April 2019 Meeting
On April 3rd, the Wessex Section held a slot car racing evening at Millstream Raceway in Ringwood. The Raceway is one of the premier slot car racing venues in the country with two huge eight lane tracks, one of which is apparently the largest in Europe at 205 ft long.
A group of 19 enthusiastic Wessex slot car racers gathered, all eager to relive their younger days playing with Scalextric.
After a period of practice, the food arrived and we were treated to Pie and Mash courtesy of Matt at Bournemouth Pies.
After that, Bob Henderson, who manages the Raceway, organised us into teams for an hour of frenetic racing with flying driver changes within the teams and a series of continuous heats with teams moving across the different lane positions (thus balancing any benefit from “better” lanes).
Those not driving were kept busy acting as marshals, putting the cars back on the track after the frequent spins offs and pile ups !
The computerised lane counter kept track of proceedings and, after each team had driven all eight lanes, the winners were declared on the basis of the most laps driven.
The podium positions were :
1st Graham Vail and Stephen Paddock 363 laps
2nd Mark Crookall and Murray McCartney 358 laps
3rd Tracey Culver and David Duckenfield 354 laps
The best lap time of the evening of 8.56 seconds was achieved by Mark and Murray which equates to 16.3 mph or, given the track is 1/24 scale, a scale speed of 392 mph !
To put this in perspective, Bob then demonstrated one of his “serious” winged slot cars which weighed just 72 g and has all sorts of aerodynamics features for down force. This lapped in around 4 seconds for a scale speed of around 840 mph !
A most enjoyable evening was had and we record our thanks to Bob for organising the evening and to Matt for the pies !
