Don’t whack my car!
This is the worst that can happen to the driver of a slot car — when the guava next to you lets the rear wheels slide out on a corner and your beautiful, laser-cut, flat metal, brightly painted, fully stickered motoring, moveable art creation gets klapped off the track and goes spinning and rolling on the floor.
Slot car racing is super-fast and serious.
The model cars hit a fiery 82km/h on the infamous back straight of the 22-year-old 47m super wood, smooth-epoxy painted track at the EL Slot Car Club at 33 Dyer Street, Arcadia.
By comparison, only the intrepid road cyclist blasting down the famous Chapman’s Peak tar stretch heading towards Hout Bay in the Argus Cycle Tour will max out at 82km/h.
You don’t want to get a blowout at that speed, and so it is with the model cars which fly off the track.
Four men, mostly in their 50s but there is a 13- and 74-year-old, stand on the rostrum for each heat, console in hand and they control their beloved machines like men possessed.
Club secretary Louise Petzer says our city has history with model cars.
The club runs the SA Model Car Association (Samca) formed 54 years ago in 1966 and is hosting the final round of the SA Slot Car Championships.
The local stakes could not be higher: The East London club is defending a clutch of national titles it has won for the last two years and in every driver class — pro, expert and amateur and junior.
The championships are on from Thursday to Saturday, September 25 to 27 and Petzer says: “You really have to come and see it for yourself.”
Our local champions are in a field of 25 racers who have arrived from around SA, from Pretoria to Cape Town, for the big event.
Petzer suggests this is a “hobby”, but admits is more an obsession than a gentle side hustle, and that a couple of racers have been penalised for losing their tempers and “shouting”.
The passion starts with an idea of the perfect car.
Racers will take to the drawing board and come up with technical drawings.
From there, razor thin but hardy spring steel is sent for precision laser cutting.
The kits are then soldered together while tyres — very much slicks — start with imported rubber, which is then glued to a rim turned on a lather to be 1.7mm thick.
The tyre radius is 16.8mm.
The tyres are fitted to a back axle — there are not front wheels or axles, that role belongs to the slot which fits into one of four rails on the track.
The back wheels are driven by a brushless motor.
The artisanship is extraordinary and this is why the paint jobs using special but bright Lexan polycarbonate-specialised paint is of the order of a Da Vinci masterpiece.
“Everything must be flat and straight. It must be right,” he says.
There are some fun quirks in the assemblage: each car must have a mould of a little helmeted driver holding onto a steering wheel for dear life.
Bodies are imported colours, brash and rich greens, pinks, yellows, and good old sophisticated black and white.
Now it gets quirky, with miniature motoring brands adorning the final machine — Goodyear and Shell corporations reduced to tiny ticker tape.
Racers are left holding a micro beast which is 6,4cm wide and 15cm long — about 10% smaller than the average cellphone.
The final cost? R4,500 — not bad considering that a small aluminum top box for a 260kg 1200 BMW adventure bike costs the same.
How many cars does each racer own?
“One or two … or five ,” but he bashfully admits to owning 15!
The light at the starting grid switches red to green. It’s go-o-o-i!
Four cars in four slotted lanes, each with a little coloured sticker on their noses, are raced, controlled by madmen until the power is cut on two or three minutes per race segment.
Each car must race in each of the four lanes to make up four segments — the heat winner will be measured to have gone the farthest when the distances are added up by race control.
There are around 4,700 one-centimetre marks on the track so it’s pin-point accurate.
He says the course is fairly flat with an uphill and a deadly slight downhill.
The course starts on a straight, with four or five sharp corners until the final hairpin bend into the back straight where top speeds are reached.
Cornering is a test of the racer’s tyre and the amount of “sticky goop” applied for traction.
Where the downhill hits the sharp right is where much of the crashing takes place with cars sliding out and biffing each other.
When the “deslotted” race car finally comes to rest on the floor, drivers can get hot under the collar, but marshals are there to step in and penalise if it gets foeffie.
The championship heats start on Thursday, but drivers are on the track early Wednesday taking advantage of five-minute slots. Locals are not allowed to use the track in these warm ups.
The locals defending their titles this weekend are: (2023) pro — Louise Petzer, expert — Clinton Landman; amateur — Geoff McGregor; and Junior — Arno Landman; (2024) pro — Louise Petzer, expert — Darren Schultz, amateur — Liam Bibby (tied with Derek Heyns, CSCC); and junior — Arno Landman.
* Whatever you do, don’t call this sport Scalextrix because that is a registered trademark owned by Hornby Hobbies.
