F1 Proxy - Round 5: Pebblestone Model Car Circuit

[gascarnut]

18 cars arrived late last week in another of Audi1's magnificently-packed boxes, ready to do battle in round 5 of the 2019 F1 Proxy.

After a short test of all cars to ensure there had been no damage during transit (there was none!), I decided that I would get on with the qualifying so that we can keep the interest and the momentum going.

First, the track:

119 Under lights 02.jpg

PMCC is a three-lane wood track with non-magnetic braid. The surface is painted with UMA, a specially modified acrylic paint that provides good grip for all types of tire compounds, but particularly for rubber. Power is from a Pyramid adjustable Power Supply, set for qualifying to 10 Volts as requested by the Proxy Organizer. Controllers are Professor Motor diode units with adjustable sensitivity and brakes. All lanes are the same length, but the outer red lane is about 2 tenths faster than the center blue lane, and it is in turn about the same amount faster than the inner yellow lane. Lap scoring is by Trackmate with a light bridge.

I ran each car in the center lane for 1 minute in the Trackmate Qualifying mode. The cars were driven in random order after making sure that the track was clean enough that the early cars did not suffer loss of traction. Each car's tires were cleaned on a sticky pad and the braids checked for alignment and cleanliness. No other maintenance was done. If a car de-slotted during its run, I paused the time and re-slotted the car then continued. If a car came off int he last 10 seconds or so, I let the time run out, as most cars had already recorded their best laps early in their session.

Here are the results (I don't have records right now of who owns each car, so this is purely by the numbers):

Qualifying.JPG

Note that Car #31 is the #3 Mercedes, and car #51 is the #5 Renault, to distinguish them from the #3 Red Bull and #5 Ferrari respectively.

There are some really nice cars in this group, I was surprised at how much speed can be extracted on 10 Volts! The spread of times is however bigger than I have seen in some other proxies. Perhaps the lower voltage amplifies the differences in tuning and set up. Some cars struggled with grip, some have noisy gears, some have some drive train chatter. I will try to provide more detailed feedback later.

I hope to get enough drivers to run the actual race this upcoming Saturday, March 30, so more news later in the week.

Good luck to all!

[Brumos RSR]

Thank you Dennis for the qualifying round. Congrats, Steevee, ChrisGuyW and Aloha on qualifying 1-3. Good luck to all the builders on race day

[Aloha]

Dennis thank you for the Q run. Have fun they look like a great field
Aloha
Dale

[Modernslots]

Dennis, Thanks for the quick work on qualifying. Great looking track- Looking forward to the race!
Rob

[gascarnut]

Race day has arrived!

I will try to update this thread as we go through the heats today, but for now, preparations have begun, and the first drivers are expected here in 90 minutes or so. Cars have all been checked out, oiled, braids cleaned and treated, and tires cleaned on a sticky pad. The tire cleaning will be repeated before each car is raced.

Good luck to all.

Dennis

[Brumos RSR]

:banana-dance: :banana-dance: :music-rockout: :music-rockout: :banana-dance: :banana-dance:

[Audi1]

Always fun to run at PMCC! Looking forward to the results!

Thanks, Dennis.

Allan

[gascarnut]

Well, as the sun sets on a beautiful SoCal spring day where the temperature was in the mid to upper 70s, we have completed round 5 of the F1 Proxy.

6 drivers were used today, each driver drove each car for two minutes so the cars got 12 minutes of racing each. We split the pack into two groups so that no-one had to stand at the podium for more than 9 heats at a time - none of us is getting any younger I'm afraid! No-one apart from me had driven the cars before they were placed on the track, so it was a tribute to the drivers that we had some really close and high quality racing, very few crashes overall. This was probably helped by the lower track voltage too.

Here are the final scores:

1. Car #19: 107.30 laps
2. Car # 10: 107.05
3. Car #5: 106.25
4. Car #3: 106.05
5. Car #17: 105.25
6. Car #7: 105.10
7. Car #27: 104.35
8. Car #15: 102.20
9. Car #31: 100.75
10 Car #44: 99.65
11 Car #87: 97.75
12 Car #57: 97.55
13 Car #33: 95.90
14 Car #51: 95.85
15 Car #4: 95.25
16 Car #23: 95.05
17 Car #12: 94.0
18 Car #13: 92.15

Congrats to the podium cars!

A couple of photos of the action:

IMG_20190330_161518.jpg

IMG_20190330_161536.jpg

There were very few breakdowns or breakages in the race. Car #33 had a pinion come loose, so we corrected that with some red Loctite and the car continued the heat, with just the segments of a lap lost between the time the pinion slipped and the time we hit the track call button. Then one of the Mercedes cars, #44 I think, lost part of its front wing but that was repaired after its race was done. The #13 Ferrari has a very badly twisted chassis. I tried to flatten it by loosening then re-tightening the screws, but it takes the same set again.

Otherwise all cars ran perfectly. Well done to everyone who sent in a car, we were pleasantly surprised by the performance, as we seldom run F1s here in head to head racing. I think we will do more in the future. If anyone wants more feedback, let me know and I will try to provide it from my memories of qualifying and then racing the cars.

Onward to round 6 wherever that might be.

[Aloha]

Dennis and team thanks for spending time on your weekend to run our cars. Congrats to the podium finishers.
Aloha Dale

[Brumos RSR]

Thank you Dennis and your team for running the round. Sure looks like there was fun along with close racing. Congratulations on the win Audi1, another great podium for SteeveeW and Rleog, I knew your car was a contender. Looks like the shuffling continues which makes for a fun proxy. I apologize for the use of time for a the plastic pinion fix on the #33, I do thank you for the repair. I hope it was not too much of a bother.

Also NICE watches guys!

[Rleog]

Thank you to Dennis and crew for running and reporting this round in such a timely fashion. After placing 4th three times in prior races, #5 just barely squeezed past Josh’s Red Bull to claim the 3rd place on the podium.

No gloating going on here but I couldn’t help but notice that three of the top four cars are from New England. It’s cause for regional celebration. Hats off to Allan, Steve and Josh too.

My thanks to the players in Irvine, California. Well done, guys.

[Audi1]

Thanks to Dennis and the other Pebbleheads for running this Round for us!

That's a fast track; 10V or not and I think that we've all seen by now that these fragile little Formula 1 cars can take a full proxy series if we moderate the power (motor and voltage), which I think is nice, because these cars are fun to run and too often they end up being shelf queens because of the potential for totaling them in racing.

Congrats to Steve (steeveew) and Bob (relog) on their podium finishes! :handgestures-thumbup: :handgestures-thumbup: I see my check arrived in time for the race...……….

Allan

[Old23]

Dennis, and your team, thanks for the race. Do you have any impression of what is wrong with old #23? Speed or handling? Whatever it is, it seems to be getting worse.
Congrats to the podium winners.
Stewart

[GAS41T]

Thanks for the round ....congratulations podium getters

Yes
Some comments on my machine would be great thanks Dennis

Rossko

[gascarnut]