Racers arrived to an unseasonably warm day at the track on Saturday, February 7. The track-surface temperature was 76 degrees F, and the clubhouse temp was near or just above 80. I think many of us were feeling a little overdressed by the end of the race. This racer expected the higher track temperature to have some impact on the race times, but in reality it seems to have had little effect.
One thing that definitely has an impact on the racing is the voltage. We run our Group A series at 12v and Group B at 10v. Group A being tailored to more experienced racers, and Group B for newer racers and racers who aren’t comfortable with the demands of the higher voltage on both tuning requirements and reaction times. A noticeable difference between the two levels is the standard deviation of lap times between the two. In this first round, the Group A racers saw a 0.694 second standard deviation in lap times, where the Group B racers saw a standard deviation of 0.588 seconds. A 0.106 difference in favor of the Group B class for driving consistency. To be fair, we are all racing these cars for the first time, and more than one car in Group A was showing its first-race jitters as racers come to terms with setups.
Corvette’s dominated the field in this first round, with six of the ten entries. Three C7’s and three C8’s. The C8 ‘vettes proved to be a handful on the track. The phrase “Curse of the C8” was tossed around a few times. These are a new model from NSR, so we have a bit more work ahead of us to get them dialed in to be competitive. The C8’s have received good feedback in the larger racing community regarding handling and speed. We just need to put in our time to get them tuned for our track.
Check out the race video on our YouTube channel. (Apologies for the switching black screen, we had a battery die mid-race)
In addition to a great race day, we enjoyed the company of several visitors. Steve and Angel stopped by to check out the action as they are investigating the hobby. They even ran a few laps in between series and showed great promise. Josh stopped by from Capital City Slot Cars in Pflugerville, where they race primarily wing cars to visit and check out the race, and we even saw one of our founding members, Shawn for the first time is a while. It was great to talk to the new folks and catch up with old members! We hope to see them all again soon.