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When you get together with other slot racers who each have more than 1 car, how do you determine the classes for the races? If no classes, the guy with the fastest car uses it to win all the races.

We at HRW have long been known not to have any class.

When we get together we are doing it for fun.

But the truth is we all tune our models pretty much the same. So when we get together, we have some really close battles. Seems we are always talking and asking each other what gearing/motor combo each other is using and we just build/tune accordingly.

Check VSRN2 in the Lumber Yard for track photos.

http://homeracingworld.us/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8041

I expect that most clubs don't just mix up all sorts of cars when they race, they are usually divided up into classes based on the different classes of 1:1 cars. To keep things more equal a club might have a class for cars of the same make, for an example Shoreline Model Raceways had a class for Scalextric Trans Am cars. Trying to sort cars by their performance on a dyno is not likely to work very well unless you run cars with a lot of magnetic downforce. In any case what really matters is the car's lap times. We once had a class for Scalextric IRL cars that were stock except for silicone tires. We found that there were large differences in the cars. We checked all of the cars on a dyno and ran them around a skid pad in both directions. As you might expect the fastest cars on the track were the ones that were the best both on the dyno and the skid pad. If your car was down on power you had to find a better one. We did work out ways to improve the handling of the poorer performing cars so the racing became more equal.
If a person is always getting beat up on the track he is going to have to put more effort into tuning his cars and it is a good thing if the more experienced racers share their speed tips.

BTW Some of my cars are old used bodies I have purchased over the years. I have freshened them up and adapted chassis and motors to fit.

If you have a computer based timing system it will remember your best lap. If you use time trials to sort what classes the cars will be run in the cars could be driven by someone other than their owner. A person might sandbag during qualifying, but he is not likely to do that during a race if he expects to win. Even if a person sandbags during a race there is bound to be a fast lap every now and again and the computer will remember that.
If you really want to keep things equal try running an IROC style race. One way to do that is to use cars that stay on their lanes while the drivers rotate, that way each driver runs all of the cars in the same lanes, everything is equal except for the drivers.

P1010007.JPGWe just play and run all the same type cars. H&R chassis with 1800 motors, silicone tires and hard body modifieds, H&R with 2600 motors and late model dirt modified bodies. We have fun, nobody worries about winning, just having fun.

When we run drag cars they are run what you brung and we just run against our best et and dial in the handicap for the slower cars. We have fun.