Home Racing World

Yesterday we tried out running some races using the IMSA championship as a guideline. During the season the cars were given a "balance of power" adjustment and at the end of the year a lot of teams were still in contention.

So this was the rules we laid out;

1. If you wreck or cause a wreck you throw in a chip. 6 chips per race- crash and burn. When you are out of chips you are out of the race with a totaled car.
2. Cars are vintage road coarse racers. Mostly what we run anyway.
3. One magnet.
4. Fuel will be turned on during the races. 50 lap heats.
5. Starting power level is 13, braking is 10 and fuel is 14.
6. Fastest best lap has to lose one point of power after each race. Lowest power setting is 11. Once you are at 11 and still running fastest lap you can choose to give up tank capacity or braking.
7. Slowest best lap time can pick to improve power, braking or tank capacity.


We are running the 1/24 cars with one magnet only. We had a very light turnout, mostly because a lot of the guys were busy.

Using the software from Bruce Yingling, it is possible to adjust factors in the software. it also keeps tracks of scoring with several adjustable parameters, such as fastest lap, most laps led, etc.

The first race was pretty close, but I jumped out to a big lead with a win, best lap time, and most laps led. So my power was dropped to 12. Next race my lap times increased because the car seemed to handle better and spin out less. My power was dropped to 11. It was still a very close race, but it got a lot more challenging..............

The rest of the races were extremely close, as after each race the minor adjustments came in to play. At the end of our 6 race season the top 2 scores were 161 points each. I think it is almost impossible to get any closer racing action than this. One race had best lap times separated by 1/10,000 of a second. All races had very close finishes.

The race was often determined by pit stop strategy and very careful driving. Even drifting around a corner cost me the tiniest fraction of a second that might mean the difference between winning and losing.

This format is quite different, but does a good job of handicapping between cars and drivers.

The Yingling software does fuel, braking and power in 15 steps. It has a lot of variables you can select, and you can customize the scoring too. When you hit the start button to begin a race it somehow takes over and adjusts everything.

Another feature I thought might be useful is the minimum lap time feature. It is similar to bracket racing in a way. You can set a time and all laps faster than that time are not counted. This way if your group decided to run a class of cars that are supposed to be running in a certain range, you can set the software to ignore laps faster than that. Sort of like breaking out of your bracket in drag racing.

The breakdowns are kind of neat but we usually turn them off. It just became too much of a factor in who wins and loses. I know this is realistic, but it was not fun for someone to be winning with 3 laps to go and have their motor blow up causing them to lose the race.

I like that system!!!!!!!!!!
Might have to adopt that, or a version, at HPRA.