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Welcome Race Fans to the Pebblestone Model Car Circuit, located on a patio behind my garage in Irvine, Southern California.

Round 5 of this year's HRW TransAm Proxy will take place on Saturday August 31, starting around 2:00pm PDT. We will have a group of experienced Proxy drivers drawn from various clubs and commercial tracks in and around Los Angeles and Orange County.

Today, I completed the Qualifying. THis was executed on the center Blue lane as always, running each car for 1 minute and recording both the distance covered and the fastest single lap. While it's only the lap that counts, the distance gives a good indication of how consistent and predictable a car is, as well as how it stays in the slot. Each time there was a deslot, I paused the Trackmate system to re-slot the car, then continued.

Before I post the results, a few comments:

As is my habit, I checked some of the main rules against the cars as there were some that seemed to me to be non-conforming. There was basically only one rule that was contravened, and that was the rule that required a maximum wheel width of 8.5mm even though tires were allowed to measure 11mm across the sidewalls. No cars were outside this 11mm, but the cars shown with asterisks in the results have wheels ranging from 9 to 11mm wide. There's no penalty for this, but I thought I would mention it for future reference.

Then, there were a few cars that needed some attention, for loose interiors and other miscellaneous items. One car had its body held on with magic tape as it had lost all its body screws (holes in the body too big for the screws.) In this case, I filled the holes and re-drilled them to allow the screws to bite again.

Now to the results:

Qualifying times and comments.JPG

The original Excel file is also attached for those who like such things.

Congratulations to Allan on his dominant qualifying - that car is truly amazing. A great performance too by Smokeio, although we expect it from his cars, and to Dariusz, a very well set up stock frame and the fastest car on urethane tires.

Looking forward, hopefully Saturday will be a little cooler than today, it was around 95 degrees when I started qualifying!

More later.

Dennis, thank you for the qualifying and as always, the notes are appreciated. Congratulations fast builders up front, Allan, Smokieo and Raderek. Good luck to all the builders on race day.

Thanks Dennis,
Man a whole lap off the pace. Out of my 3 Cudas this was the best on my track. Back to the test lab.

nice to see the proxie back on pace. lets go racing boys.....

Thank you Dennis

Great to race on this track again. Super happy with my qualifying results. If Allan is first and Smokeio second I can't ask for more ...

Great news to finish this perfect weekend...
Thx

Radarek

Dennis
Thank you for the quali and review. To the other competitors I would be happy to send up another tire/wheel set. Congrats to the top 3 and all those who entered.
I am confident Dennis and his group will put on a good shoe.
Aloha
Dale

Just saw this post - very happy with the Qualy results - let's see what the race brings...…(?)

Mike - check's in the mail...……..!

Allan

Haha! My retirement account is starting to look a little lean...………..

Allan

Is today race day?

Allan

Yesterday was race day, and six intrepid racers braved the 95 degree heat to run the cars. There was some great racing and a lot of close finishes in mid-pack. More details and photos later today.

OK, here we go!

Round 5 is in the books and it was another great one. The weather was hot, but the racing was hotter. The drivers did an excellent job of extracting the best from all the cars. With 6 drivers available, we ran each car twice on each lane for two minutes at a time, to give a total of 12 minutes of racing per car, with all 6 drivers racing each and every car.

Results:

Final results.JPG

As always, the Excel file is also attached.

Congrats to the Podiumites as always, with some very fine cars. As you ccan see, there were some close finishes down the order a bit, separated here by their fastest race laps.

A couple short videos for your entertainment:





There are a few cars that had some issues during the race. Car #22 stopped at one point, as a result of a broken leadwire right at the guide, but this was easily repaired. Then one car sucked a piece of the strapping tape holding its interior into its gears, so that had to be corrected. Another car got a screw caught between the guide and the chassis, but we discovered that before the heat started, so no time was lost. I still have not found where the screw came from! Finally, Car #11's gears got noisier all day long and I am not sure they will last another race. The next host may want to turn the spur gear around on the axle to mesh with a different segment of the pinion, but that will only be a temporary fix, as the mesh is way too loose.

Thanks to all who submitted cars, we had a blast driving them.

Onward to Round 6

Dennis, thank you for the run. Congratulations Allan, Smokieo and Mseitz! Also great work to all the builders who finished better than their orginal thought.

Thanks for hosting Round #5 for us at Pebblestone Model Car Circuit, Dennis! Great job with the qualy and the race itself! Twelve minutes per car is a lot of racing in 95 degree heat.

Congrats to Mike (smokeio) and Marcus (mseitz) on their podium finishes! :text-bravo: :text-bravo:

The next Round takes us west to the Hawaiian Islands where Dale (aloha) is ready to host Round #6 on his new track in Honolulu - Koolau Raceway. Dale, please have a look at the gear issue that Dennis described with Darius' (radarek) #11 car, discuss it with him and make the necessary adjustments; thanks.

An all expense paid vacation for our slot cars in Hawaii...…...not bad!!

Thanks again to Dennis and the Pebbleheads for a great Round!!

Allan