by Arie Viewer

You’ve bought that first slot car race set and expanded it into a good-sized layout.  You’ve equipped your track with a lap counter so you can tell who’s ahead. You’re having a great time running cars on your track, and you have a group of friends or family members who are enjoying it with you.  Then somebody says, “Why don’t we run some real races?”    Real races.  That means racing rules.  And you have no idea what they should be.  In particular, you don’t know how to ensure that the racing stays simple, easy, inexpensive, fair, and above all, fun.  Actually, it’s not hard at all and we’ll tell you here what you need to know to get a good start.

First of all, this article is about conventional slot car racing, the kind in which each car runs on its own lane and the number of cars you can race at one time equals the number of lanes on your track.  There is another, newer form of the hobby, called digital, in which electronic circuitry in the cars and controllers allows as many as six or even eight cars to run on a two-lane track, changing lanes to overtake and pass.  Digital racing is growing in popularity but is still a relatively small part of the market.  Many of the basic principles in this article also apply to digital racing and all the cars mentioned can be converted without too much difficulty.  However, the specifics of the article all refer to conventional racing.

Everything you do, from a technical standpoint, should be intended to make the racing as easy, inexpensive and, of course, fun as possible and to give every participant a genuine chance to be competitive.  The place to start is to put some intelligent restrictions on car preparation, controllers, track design, and power supplies.  You don’t want your racers to have to spend long hours at the workbench and large sums of money just to have a chance at winning.  You want it to be fun, not work.

However, you probably have already seen that there are different skill levels and racing preferences represented in your group of enthusiasts.  Also, you don’t want to race the same cars all the time.  Variety is, after all, the spice of life. So, here are three racing classes designed to provide a variety of challenges and performance levels while still keeping things simple and keeping costs down.