Test Night @John's

We will meet on 12/29 at John's for a Test night in preperation for the next Piston Cup Race on 1/8. Details for the Cup race will be posted separately.
John will open his doors on 12/29 at 6:00pm.

Hope turn out will be high!

See you then!

Seb

Turkey Race

Finally got it done - check out the video from our Turkey Race last weekend.

Hope everybody had as much fun as I!!

Will see you at the races....

Cheers!

Seb

 

Turkey Race 2016

It's getting close for the event....

Just wanted to have one last count of drivers that are committed to be here on Saturday. Since this is a team event, we need to plan ahead as much as possible.

So far I have enough drivers logged for exactly 6 teams, so please let me know, if you are planning on being here on Saturday - I know there were some "maybes".

I'm looking forward to race day....

Cheers!

Seb

Track time, test and tune this Sunday

As a "last chance" to run on the track before the Turkey Day Race in a few weeks, you can come and test/tune and run this Sunday, starting at 1:00pm..

Let me know, if you plan on being here....

Thanks.

Seb

It's on!

Great opening day for the 2016 Piston Cup - 9 drivers showed up. Pat seems to have been holding back the last few seasons, as he is just pulling away like lighting!
I'm sure it will be an interesting season....

See you all next race...

Cheers!

Seb

Turkey Run 2016

The Turkey Race 2016 will be held on November 26th. The track will open at 11:00. The race will last for 4 hours - this will be continuous time.
Each team persist of 2 drivers, each driver has to drive half the distance of the race. It's at each teams discretion how to divide stints of each driver.
Driver changes can only be executed while the car is in the pit lane. Cars that need to be taken off the track, have also to be in the pit lane.

At this time we are still looking for 4 drivers to have 2 more teams.

See you at the races!

Cheers!

Seb

Piston Cup

It's time to start the season for the Piston Cup races. We will start racing on Paul's track this Sunday, November 6th at 1:00pm.

Let us know, if you can make it.

See you then.

Seb

Turkey Day Race

It's already end of October and we are getting close to Thanksgiving. For this years Turkey Run we have 2 dates available. If everyone lets me know which date is better, we might get enough racers together.
Remember, Turkey Day Run is a team endurance race of at least 4 hours. Each team consists of 2 drivers.
Once we have a date, I will post some more details....

Here are the choices:

Saturday 11/19/2016
or
Saturday 11/26/2016

Looking forward to the Turkey Run 2016!

Here is the video from last years Turkey Run:

Cheers!

Seb

Of course....

...bring your 1/24 cars as well!

Matt, if you don't like the pretty, cool looking chrome, I'm sure there will be some other colors to choose from.... ; -))

See you on Friday!

Cheers!

Seb

DTM this Friday

Hi Guys,

We will get together and tune/race some DTM's. I have setup 6 of them and they all run great and competitive to each other (so, plenty of cars for everybody to test how the DTM's run). Bruce and I figured out the tire to be used.
Matt, I was able to set up one of the older Mercedes's and it seems very competitive, so you should be fine with the one you have, once urethane tires and weight is installed.

So, if you don't have any plans, come on over on Friday, starting at 6. If you plan on coming, please let me know.

Looking forward to get together.

Cheers!

Seb

DTM D132

Hi Guys,

Bruce and I have been tinkering with some of the available DTM cars. It seems they are fast and fun to drive. So far we have tested 3 of the BMW liveries and one Audi A5. They seem to run pretty even in terms of lap times - of course we all know, that there can be a big margin in motor performance, especially on the small motors. But so far no problem. 
At this point we are still experimenting with the choice of tires. We have tried Yellow Dogs so far, but thinking about using our own/same compound as for the 1/24's. We will see what work better.
Just thought I give you a heads up, in case you are ready to try something new. I don't think we will restrict it to only the new DTM cars, so any Carrera DTM that is either already digital or able to be upgraded will work.
As far as the tuning goes, we will keep it pretty much the same as for the 1/24's. Everything is stock, besides the rear tire. Front tires with super glue, magnets out, etc.. Since these cars have inline motor configuration, and I'm not a big fan of the motor shaft holding the axle in place, I will explain my personal preference to anybody that is interested. It doesn't cost any money, just some super glue and time - tire truer is needed though.

Will keep you up to date on the choice of tire compound and hope you start looking in the meantime which car you are going to get first! 

See you at the races!

Cheers!
Seb

Friday canceled....

...we are not enough people. It's ok, it was too short of a notice.

I'll plan something further down the road - maybe on Scott's track next, we will see.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the 2 minutes of no rain.

Cheers!

Seb

This Friday...

Last Friday was indeed a lot of fun and turn out was record breaking! I hope everybody had a good time. To have Dave here and get some of the insight was great - of course to see upcoming samples of cars, as well. Not to forget the box with "goodies"!
Thanks to Paul for standing in the heat, grilling sausages!

It seems I will have time on hand this Friday and wanted to see if people wanted to come over for some racing - I know it's pretty short notice.

Let me know!

Seb

Special Guest

We will get together on Friday, August 12th. Doors open at 6:00. A special guest from out of town will join us....


We will grill sausages - haven't really done this in a long time, anyway.


I hope you can all make it!


See you then!


Cheers!


Seb

Great!

We will be meeting on Sunday, 7/24 at 11:00 at John's! Let me know, if you need his address and I'll send you an email.


Looking forward to seeing everybody.


Cheers!


Seb

Next race

John has invited to hold a race at his house on the weekend 22-24 July. Not sure which day works best for everyone. Please respond with your 2 choices and we will go from there....

Looking forward to some fun times!

Cheers!

Seb

Next race

Hi guys,

We will be racing on Friday, 6/24 at Paul's Speedrome - doors open at 6:00. This has been long overdue and I hope we can get enough racers to make this one work.

Looking forward to seeing you all.

Cheers!

Seb

Le Mans Party Cancelled

Sorry, but other things came up and interest/availability by the amount of replies seems to be very low. Will try to have another regular race sometime soon.


See you then!


Cheers!


Seb

Le Mans 2016

It's right around the corner - as every year, I would like to get together for a whole day of racing and hanging out while watching the race.

Doors open at 9:00 -- if you can't make it at 9:00, no problem, since we are going to be there the whole day - that is, if we get enough people together.

So, please let me know, if you are planning to attend, as I know some of you have already other commitments for this weekend.

Cheers!

Seb

First race with urethane tires

The turn out last Sunday was great! We were 10 and could welcome 2 newcomers - Kevin and Jason! It was the first race with the new urethane tires. Some seemed to have a little trouble to get them trued, so not all the cars did perform as they could have. This will be resolved for the next race, so it is expected to have all cars being competitive once again.

We started to enforce penalties for reckless driving - if somebody on the inner lane gets caught to cause somebody else in the outer lane to come off, then we will send the causing racer into the pits for a 3 second penalty. The other car gets placed on the track where the car would have been without the wreck. This way there's no negative impact for the car that got thrown off the track. With this in place, the racing was very civilized and track calls were at a minimum.

Now, that the changeover to new tires is complete, we can keep going on the Piston Cup 2016. Hopefully with more frequent events.

See you all next time!

Cheers!

Seb

Let's try this 2.0!

Ok, it seems Saturday is not a favorable day - we will race instead on Sunday 5/1 at 1:00pm.


Hope some other people can make it on Sunday!


See you then.


Cheers!


Seb

Let's try this!

Long time ago, there was a group of people that occasionally came together to race ....


Well, it's not that long ago, but it has been a while. Let's see if we can make it happen this Saturday 4/30. I'd say doors open at 6:00.


Please let me know if you can make it.


Thanks.


Seb

Test and tune

Canceled!

Seb

Fantastic....

Found this on SCI and found it worth to share - I guess it's that rhythm they are always talking about! ; -))


Enjoy!


Seb

Matt and Ken birthday race

As many times before, Matt and Ken are celebrating their birthdays with a race on Monza! This has always been a great event, not only because it is hosted by Matt and raced on Monza, but also because the cars that Ken builds. These scratch built GP racers are absolutely stunning - for the eye and in performance!


Come and join Matt and Ken for some good times, on Sunday, April 10th at 11am.


Please leave a comment, if you plan on attending. If you need contact information or directions, let me know.

Seb

Friday night get together....

Lets get together and get some of those tire changes, truing, etc. out of the way, so we can get started to race again. This is just a get together, maybe some racing, but not for Piston Cup points.


Doors open at 6:00.


Let me know who want to come over.


Cheers!


Seb

Nobody?

I see that there hasn't been any comments left for the tire post. Not sure if everything is working as it should or if people just don't want to have new tires?
Maybe my wording "respond" wasn't chosen wisely - I should have said "reply in the comment section which tires you initially want."


Seb

In the meantime....

Some might have wondered, why there isn't any racing going on these days. Well, besides being traveling as usual, I was also working on finding a new tire compound for our cars.
It had all started before Christmas, when I visited a slot car club in Berlin - they are racing on commercially available urethane tires and like it a lot. That made me think, because there's 2 things I don't like about the silicone tires we run. Silicone is very hard to true and takes a long time, and secondly, the residue left behind on the track, which results in a lot of cleaning (no, I'm not looking at you, Scott).
So, with the help of Bruce we bought tires that are commercially available in the US for the 1/24 cars - both tires are made by Paul Gage. I also brought back one of the German tires. I established a time table for these tires by mounting them on separate axles and installing the axles in always the same car - ran each tire 100 laps, recorded each lap time, average, etc. This gave me a pretty good idea. The German tire outperformed both of the Paul Gage tires - not by much, but if your tire runs consistent 1/10 of a second better, then I'd say you have the better tire.
After ordering many different urethane compounds, making tires with each, mixing compounds and making more tires, and of course testing all these tires and comparing the data, we finally settled on one particular compound. It also beats the Paul Gage tires and performs equally well as the German tire.
The big disadvantage of the urethane is that the making of tires takes a lot longer. The silicone allows to be cured at elevated, moderate temperature, in order to speed up the curing process - de-mold time is only 1 hour. The urethane takes 16 hours to cure - of course heat can be added, which also results in faster cure/de-mold time, but, and do not underestimate this, if one does accelerate the curing process, the tire will not perform (yes, it was very frustrating to learn). The heat will cause a change in properties of the urethane, which will impact the performance for our use negatively.
One can imagine, that Bruce wasn't looking forward of making tires at all! So, we had to work on a solution for this as well - providing more molds to Bruce.
Only a few challenges to overcome: make it fast, cheap and good quality! And I think we did!


Bruce now has the first batch of molds and is testing this week the tire production with the new urethane compound. We are both excited and looking forward to race with urethane tires in the future, which will be almost the same as on silicone tires.
The urethane seems to be 5/10 of a second slower per lap on the Überring, compared to silicone, but they seem to be almost more fun to drive.


Of course, tire demand will be high, since everybody wants to change their cars over to urethane, so I suggest for everybody to respond to this post with 2 sets of tires he wants to have initially. That way everybody has 2 cars to start out on and can then replace all other cars later on. Also, Bruce will have an idea on which tires to make first.


Looking forward to see you all, soon!


Cheers!


Seb

It is started....

We finally have the first event of the 2016 Piston Cup in our book! Attendance was average with 8 drivers, but the racing was really good. Pat and Paul were at their best, and ran away from the rest of the field.


Find the results in the "Standings Piston Cup 2016" page.


Looking forward to the next one!


Cheers.


Seb

Racing at Paul's

We'll be racing at Pauls on Saturday at 6pm.

Let us know if you can make it.

Cheers!

Seb

Racing at John's

John is inviting to race at his place, this Saturday 1/16 at 1:00.


Hope everybody can make it!


Let us know.


Cheers!


Seb