FRC Thoughts Mid-2017

[gordon]

FRC Thoughts Mid-2017

Following are some thoughts I've put together which I believe are in the best interest of the current core group of five to six FRC regulars. By "core group" I'm referring specifically to myself, Ramesh, Steve, O'Brie and Luke, however anyone else who is interested should feel free to chime in. These are not by any means fixed decisions. They are simply suggestions which I'm asking you to think about. I encourage all of you to provide some feedback and share your own ideas.

Objectives:

1. To focus on classes for which we take the time to meticulously prepare our own cars.
2. To reduce/simplify our classes.
3. To reduce class grouping cycle time.
4. To finish our race nights at a reasonable hour.

IROC Classes:

There should be no more official scheduled IROC classes. These cars can be used to introduce new drivers to FRC and for the odd special occasions. When run, we can halve the number of races if necessary to save time by having drivers skip down two positions for each race instead of one position.

This addresses all objectives above.

Non-IROC Classes:

Current non-IROC classes (10 classes):

• Slot.It Challenge (SC)
• Formula 1 (F1)
• Historic Saloon (HS)
• Vintage Sports '60-'75 (VS)
• American Pony Car (APC)
• Restricted GT (RGT)
• Modified Production (MP)
• Rally Car (RC)
• GT
• LMP

Proposed classes to be retained (8 classes):

• Slot.It Challenge (SC)
• Formula 1 (F1)
• Historic Saloon (HS)
• Vintage Sports '60-'75 (VS6075)
• American Pony Car (APC)
• Modified Production (MP)
• Rally Car (RC)
• LMP

Proposed changes to remaining classes:

Combine RGT with GT as GT 2017, using current or slower RGT regs.

Proposed new class structure (9 classes):

• Slot.It Challenge (SC)
• Formula 1 (F1)
• Historic Saloon (HS)
• Vintage Sports '60-'75 (VS6075)
• American Pony Car (APC)
• GT2017
• Modified Production (MP)
• Rally Car (RC)
• LMP

This addresses objective 2 above.

Proposed new Class Groupings:

1. HS, APC, VS6075
2. RC, SC, F1
3. MP, GT2017, LMP

This will result in a cycle of three events instead of the current four.

This addresses objective 3 above.

Race Night Schedule:

In order to try to not run too late on race night, we should set some fixed times. Here are my suggestions:

1. Close off all practice at 8:30 PM.
2. Scrutineer the cars - 15 min.
3. Qualify the first class (5 min), immediately followed by its three races (15 min), then have a drink break (10 min). This is a total of 30 min per class - 90 min
4. Packing up - 15 min.
5. Total time - 2 hours. This means we should be done by 10:30 PM.

This addresses objective 4 above.

There are other suggestions which some of you have made, but I'll leave it up to you to voice these in the comments below.

Gordon

[Luke]

At a glance Gordon - it's looking all crisp and new ..!

Especially the RGT/GT possible course of racing action.

To tell you the truth - I somewhat had a feeling some sort of suggestion was going to come forth from the FRC "melting pot" Class Groupings and just didn't know, if it would be sooner or later and it turned out to be right in the middle of the year.

All in all - it looks like a positive step for the right time turning over the present classes of FRC racing.

Mind you - hope you don't push the (now) 3 IROC classes so far back that you might forget where you last put them

A grand fan of the Mixed GT, Mini Challenge and Nissan GTR Super Series IROC cars.

Luke

[steveaca]

Hi Gordon,
I agree with the objectives you have put forward here and also agree with the proposed restructuring of the class groupings to accomplish these. My suggestion for the GT class would be to retain Restricted GT as THE GT car class, with no changes from the current regulations. My reason for this is that is that these cars have undergone many changes in configuration in the recent past (standard magnet location, standard mag. location with USD, free magnet location with USD, free mag. location with USD and ground clearance limit) and a lot of work has gone into getting them to perform at the current level. I would not like to have to change set-ups on these cars again. I would suggest leaving the name of the class as 'Restricted GT', indicating that the spec. has not been changed . We can reserve the 'GT' moniker for the existing cars to possibly race at some specialty event or for display purposes , to dazzle newcomers with the kind of performance that can actually be achieved.
Steve

[gordon]

Steve, everything you said above makes sense to me. I'm in full agreement.

[RameshB]

I think its a good idea for now, it just means we are leaving out GT Modify and all IROC cars . So the new fast cars night will be RGT , MP , AND LMP. as our last cycle of races. I think as Steve suggested we can have special events where non mag , 2017 GT and SCX cars can run. its all fun for me as a slot car enthusiast .

[RameshB]

We can also consider to leave out LMP for mean time and replace it with 2017 GT. So they can all be around similar spec.

[steveaca]

I Like the idea of retaining LMP as these cars are very different from GT cars in the 1:1 world. Although the scale LMP and current GT cars' performance is similar, I feel that if a choice is to be made to retain one, it should be the LMP cars in the interest of diversity.

[RameshB]

Hi any word on track layout of the Goodspeed or similar 4 lane Analog layout, i am looking at developing this instead of the last one recently done. I saw the dimension of 32ft long by 10 ft wide. I have an area that this might just fit , thanks for the help.

[gordon]

Hi any word on track layout of the Goodspeed or similar 4 lane Analog layout, i am looking at developing this instead of the last one recently done. I saw the dimension of 32ft long by 10 ft wide. I have an area that this might just fit , thanks for the help.

Ram, are these the dimensions for the track or for the room?

[steveaca]

I wouldn't have any problems if the proposed class groupings were implemented from now.