Sprite Proxy Race 2018_Round 4 - Mike's Airport

[VTECFOUR]

Ran yesterday on Mike's Airport with obviously an air transport theme. Has a lot of corners of various radius with one long straightaway.















Ran three lanes, three minutes apiece at the specified 10 volts.

Results were:

#12 Austin - 43.10 laps, 11.508 seconds - fastest lap
#54 ER - 44.9, 11.078
#14 glasshorsevh - 46.80, 10.561
#75 black3sr - 47.3, 10.383
#64 HMG - 48.60, 10.717
#10 charlesx - 49.80, 9.848
#9 VTECFOUR - 51.2, 9.544
#198 chrisguyw - 51.5, 9.571
#79 TF1250 - 51.6, 9.511
#5 Doubl B - 52.20, 9.517
#60 JTPrevia - 53.3, 9.317
#16 Duke7777 - 53.9, 9.213

Congratulations to our podiumites:



1st - #16 Duke777
2nd - #60 JTPrevia
3rd - #5 Doubl B

As been the case, the cars that could slide progressively and not suddenly break out and flop at the limit, ruled the roost.

Well done everyone and especially thanks to our track host, drivers, marshals and sponsors.

Onto round 5 at Perry's Rocket this Friday, tomorrow.

Parting pics:

[waaytoomuchintothis]

What a fun-looking room! Is that 8'X16'? Maybe 8'X18'? Love the WWII aircraft overhead! Great car photos, too.

[Doubl-B]

Great job pushing these rounds through, and I like the results too!
Cudos!
BB

[JT Previa]

Soon as. I saw the airport theme, I knew DoubleB would like this track - apparently his car liked it too. Nice to see a new face on the podium, he’s been close a few times.

Another way to look at the podium: Canuck, New Englander, New Englander. :P

A big jump for VTECFOUR, too.

This track is great, well executed graphics and a perfect reminiscence of Sprites racing at airfields in the late 50s.

My polished aluminum be-finned Sprite must have felt at home with all that similarly finished aircraft hardware.

Looks like I’m “Duking It Out” for the series lead with you know who :banana-dance:

JT

PS. Love the photos, really like the three-car Black3sr team livery with ER and HMG!

[Duke7777]

Mike managed to get his track quite clean, so the grip was good. Again we elected not to clean any tires, as most cars were already tipping with little or no warning. Trying to find the maximum speed through all those turns was like threading a needle. Again, the cars that would slide a bit were much easier to hold near the limit.

JT's car was still fairly unforgiving at the limit, but cornered so well that you could leave a little margin and still turn consistently fast times. It was nice to see #5 DoubleB make the podium - his car has consistently been well balanced, and particularly liked this track. It was enough to bump #79 TF1250, a similar handling car, just off the podium for the first time in the series. Cars with good speed modulation at low-to-medium speeds did relatively well, and any tire rubbing issues, or other sources of varying friction or power surges were especially detrimental on this track.

Perry's track for tomorrow's round should provide a bit of a re-shuffling, as it is more of a high speed track. As on Luf's track, #198 chrisguyw should do well if we can keep the rubber side down.

Brian

[SuperSlab]

[Duke7777]

Alwyn displayed an uncanny ability to maximize the average speed of these little cars, on a track that I found particularly challenging for them. Normally Alwyn is a bit faster than me, but this time he just disappeared into the distance every time. Funny then how he deslots TF1250's car TWICE, and it's one of the most forgiving cars! Maybe he got bored?

[SuperSlab]

Thanks for the compliment Brian: it was just one of those days that I felt "in the zone" with these cars. I just enjoyed them way more on Mike's track than Luf's for some reason. And at Perry's this afternoon it will quite likely be a completely different story...

I still feel awful about my driving Don's car: I will have to take some kind of peace offering along for him this afternoon. Pity we do not get McLelland Single Malt whiskey around here... as long as he would have excused the slight misspelling of his name!

[black3sr]

[waaytoomuchintothis]

One more question about that room/track... Is that a red-nosed Ercoupe fuselage in the blue bin against the wall behind the driver's stations?

[JamieB]

That is a great looking track! :text-coolphotos: I'm curious of the dimensions as well.

[VTECFOUR]

Here are Mike's answers to your questions.

"My shop's 20 x 22 with a 9 foot ceiling. The track's 8 x 16 and the red primer nosed plane is a 60 size gas engine Ercoupe.
All models hung from the ceiling are 1/72 scale with about 180 planes at last count."

More pics.







The latest add-on is this vintage Good Year blimp model with a working message board. A perforated paper with messages rotates with a series of three bulbs providing back light. Unfortunately, it's only really visible with the room lights quite dimmed out. Maybe a retrofit with modern LEDs would help.



It's a very cool and unique slot car landscape theme.

Kudo's to Mike.

Dan