Solo Racing

[vonsirius]

Does anyone here race alone?
If yes, what kind of race you do? I mean point systems or whatever.

[HomeRacingWorld]

I race myself against the timer. Try to best my lap times. It's a fun way to run solo. It's why a lap timer is well worth the cost for those of us that are solo most times.

I still come in second...not sure how :)

[DManley]

I just have a spreadsheet with all of my cars in it. I use a timing system on my laptop. I pick out a car, and I try to beat its fastest 2 minute run. Some nights, I try running two or three minutes on each lane and taking total laps, just like I would be doing in a real race. I do allow myself a mulligan on one lane if I have a real problem, as I have to self marshal. Other times, I have the spreadsheet sort the cars by speed, and I take a car and try to tune it to beat a car that was ahead of it on the spreadsheet. Then they end up switching places. Once, I had a whole day to kill, so I took four cars that I was tuning to make a matched set. I set up four identical controllers, and put one car in each lane. Then I ran three minute runs with each car. Then, I moved each car ahead a lane, just like racers rotating in a real race. I ended up driving all four cars in each lane and recording the results. (Four cars times four lanes equals 16 three minute runs!) After looking at which cars did best in which lanes, I tuned them a little bit and re ran the whole test. This helped me set up the four cars for IROC racing so that the car were placed in lanes that gave them almost identical times. With the faster cars in the slower lanes, the IROC race stayed close for all four segments!

Other times, I just go through the spreadsheet over the course of a few days, trying to make a faster run with each car. I usually start with the slowest ones, and progress to the fastest. I just keep track of where I left off, and make a two or three minute run with each car in a specific lane. I have columns in the spreadsheet for the best two, three and five minute runs in all four lanes, the fastest lap in each lane, the fastest overall lap, and the fastest four lane "Race" at two and three and five minutes per lane. (Sometimes our club goes two, sometimes three, sometimes five) Of course, any time I work on a car, or modify one to a faster class, I run it and watch the spread sheet sort it into its new place. I also try to run the cars in all four lanes, lest I have one really rubbered in lane and three greasy ones! When I had to move my track, I was finishing up making a batch of two minute runs with every car in red. Next, I was going to run them all in yellow. I always made sure I had done an equal number of two, three or five minute runs with all of the cars in all four lanes before going back to my favorite lane again.

One funny thing I learned was that my old track gave a lot of cars their quickest lap in the two middle lanes (This is to be expected) fairly evenly split between blue and white, but certain classes and types of cars seemed to like one lane over the other. About a dozen of my cars had their quickest lap in red! (Gutter), but no car ran the fastest lap in yellow. Several cars, though had their fastest three and five minutes in yellow! No car had a fastest five minute run in Red. My track had a bridge, so all of the lanes were equal length, but the two gutters had very different challenges. There was one R1 turn in each direction. The esses and the increasing/ decreasing turns made the challenges in the two gutters very different. Red was tricky to drive, but if you were perfect, you could get a killer lap out of it. Yellow was a bit slower, but more mellow and repeatable from lap to lap. Very few people would make three minutes in red without making a few mistakes.

With my new layout, I have to start over. I think I will just record all of the runs at three minutes instead of the three different "race" lengths. That will make the spreadsheet a lot easier to manage. The bad thing is I am going to make the new track bi directional. I will have to keep a second section in the spreadsheet for reverse direction.

Of all of the formats, one of my favorites is taking a car and tweaking it to beat the time of a similar car that is ahead of it on the spreadsheet. I make sure to spread the love and work on all of my cars over time though. I usually keep track of which cars haven't been run lately. For me, tuning and tweaking is a big part of the game. Since I do race with other people, it is a good idea to keep improving my cars.

[HomeRacingWorld]

[Half Fast Slotter]

The reason you (and I) always come in second when racing alone is strangely because of the '2001 A Space Odyssey' on board computer Hal. Hal got grounded from spaceflight as a result of disobeying humans. He now occupies all slot car software in the universe and continues to carry out his evil anti-human plots. I can just hear him in his soft 2001 movie voice saying, "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't allow your 1969 Camaro to beat the 1970 Mustang ghost car".

[glasshorsevh]

Solo racer? Yup about 99.75% of the time if you don't count 1/32 scale plastic and resin people. Not a fancy setup, Scalextrix Sport 37ft. circuit. I use two 14v PM power packs (one for each lane) and I swap out one of my PM controllers with an old Model Motoring HO steering wheel to set a ghost car occasionally. I mostly run my cars against a Scalextric ARC timer and keep a database as to the times for tuning purposes (the ARC systems have real potential if they were to expand the software capabilities just a bit which really wouldn't be hard to do). Since entering my first proxy race this year, I have found that to be a real boon for solo racers. If you haven't done that before, I strongly recommend finding one in your interest area. Great fun.

Half Fast... you are seriously weird dude... but we want to hear more..

[DManley]

I also used to use the "Tape on the rail" trick. Set up a car with better magnets than the one you are running, and set the power up to where the car falls off of the tightest turn on its lane. Stick a five or six inch long piece of tape over one of the rails going into that turn. You might have to tape another inch or two at the apex, or on the exit of the turn to keep it from crashing on exit. Then turn up the voltage until it crashes on the next turn, and tape that turn. You don't need to get it up to full voltage, or tape all of the turns, just the tighter ones. It lets you run a ghost car that is actually a little smarter than one cruising with no input.

If you do this, I do NOT suggest using clear tape. It can be easy to miss a piece when taking it off and if you do it the night before a club race, you can be accused of some horrible stuff!

[arroldn]

Solo 100% have yet to find anyone in Nashville. I do host oval proxies. I may need to take a look at the ARC system.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Well, I can assure you that most time spent at the track is doing the same thing. No timer, just enjoying the car. Perhaps a sand session here, front axle or float adjust there to keep dialing out any chatter/hop.

I had set out to time my latest Brass-Am Cougar against another with standard chassis to see how close they were. Just didn't happen. I ended up with a trackside full of cars as I just kept on comparing them on smoothness and simply the sight of it :)

[chappy]

Sometimes I run against the clock to get a fast time, but more often than not I open a drawer and pull out a few cars and just turn laps. Use a sticky to note what tuning it could use and the time it ran. Then back in the drawer. Then onto, the next drawer and same thing. I domeach car at least twice a year, then I look at the notes and do a bit of tuni g to, see if I can correct the car so it runs better.
just love doing laps and I often downsize motors for more fun on cars that are too fast.
I even slid some BWA NC1 motors into some slot it cars and a bit slower but still a blast to drive.
Bob

[dreinecke]

[MikeyAutobahn]

Solo racer here. Pretty much the same. I like to tune and run laps, then set up a series for my cars to compete in. I rug race currently, so I make a fresh track for each race with different challenges. Then I document all of it and keep a running score. And by running a series of 20 races or so, it keeps things interesting in the long run. I just finished one that ended up going down to the last race before a champion was decided. That's pretty cool.
Doing a series of races also helped me to focus on adjustments and modifications to the cars for competition's sake, instead of just to run laps. One car would win, and I'd spend the next day working on getting the other cars faster. It always went up up up. Fun.

[borninthe50s]

I'm embarrassingly guilty. Solo almost all the time. I've gone to so far as to build a digital track with a computer program that allows me to record laps with my fastest cars and race them with my other cars (variable throttle pace cars). 50s

[glasshorsevh]

[waaytoomuchintothis]