by RichD » Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:01 am
With respect to my 1/32nd club, Shoreline Model Raceways, most of our tracks have spots that are difficult to reach, so we always have track calls in the event of a crash. All of our tracks have a single pause control button on an extension cord with a person in charge of that. If there is a crash that person might see it, or he might be looking at another part of the track, so the driver will yell TRACK!. In the case of HOCOC, which is my HO club, we always do track calls on ovals because the lap times are very low. On road courses we normally do not use track calls. The exception to that would be if we did not have enough people to marshal the track properly and the one track where there is a place that can't be reached easily. We dock a lap for each crash if we are using track calls with a maximum number being allowed before the driver is out of the race.
If you want to compare slot racing to 1:1 racing remember that a 1:1 car that has gone off the track can just drive back on if it is not seriously damaged. On a road course a disabled car would trigger a local yellow if it was off the track or possibly a full course yellow. A major accident could trigger a red flag. When a slot car crashes it is not going anywhere until it gets put back in the slot.