Updated 4th Aug 2013

The News Page

Tauranga Slot Racing Club Makes the Local Newspaper

Kiwi Racing Overseas
Allan Tucker is visiting family in the UK and has taken time out to race his slot cars.
Have a look at the second photo.
 

Contact details on the clubs page
 

A Final Cars  (from right) Doug Macrae 1st=, Bruce Tocker 3rd, Laurie Penney 4th, & Paul Caplan 1st=.

Hi Graeme
We had an invitational event over the weekend to mark the re opening of our Hamilton Track after an extensive upgrade.
It was a pay back for all those who had put in money, time and effort to ensure we had a quality upgrade of the track.
Below is a copy of what I posted on our website news page together with some photos.
Full results etc are on our club website under Club Results, PB’s, Records etc.
It was good to have a slot car competition back in Hamilton after quite a few years absence.
Congratulations to Doug and Paul for having such a tussle and ending up tieing in first place.
Regards
Bruce

B Final Cars (from right) Glenn Catchpole 10th, Chris O'Connor 8th, Wayne Johnston 5th, & Rob Jackson 6th.

Hamilton Invitational Meeting
2nd April 2011
Falcon LMP Class with Flexi Chassis

A full field of twelve entries marked the Invitational Race Meeting to celebrate the opening of our newly upgraded track.

The line up of drivers was: Dion de Graaf, Doug Macrae and Rob Jackson of Auckland, Dan and Stu Smith from Tauranga and Bruce Tocker, Chris O’Connor, Glenn Catchpole, Laurie Penney, Paul Caplan, Tony Gosnell and Wayne Johnston all from Hamilton.

The meeting began with practise from 10.00am and Qualifying (each driver had a minute on the track on their own to set their fastest lap) kicked off at 11.00am.  Doug was the first up and set a really hot track lap record of 3.284 secs which was not to be bettered by anyone else on the day and so he became top qualifier.  Rob was second with 3.445 secs, followed by Wayne with 3.455 secs.

After the three heats of the first round saw Doug in first place with 187.1 laps (total for 4 three minute races), Paul second with 183.9 laps, Bruce third with 174.8 laps and Laurie 172.2 laps.   This saw Bruce and Laurie move up into the top final for the last round with Doug and Paul.

An eventful second round saw some really close racing and some reversals of form.  Paul took out the second round with 189.5 laps to Doug's 186.3 and believe it or not their two round totals were exactly the same with a total for the eight races of 373.4 laps, thus both sharing 1st Place for the days racing.

Bruce and Laurie improved on their first round totals with 176.7 and 178.3 laps respectively, Bruce taking out overall 3rd Place with a total of 351.5 laps and Laurie only one lap behind with 350.5 laps for 4th Place.  

Wayne pulled out a 184.8 lap second round result to get himself into 5th Place after having a few problems in the first round, his combined total being 350.3 laps, (only 0.2 behind Laurie).  Rob ended up in 6th Place with a total of 341.1 laps for the day.

During round one Doug set a new track record for a three minute race with 49.2 laps but Paul beat that in the second round with 49.3 laps to become the record holder in Falcon LMP Class using a JK Flexi Chassis.

Congratulations to the place getters and other drivers for a very good competition.

Young Dion de Graaf enjoyed racing on another track for the first time (his home track being at Henderson) and the experience will be of benefit for him.  You should have seen the expression on his face when Paul let him drive a Group 12 after the competition event was completed.  A Group 12 in Dion's christmas stocking is his wish for later in the year.  (Paul has done a 2.9 sec lap in his Group 12 during testing which shows why Dion got excited).

Congratulations to all of the place getters and other racers as well. 

This was the first competition event held in Hamilton for many years and it was good to have an event on the calendar again.  The new track went really well and the opening and performance of the track was a great success by all accounts.  Another event next year??  Thanks to all the visiting racers, we hoped you enjoyed your day out in Hamilton, home of the ITM V8 Supercar race.  May see you back again in two weeks for the Supercars.

Thanks to every one who contributed to the repainting, braiding, new power supply and lap recording system for our track.  The results above show how worthwhile it is.

C Final Cars (from right) Tony Gosnell 7th, Dion de Graaf 11th, Dan Smith 9th, & Stu Smith 12th.

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News from the Hamilton Club

Some news pulled from a Bruce Tocker email

Hi all
Just thought you all might be interested in what’s happening up here in Hamilton.
Our newly upgraded track is up and running and we are really pleased with the outcome.
A big learning curve re installing braid, completely rewired, new power supply and battery and Trackmate Lap timing/Recording,
We have held three club nights to test the track and systems so are now ready to hold an Opening Meet.
Thanks to those who gave us help/advice to get this underway in the planning phases.  It was a lot of hard work but well worth it.
Regards
Bruce

The New Track ready for Action – just need to mark up Yellow and Green Lanes.
Blue and Red coloured on the inside of the braid and in the slot, nice effect.

Planning is well underway for the Official Opening of the upgraded track to be held on Saturday 2 April.
Invites have been made to racers that have helped us with the track upgrade and some others who have raced with us on club nights over the last two years.
At this stage the confirmed line up is Doug Macrae of Auckland, Stu and Dan Smith from Tauranga and local members, Bruce, Chris, Paul and Wayne.
So far seven confirmed entries, we are only taking a maximum of 12 entries for this meet so get your entry in to me.
Falcon 7's with any two piece flexi chassis will be the format.
We will run a one minute qualifying round to get seedings for the series of three minute races.
All racers will complete two rounds of four races (eight races in total for the day).

Other Items

Points Night kicks off this Thursday 24th March.

This will be held over every second week for the next 20 weeks, i.e. will finish on 28^th July.
Racing will be on a handicap basis, an average of total laps over your last six points nights being the base.
The oldest points night result will be dropped off each time as we move through the competition.
In late August we run another points competition on a similar basis.

A combined Hamilton-Tauranga team has been entered in the Auckland 12 Hour Enduro to be held Saturday 14 May.

The Team is Paul Caplan, Wayne Johnson, Bruce Tocker and Dan and Stu Smith from Tauranga.
Paul has started to put the car together and just waiting on three Parma S16D #502 motors and tyres etc.

Results of the NZSCA Enduro, which featured Paul from our club in, are now up on the NZSCA Website.

Watch out for some Group 12 action on our track.

Paul has had one for a while but Bruce and Wayne are building up one each.
They are setting these up for a July meet in Auckland and then the Nationals in Wellington in November.

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Those who raced in the recent NZSCA enduro will have met Chas and Paul Le Breton who ran as part of the Napier Dragons Team.
Chas and Paul are part of an informal group of 5-6 based in New Plymouth.
They have met once but hope to be up and running shortly running non-magnet Hard Body cars on a variety of tracks.
The track in the left hand photo below is complete with timing gear and ready to go.
Another two wooden tracks are in the planning or construction stage.
They also have three Scalextric tracks and one Ninco.

Contact details on the clubs page
 

NZSCA Members Compete in Aussie RTR Enduro

Chris Wong Reports on his recent trip to Australia

A team of five comprising myself, Alan Lee, Gil Andrews, Mike Doo and ex pat Kiwi Johnnie Lee now based in Sydney, entered New South Wales first ever enduro, held at the impressive venue at Armchair Racer on Sydney's North Shore.

There were 11 teams entered and it was raced over two 8 lane tracks with 15 min heats to total 4 hours. One track was much bigger than the other.

We came fourth by only 16 laps, but felt "robbed" of a podium after a few minor problems cost us around 50 to 60 laps.
The first three teams were all local to the track so had somewhat of a home track advantage.

For us a lot of it was inexperience with the track surface (Ferrodor which is best described as 120 grit wet and dry!) and the use of rubber vs silicone tires which after too much use deteriorate and begin to chunk badly. We didn't change them soon enough and it was to cost us almost 30 laps in one 15 min stint. Coupled with a grub screw on the crown wheel that kept undoing itself and we felt a little hard done by.

Despite this we all thoroughly enjoyed the event and the socializing outside of the racing.
The Aussies were a great group of guys and we feel we did not disgrace ourselves. It is uncertain whether there will be another enduro like this,
but based off the success of this event it would seem likely in which case I am certain another NZ team will be participating!

Thanks to Alan Lee for the majority of the photos, to Gill for the team and car photos.

	The Kiwi Team Michael Doo, Gill Andrews, Alan Lee, Chris Wong, (absent Johnnie Lee)