Mario Andretti and Lucien Bianchi.
- TeamSlot It’s been a complicated few months for TeamSlot, but they have now announced that these long-awaited Ford Escorts are due to arrive soon.
- The RS2000 XPACK “Rothmans” will be available in the UK in 15 days
- The Zakspeed Gr. 5″ DRM GOLDEN MOUNTAIN LOWE ’78” will be arriving in 10 days.
- The Zakspeed Gr. 5″ DRM NORISRING ’78” has been delayed due to decorating errors but is expected in 20-25 days
- The Zakspeed Gr.5 “Rothmans” is expected at the end of April
- Kostas Dzingovic’s Ligier-Matra JS17 Kostas Dzingovic’s Golden Era F1 slot cars are sensational works of art. His Ligier JS11/15 is rightly one of his most popular models – and it’s about to be joined by the 1981 Matra V12-powered JS17. Pictures and video of the prototype can be found on Kostas’ Golden era F1 slot cars Facebook group.
SlotRacer News Focus
- Ollie Gavin at Mugello 1996 This new livery on the Slot.it Opel Calibra V6 featured in the Digest last week. Now woodcote has taken the car, the race and Ollie Gavin’s career as the subject of a SlotRacer news focus. The post in the News section includes extended ITV highlights of both the 1996 ITC races at Mugello, plus some sumptuous photographs from Slot.it.
SlotRacer on Facebook
- Doug’s Slot Car Photography Doug continues to share examples of his breathtakingly beautiful slot car photography in the SlotRacer Facebook group. This Slot.it Porsche 962 was a highlight of the weekend’s posts. Thank you Doug!
Slot Racing
- News, Reports & Results from the SlotRacer clubs Over in our ‘Your Club’ section we have updates this week from Norwich, Viking, Manx, Worthing, New South Wales and Bury St Edmunds slot car clubs.
- DiSCA Le Mans 24hrs Taking part in a 24 hour race is certainly not for the faint hearted. But several intrepid forum members have taken up the challenge of racing at the ninth DiSCA Le Mans 24hrs. Catch up with how they got on at one of the most impressive slot car events, with BARacer’s reports, Hotlap’s updates, and plenty of photos and videos.
- Triple Crown Proxy – American Road Race The second round of the American Road Race proxy took place at Conington Park in Norfolk on Sunday. How would our intrepid bunch of a wacky racers fare on CMOTD’s track? Find out in the SlotRacer Proxy Racing section.
- UK HO Proxy Drag Racing Three more dates and some new regulations have been announced for the UK’s proxy drag racing series. In June, it’ll be two years since these ‘socially-distant’ events began. Take a look at the Proxy Racing section if you’d like to take part.
Publications
- Model Car Racing 123 The latest edition of Robert Schleicher’s Model Car Racing has just been published. As always, ePilot has the contents page and details of how to get the free sample copy and the full version – just hop over to his Magazine thread on the forum.
Video
- Miki Biasion and the Lancia Delta Integrale Taken from the Petrolicious website, rally legend Miki Biasion talks in this video about life and Lancias – and we see some of his wonderful collection in action. If you don’t understand Italian, don’t forget to click the subtitle button on the video!
Cars
- Welcome to the Jet Set Classic and Sports Car magazine takes the opportunity to compare three of the grandest of grand tourers from the late 1960s; an extremely rare Monteverdi 375L, a Ferrari 365GT 2+2, and a Maserati Mexico.
Motorsport
- GT World Challenge Europe – Imola The 2022 Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe season started with a three-hour race at Imola on Sunday. The race also saw the debut of MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi in the #46 WRT Audi R8. You can catch up on the action and follow the entire season via the official website.
- Legends Racing UK at Oulton Park The 2022 UK Legends Racing calendar kicked off at Oulton Park on Saturday. These little Yamaha-powered racers are just as fun to watch in real life as they are on the slot car track. To see what’s in store for 2022, take a look at the Legends UK website.
- Isle of Wight Speed Trials 2022 Held at the seaside resort of Sandown, the Isle of Wight Speed Trials have a long heritage. This years event took place over the weekend and saw a wide variety of machinery compete on a tricky seafront sprint course.
- NHRA Goes Four-Wide in Las Vegas The top drag racers in North America met at Las Vegas Motors Speedway over the weekend to compete in the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. You can catch up with action on the NHRA website. And talking of Las Vegas…
- F1 Goes to Vegas Yes, Las Vegas will host a Formula One Grand Prix in 2023. This one won’t be tight and twisty around a hotel car park, but will be full-on razzle-dazzle down the world-famous Vegas Strip. Check out the Las Vegas 2023 website for more images and info. And we’re pretty sure it wasn’t April Fools Day when this was announced.
- Cadwell Park Stages The final round of the 2021-2 Motor Sport News Rally Championship took place at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire on Sunday. Competition was fierce in what was a title decider for the circuit-based championship. You can follow the action as it happened on the MSN Rally Championship Facebook page.
