Home Racing World

A while back, I started a thread asking which Carrera cars were the fastest, as we were running a stock Carrera class. I am tearing out the other room to set up the "Real" track but I am taking advantage of a two week stretch of living alone by setting up a 14' x 8 ' track on the floor. I just layed out an Artin track, put four sets of jumpers on it (I like even power!) and put borders on one side. I only wired up one lane, and set up Trackmate. I spent a day or so getting things running smoothly, vacuuming up carpet fuzz and running in the track a bit. Then I spent a long Evening seeing how fast all of my cars would go. The track has one tight turn, one decent straight, a couple of shorter straights and a lot of sweepers and big fast R4 and R3 turns. At the end of the night, I took the Carreras and a few select others, and ran them off until I was sure they had all been given a pretty good lap. The cars were all stock, with trued tires. The tires were trued until they were round, not shaved to lower the car. Only a couple of the older ones had any coatings on the front wheels. The rear tires were cleaned, and the front tires were getting pretty slick and dirty by the final runs. I combed and adjusted the braids on the cars and the cars were all cleaned out and freshly lubed earlier in the week. I used a Parma Plus 35 ohm controller for all runs. A few of the cars were digital cars that were converted to analog that I got off of the 'bay. They had the circuit board and switch bypassed and the plugs directly connected together. I did this to a couple of other cars, and the effect is negligible on this track. I mixed the cars up and ran them again, to be sure they had pretty accurate fast laps. This track rewarded smooth cars with lots of downforce that could roll through the sweepers and combination turns, and that didn't have to grind to a near stop in the hairpin. It only really had one place to show hard acceleration and most of the Carreras didn't didn't hit top speed. There were no real hard braking zones, just a punch of brake at the end of the short chute into the hairpin, and a little click of brake going into the first sweeper. The results surprised me a bit, but most of the ones you guys told me would be fast, were indeed, fast. This is the result of MY driving on one specific track. (Other, older Carreras were also run, but they have been tweaked a bit, so I didn't compare their times to the stock ones.)

2014 F1 Ferrari (F. Alonso) 3.352 seconds Not allowed for our Carrera class, as cars have to have full bodies, but it sure did move. It was almost too fast for this old guy to drive.

1. Porsche 918 Black/Red 3.490 seconds
2. Cobra 3.631 seconds
3. Porsche 918 White/red 3.634 seconds
4. Jaguar "D" red 3.737 (Older car with coated fronts.)
5. C7 Corvette 3.753
6. Jaguar "D" Yellow 3.801 (Older car with coated fronts)
7.Cheetah Red 3.813
8. Cheetah Blue 3.822
9. BMW M4 DTM 3.827
10. 917K Porsche 3.871
11. Ferrari 575 3.872 Older car, slider magnet, coated fronts
12. Porsche 904 3.874
13. Corvette C6 3.890
14. VW Kafer Red 3.928
15. VW Kafer Blue 3.929
19. Porsche RSR GT3 3.996
17. Dekon Monza 4.194
18. 1957 Chevy 4.258
19. Lola T222 4.262
Porsche 935/78 Moby Dick 4.279 Older car
Porsche 935/78 Moby Dick 4.337 Older car

The two Jaguar "D"s had some pretty old rear tires, but truing gave them a bit more life. They would benefit a bit from fresh rear tires. I didn't oil or treat any of the tires for this test, just to keep things equal. I did adjust the slider magnets on them. The Ferrari 575 also had a slider magnet, as did the 935s. The 575 was missing the rear wing. The 575, The 935s and the T222 could all use some fresh tires. The Lola would pick up several positions if it were on equal tires. The Dekon Monza was trued, but I didn't grind the tire all the way until it was level. It was still running on the center part. I will save the wear and tear on the tire truer and wait until I put the XPG tires on that car to true things up. The Blue VW Kafer actually felt and seemed a touch faster than the Red one, but I ended up knocking out a killer lap with the red one that I couldn't duplicate. It was really about three or four hundredths off, not a thousandth quicker. That was about a one in a thousand chance. (But if anybody was really impressed that I was that consistent with my driving skills, that's okay too! :mrgreen: )

I am not sure why the 918s were so much faster than the rest. They did come from the 'bay, but that didn't seem to be the reason. I could just push them harder through the big, fast end of the track than any of the other cars. They really did well at rolling through the corners under power, and didn't get tail happy in the hairpin. I was on the gas sooner and harder than any other car. I think on my old track which was made up of a lot of dragstrips connected by hairpins, the Cobra, Cheetahs, Jaguars and, maybe even the 917K and Corvettes would have been right with them, or even beaten them. I did notice that the tires on the black one were about .005 smaller than the white one (Took a bit more truing to get them round) I switched rear axles between them, but it had very little effect on the times. The black one was just a serious ringer! The white one was still pretty fast with either tire. I also think the 917K will get a lot faster when it gets XPG tires. The treaded ones just didn't seem to be working as well as some of the others.

All in all, I'm glad I went on a couple of Carrera buying sprees. I am happy with all of them. I plan to get a few more DTM cars, as they seem to be a lot of fun, and several other people are racing them. I also need to get some new NASCARS to run with my old ones.

Nice report. It's fun to run your cars against each other and try to pin down which ones tear up the track and why.

My favorite Carrera to race is the Ferrari 512BB. Going against the other guys in my club, nothing could touch that car as it zoomed through the corners with very little throttle reduction. However, when a late race caution lead to a restart that resulted in a drag race to the finish line, the Porsche 918 left my 512 in the dust. There is just something about that Porsche that gives it incredible pick-up. It couldn't catch the 512 in the corners, but it seemed to have another gear on the straights. I suggest checking out a 512BB at some point as those can be a load of fun.

Yes sir, good report.

A few months back we did some good racing here and the 918 surprised us. Even in non-mag form the car is just FAST.

All of my Carreras have PG tires and among those my quickest are the Aston Martin DBR9, Corvette C6 and the Porsche 918.

You have done a lot of work to come up with your results. You might want to carry it further by testing each motor with a tachometer. Then you could put the fastest revving motor in the car that handles best. You still have a stock Carrera car but one that is optimized. But after all this, please do not be deluded into thinking that the fastest car is always going to win the race.

Very cool read! I am surprised that the Porshe 918 performed so well since I haven't heard much about it on the forums. It would be interesting to know how much magnetic downforce each car has which is most likely a big factor in the results.

Best regards,
Brian