[RC Racing] RC car racing pictures

[KC]

Here is a link to a photo album from pictures I have taken from this summer's racing in Tulsa, OK. All are touring car parking lot racing. More than a few depict the cars in less than optimum racing positon!

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4292225605

[Herminator]

nice pics, but does any one there know how to avoid the corner markers? I bet some wings were ripped off or a few nasty imppacts were had on the bottoms of chassis. We have just got some wooden posts to mark out our track, and to avoid damadge we wraped foam pipe insulation around the corners, it helps but you can quite often find the inside front tyre get enough grip on it to lift the car up and if you are unlucky it will roll you onto the roof. No sumasualts like yours though.

[KC]

That particular corner was the only one with corner dots. we used to use 12" plow disks but have moved away from them as they were great for launching cars. We use 2 pieces of flexible fibrous mudflap material to connect our track and leave a 8 inch gap. It acts as a soft bumper. most of these crashes occured because the drievrs are pretty new, they centered up on one of the Tamiya dots, or struck the barriers away from the corner.

I have raced a fe wtimes in Wichita and they had some 36" plow disks on their huge track. These things were about 8" tall in the middle. I stayed the hell away from them.

[Herminator]

I bet you did, that would of been annoying though, loosing sight of your car at a corner, we have just put some buckets with sand bags in them at the hairpins of our course and I find it annoying when I cant see exactly what my car is doing as it is half way around an important corner. All too easy to turn into the corner too soon and find you are trapped on the other side of a bucket so you have to reverse into the traffic.

[KC]

Is it common for racers in your area to run reverible ESCs? We do not allow them because no one wants a car to back onto the track in front of them. Also, most of the reversible ESCs are noticeably slower than pure forward only race models.

[Herminator]

Don't allow them? thats nutz. The speed difference is not an issue for us as the hall is small so high speedds would be wasted. Nearly every one has a reverse, only one guy who spends a fortune on stuff and mainly races at other places. What would be worse, someone reversing on the track, or a marshal trying to get from the side of the track to a car stuck in the middle. A marshal would be an obsticle larger than a car and he would obstruct your view. Plus it is very annoying to loose tens of seconds rather than just a couple if you had a simple spin into a barrier. Thankfully most people have the curtisy to wait till any cars are past before reversing onto the racing line, it can also help them reverse off the racing line to avoid a crash. Do your clubmates enjoy hitting each other off or something? We only ever try that on practise nights, hehe.

[KC]

That is typical of most race tracks in the US. ROAR and NORRCA, our two largest sanctioning bodies, do not allow them and nor has any track I have ever raced at. Dealing with turn marshal is much easier than a car that suddenly backs up off the wall on the straight. Turn marshalling is a part of the duty of the racer. If a car is stuck the marshall must wait for any approaching cars to pass before retrieving it. Marshalls on the track must try to maintain a low profile by crouching down to avoid blocking the racers vision. Sometimes marshalls get struck by an errant car just as I am sure that backing cars get hit. However, I have seen far too many reversible units lose a FET and cease to work so I would never spend any money on one for racing.

I know we can't chalk it up to crashing less becasue I am sure we have shunts as regularly as anyone. It does however make you think about the consequences of crashing. On a small track it will likely cost you a lap. On our bigger outdoor one it can cost you around 5 seconds to be righted.

Our outdoor track is around 100 feet long and 60 feet wide. the indoor track is about 50 feet long and 30 feet wide. It is usually more suitable for 12th scale cars. How large is you local track?

[Herminator]

well our hall is about 18 meters by 12 meters, so the the acutal track is about 3 meters wide. In such a small hall you can easily loose three quarters of a lap if you crash and have to wait for marshals dodge the traffic. It is very slidy too so you can easily find yourself facing the barriers, the couple of guys without reverse can easily loose a couple of laps in a race. Especially the younger guy who just doesn't know how to back off and drive within the cars or his own limits, he looses a lot more time infact. On such a small track we only have 5 or 6 guys on at a time and there are more crashes due to racing each other than there are reversing into oncomers. We obviously still have marshals, for any flips etc. but the less time they obstruct the view the better, since we only stand on a bench which is about a foot off the ground.