Race Review - 2nd round of the Le Mans Classics Championships

A quite late race review since the race took place a week ago, but here is my review of the 2nd round of the Le Mans Classics Championship. Moving the "paddock" from the inaugural event at the GT Team track to the longer straights of the CSB track, organizers were again pleased with another "full house" - 18 drivers, with some of them being new to the series! Imagine if we got them all reunited!

You would have to return to the 60's or 70's to see a race like this!

Preparing cars for the CSB track was quite a challenge. My car was completely unstable on this track, although managing to be just shy on the pace of the fastest guys around. I did what I could to try to solve this, but despite my best efforts the P4 had a strange eagerness for jumping around the track! The only option was fitting the car with a bit more ballast at the front (5 g) and fitting a shorter-than-ideal gear ratio to better deal with the external lanes.

Although this track was not as dirty as GT Team was last week, I knew that I would have to qualify for the last heat, which would not be easy since many drivers made an amazing job in preparing their cars for the unique demands from this track. So, being the championship leader, at least I had the advantage of being the last one to qualify. I had seen some drivers scoring impressive laptimes, but other favourites had some issues, so I could have a shot at the 3rd heat. So, after a quite nervous and nail-bitting qualifying minute, I did good enough to see me sitting on 4th place overall, and the spot for the 3rd heat was taken. "Phew!" was the expression...

My P4 sitting 4th place on the grid (top) and me (2nd from right) bracing myself for the inevitable (below)

The 2nd heat saw some amazing performances, with 2 drivers scoring an impressive 182 laps total. That was my main objective so far, since I would not risk chasing the other guys from my heat - all I could do was keeping my car on track and hope for the best.

That was actually took place - a nerve-wrecking race indeed. A couple of consistent performances on the first two lanes was good enough for 5th and 30 laps scored on each was a good mark. But then came my worst lane, the fast "green". Can't really explain what happened here, but my car was very unstable - I had different response at the same sections from lap to lap! I guess I had 4 or 5 errors here, what cost my a full lap or even more. 30 laps scored again, but I needed a good mark here, so it was a poor result. The move to the tricky "white" lane saw me driving for the 1st time on the "tight" side of the "Big Bend", and my nerves got even more punished here. But it went down OK, scored a much needed 32 laps to make up the loss in the "green" one. Moving to the "black" lane, some issues appeared again, but the final mark of 30 laps again was somewhat positive, given the demands of this lane. Finishing on the fast "red" lane, I needed to score 30 laps to move ahead of the 2nd heat results, and eventually scored 31. The end of the race was very well received (and even needed for my fingers - fighting my car and my adrenaline at the same time is exhausting), but I could only finish 6th, 4 laps behind the winner. Still, my fastest laptimes are very close to the fastest guys on the middle lanes, but the outside lanes were horrible.

To my help, some of the drivers that fared less better on the 1st race were present on the podium, so that mixed up the standings a bit. I'm now 4 points behind the leader (who finished 2nd twice) and tied ex-aequo in 2nd place with 2 other drivers (including the winner from this round).

So, some homework left to do before the next round at this track, but now it's the GT Team's turn. I hope for a better showing here, but having to prepare new tires hurt a bit my aspirations. Let's wait and see...


Well, this is it for this review. I'll leave you with some more pictures from the event. See you all around soon...

The podium from the race - another Ferrari beating the GT40 and 917, this time the honours were taken by a Ferrari 512 on an all-Fly models podium

Here I am, controlling the race managing system... that didn't help me much on getting a better finish! :)

Looking at these great looking Codalungas, one has to believe we're looking by the rear-view mirror on the "Gulf" Porsche 917 of Steve McQueen on the "Le Mans" movie!

More Slot Car Madness: A Fly Ferrari 512S Codalunga with HRS2 chassis...

Next on "Slot Car Madness", I present one of my longest running projects so far that is yet to be concluded. I'm really fond of Classic Cars, really. Specially the Le Mans legends, even the ones that failed to win. The Ferrari 512S "Codalunga" is one of my favorites: the looks on this car mix both the oddity and the need for speed. Plus, it's a Ferrari, a true prancing horse, no doubt.

A few months ago, when I visited a private club's track in Braga, I was almost knocked out from my feet when I saw for the first time a slot track with permanent scale lighting... I imagined the kind of races you could get there, specially since the track was built on the living room of an unused apartment: you can run "night races" even if the sun is at high noon!

So, the idea that popped into my head was re-enacting the great night racing from the Le Mans 24 Hours, but in old-fashion 60's or 70's cars! Every time I see the Steve McQueen's "Le Mans", the thing that strikes me on the night scenes, is that you can't see anything else apart from the headlights that seem to move on nowhere! I really admire those guys that had to do the full 5km Hunadieres straight without seeing anything that was a couple of inches away from their own noses...

Luckily for slot car enthusiasts, many slot car brands have dedicated some of their efforts to bring us those kind of legends. I saw the Fly's Ferrari 512S Codalunga "#5 1970 Test Car" on sale with reduced price, so I decided to grab it. I knew some of the flaws of this car, so I decided for something not too common with classic slot cars: fitting it a HRS2 chassis.

As you can see, the project is still far from finished, but the chassis is already assembled. What took most of my dedicated time on this car was the fitting of the lights kit. I purchased some very affordable kits from Amoslot (www.amoslot.de), these are very simple to build if you have some basic notions on electronic components and soldering skills (they are sold with very easy to follow instructions, by the way).

Fitting some lights to this car proved more difficult than initially imagined. The huge headlights from the 512S are big enough to house a 5mm LED. The light kits come with 3mm LED, but I replaced with the bigger ones. Another of the striking features from the 512S are the small lights at the center, and I decided to light'em up too with some small LEDs (I don't know the type, it's the ones used on cell phones). As for the rear section, I was not willing to spoil the small rear lights, so I placed the red LED a bit to the inside, with some rubber insulation from electric cabling to limit the spreading of the light.

Here are the views from the front and rear:

And this is the messy look from the wiring under the body, with the detail on the front section:

Although I don't show on the photos, I can assure you that the lights are functional. I still have to decide a couple things on the mechanical side, so that I can solder the system onto the motor and it the track with this red beast...

So far I managed to convince some other enthusiast to build their own HRS-Classics, so that we can have enough ones for that special night race - the track only has 4 lanes, so we don't need many cars!

To finish another report on odd things in my world of slot cars, I present you the next project in line... not hard to guess what I will do from this:

Racer Ferrari 312 P shown... and raced!

Racer cars are known for their really astonishing look and fine detail... but they're also known for their high price! No wonder we don't see them racing around too often! Well, sometimes you see great deals on Racer cars on the web, and that was the case when I found the Ferrari 312P bodywork and chassis for a more affordable 40 € sum - still a bit high, but nothing like those 150 € plus they cost!

The bodywork comes with less detail than the complete car, looks like a pre-finishing form. The parts for front and rear lights were missing, as for the exhaust pipes. I emailed Racer to know whether it was possible to buy those parts from them, and it was! A great costumer service from Racer.

So, it's time I show you my best looking classic slot so far:

Notice that the Slot.It motor pod and motor were not present when I bought it, this was after transformation for racing.

The details in black were added by me (cockpit windows rubber, front air inlets, engine cover and rear lights). The interior was left unpainted since time was short to prepare this car for racing - and even so, I wouldn't have painted it for racing if I had the time, but replacing it instead for a lighter interior. This one weights a ton, it seems!

From this picture, we can see the headlights, which were bought separately from Racer. Much better looking than the ugly black covers that came with the car.

As I told before, this car was born to race. While most Racer cars may find their places at the shelves of many slot enthusiasts, this one does not seem at ease there... So, the advent of a 4 Hours Endurance for Classic 60-70's cars seemed too great a chance to miss it! That race took place back in July the 4th.

I contacted a couple of Ferrari fans and one heeded my call, so together we formed the very appropriate "Scuderia Ferrari, SpA." Initially, we had some doubts about the added weight from the Racer car, so we were also preparing a Scalextric Ferrari 330 P4 and a Fly Ferrari 512 S Codalunga (one of my favorites). Rules for this race made cars with motor placed at level with the bottom side of the chassis forbidden, but an exception was made for Racer cars to help them be competitive despite the weight handicap - provided that no "offset" configuration of Slot.It motor pod was employed. Our fastest car was clearly the P4, but the 312 P was a tenth of a second shy on the lighter P4 - but way more stable and easy to drive! Our (tiffosi) hearts fell on the Racer, and so we went racing.

The outcome was rather disapointing for the Scuderia, 4th place from 6 teams, but we held the 3rd spot just minutes until the end. The podium was taken by the three Fly Porsche 917 Spyders enroled... still dominant in slot cars too, it seems. Our car had an evident lack of straight line speed and that caused some dificulties in holding off the opposition... a later measure of engine rpm saw that our motor - supplied randomly by the organisation - rated some poor 19.000 rpm when nominal figures should be 21.500 ! No wonder we couldn't perform better... but there was another team with an unlucky motor - they even had to replace since their's completely shut up!

Anyway, a great Saturday afternoon, like all our Endurances end up... this Racer still has something to show to the rest of the guys, at some later opportunity - looks like we'll have a series with these cars in September, but I'll have to conduct further tests to the P4 and this one.

I'll leave you with some photos of the race, even from the "Ferrari Memorial" we held at the track - we're hardcore "tiffosi", or not?

The starting lineup, with our 312 P qualifying in 4th place.

A great looking "mean machine" standing on the track.

Final cerimonies - 4th place seemed insuficient after cruising all race in 3rd place...

The Ferrari Memorial, with many classics parked in the grass of the last corner of the track. One of the P4 was actually the other option for the race (the one standing on clear plastic). The 312 P on the plastic base is NOT the one we raced...