G'day Guys,
Yep, as promised in another thread today, here is the GLORY OF SCALEXTRIC!
The "glory" of Scalextric is very simply this companies UTTER and ABSOLUTE domination of F1 class racing in 1/32 scale...
....It's true, no other manufacturer has seriously offered any significant opposition to Scalextric in the modern era.
Proslot? No, Ninco?, nope, SCX, a little if you turned a blind eye to their models outrageous track dimensions and the "Smokey Yunick" factor at work with their motors (Pro-Turbo plus motors WERE the swap way back). Carrera? ...I'll leave that to a bit later :)
For three of the four contenders mentioned you could pretty much say, "Thanks for coming, hope you brought a coat, its going to be cold when you wake up"! Scalextric F1's have been clinical in their domination of the 1/32 F1 class.
Naturally, Scaley being Scaley, there was always a little "fiddling" around the edges of the concept, and some models have more potential than others...
An example being the first release Williams and McLaren, most of us twigged early that the Williams was the bomb (Ahhh, and those "wet" tyres, they were sweet!). The McLaren had a little issue with the magnet pocket, it was fixable though if you had it nutted out.
Son Jake and I had a lot of success over the years with the Scalextric Toyota "Sport" F1 cars. With the amazing Mika Salo as one of the drivers featured in the release (he was brilliant, why didn't this beautiful Finn get the breaks lesser drivers appeared to), it was a no brainer for me. We had a few of these over the years, the two cars pictured are the last FC/SP club chassis we raced. They were stock, with the exception of Super Tire Yellow Dog slicks, they ran flat in the high four to flat five second lap range at club and 1.6-1.7 second laps on our home track, they were smooth and quick, we rarely were beaten.
Enter the current Scalextric FF motor era of their F1 releases...
....To be honest it had many of us stumped, Harry and I included. I can recall both of us having a chat and comparing notes about the new FF powered F1 Chassis. I had just written a review for SlotCar Outhouse featuring the new FF powered Renault (a lovely model in every way). Basically I had ripped just about every part off this thing trying to match the times set by the previous FC powered Renault release. It isn't a pretty picture seeing the angst of two slot car reviewers let me tell you!
Hence the reason why Jake and I stuck with FC powered cars for that long!
Anyway, as often happens, I started looking for that little bit more for our club cars, things were getting tighter in competition and we wanted to stay at the top of the heap.
...Enter the "walrus", this Williams was released alongside the FF powered Renault, I figured if I could tame it with a little "Smokey magic" /AKA cheating, it might be a good thing.
First thing to go was the stock rear rubber, it was replaced with Super Tires Yellow Dogs (PGT XPG's are just as good). Secondly, the stock "stepped" magnet was given the flick and replaced with a Slot.it. CN01 neo mag.
Finished model weight was 61 grams, nett downforce was a whopping 340Grams and motor speed from the stock FF motor was 14200RPM.
Wild!
Best lap was 1.5 seconds on our small four lane Scaley Sport home track.....
This was our second build, a 2004 Scalextric "Schumacher" Sport limited edition that we got from Bruce awhile back. The build was the same, nett downforce 360Grams, 14800RPM at the rear wheels. I don't know if Scalextric "grade" their FF motors and put the hot ones in the F1 cars, but this pair of FF's are wild, serious motive power!
The best we have ever got out of a stock Scaley FC motor after water dipping is 12200RPM from memory....
The Scaley Ferrari does 1.5 second laps as well on our home track but really shows its stuff on the club 18metre Ogilvy magna-braid layout, best lap there is 4.6 seconds, there is nothing in our club boxes that can match this, cheap performance for a tyre and magnet swap eh?
As alluded to earlier, there is one slot car maker that may just be able to be mentioned in the same breath as Scaley for F1 cars, that maker is CARRERA....
You see, a long time ago, I (as a fresh faced, non-jaded newbie) had the opportunity to put a (then) new Carrera F1 2002 Ferrari through its paces on our (then) much larger home layout.
What a revelation! Back then most of us accepted Carrera were a bit off the pace in comparison to many manufacturers at that time. This Carrera F1 offered performance very close to the earlier FC motored Scalextric F1 cars. IT WAS THAT GOOD!
On a large open layout, which our track was, the Carrera stock motor would run with the Scaley cars, it was quicker than Pro-Turbo SCX cars, the other two manufacturers didnt even rate a look in. About the only thing I can knock the Carrera for was the stock rubber, it was harder, therefore not as good getting the power down as either Scalextric or SCX (and stock rubber was what we used back then, IG's had only just come onto the market back then).
I wonder today if Carrera would be a match for Scalextric?
Anyway guys, the GLORY OF SCALEXTRIC is their efforts in F1 class, no other manufacturer, no matter how vaunted has dared pick up the "gauntlet" as yet...
...Maybe one day?
