In the first race I entered with Hugh Ellsworth's modified American Line car, I completed 256 laps after two rounds of four minute heat races. I DNF'd in the last heat race with a broken lead wire. I was completing around 36 laps per heat, which if I had completed the last heat I would have completed roughly 292 laps for the race. My fastest lap time was a 5.061 second lap in the blue lane. I finished eighth out of eight, or more commonly known as DEAD LAST!
I entered the second race with nothing more than a new set of rear tires and repaired lead wires. I completed 343 laps with a fastest lap time of 4.890 seconds. An improvement for sure, but still only good for seventh place out of ten racers. But I finished and I wasn't dead last!
After the second race Howie invited me over for some testing and tuning. Help I very much appreciated! After three or four hours of adding, subtracting, and moving weight around, changing multiple sets of tires, and a motor swap to a Hawk 7 from the Falcon 7 I had been running, things were looking better! By the end of the test session I had my lap times down to 4.3 second range in the blue lane. Chassis changes included locking the front end down to eliminate any movement of the front axle, and side pan movement had be limited.
In the third race I realized two things right off the bat. My car was now competitive, but it was much faster than anything I was used to and I hard a very hard time keeping up with it. I could run with the quick guys, but only for a couple laps before I started losing control, usually resulting in crashes. But the car performed well! I completed 373 laps with a best lap time of 4.280 seconds. Good enough for sixth out of the eleven racers entered.
I have a couple chassis tuning mods to try for the next race, but mostly I need to improve my driving skills. I have made progress with each race and I hope to improve in the next race. To date Hugh's car has proven to me that even the "old school" cars can still be competitive, even after all these years of slot car development!
