Part 2 – The Knows and the Unknowns
What is so important about the knowns and the unknows? You can also read this as “What can I control and what can I not control”. Going into any race you want to have as many things within your control as possible. This improves your confidence and racing at a higher level starts with confidence.
The Unknowns
The Track – Plastic track with rails that sit 0.44mm above the track surface, highly magnetic, with a guide slot depth of 8.0mm. I have never raced on a plastic track. This alone is a huge unknown.
The Lap Length – Long, much longer than any track I have raced on. The lap times are projected to be over 12 seconds.
The Heat Length – I am curious to see what the heat length will be – 3 minutes, 5 minutes? I’m hoping for longer heats where there is an opportunity to fight back from any small mistakes.
The Race Format – Lane rotation is a big thing. Switching from one lane to the next lane is easier than jumping multiple lanes where the two lanes have very little similarity between them.
Scaleauto Cars – Our club has never run a 1/32 Scaleauto race. This means I have never worked with these cars; hell, I don’t even own one.
The Rules – Rules are always important and getting a deep understanding of them is key to setting up a competitive car. The rules for this event mandate the cars be run with the stock anglewinder configuration, Scaleauto shore 20 rear tires that cannot be glued or trued, and coated front tires. Just the simple question of what size wheels, of the three allowed, to use with the handout tires to achieve the rules minimum 1.0mm clearance under the motor is a big one. This is just one decision out of many that need to be made to get the car as competitive as possible.
There are numerous YouTube videos on how to set up a Scaleauto car to race but none are setting up a car for the same conditions I will be encountering. Not to say there are not points I can pull out of each of the videos but the complete car build will be unique for this event.
The Knowns
My Difalco DD304 controller. Well, that is about it.
I have my Truspeed Apex at the ready but need more hours with it before I feel comfortable enough to use it for an event like this. Having said that, the tracks we will be running are significantly bigger/longer than anything we have run on to date. With the long straights on these tracks having the option to bypass the choke could be key. The Apex is the only controller I have with this feature.
Summary
All of this is not to say the event will not be fun or that I will not be competitive, it’s just to say there are a lot of unknowns that will take time to get my head around. The time that will come from whatever time we are allocated for practice. At some point, I will have to make some assumptions and build a car for a track I have never seen on a track surface I have never run on. This should be fun.
Now it’s time to start building the cars.