I’ve never been a “math guy.” From my earliest days in school I struggled with the subject even while I excelled in many others. This was always a source of great consternation to my dear departed dad, who was in essence a mathematician who was at the top of his field in crunching numbers and solving equations that took up entire rooms of blackboards to record. However, my strange lifelong obsession with symmetry has forced me to confront numerological issues on occasion, and racing slot cars in heats on a 2-lane track is a prime example.
Over the last year I’ve begun to spend more and more time with my old-school Model Motoring track and my old, slow original Aurora Thunderjets, while spending less time running tournaments on my big AFX track where I race my new-school Auto World Ultra-G’s. Part of this is my late-developing interest in the original format and the original cars, but it’s also a matter of time: I have described in detail how my two fleets of Ultra-G racing cars – one for cruisers and muscle cars and the other for sports and sports racers – continued to grow and grow as my interest in this hobby accelerated, and it got to the point where racing all these cars was becoming an unmanageable prospect. Knowing that running heats on a 2-lane track makes it essential to have a number evenly divisible by 2 all the way down to 2, I decided to run each fleet up to maximum number of 64 cars, which would allow me to race a full tournament all the way down to a 2-car “final battle” without an odd number.
That was a fine plan, but it had 2 problems…
The first was that I never stopped buying and building cars, because I love doing it! So now I’ve got over 200 Ultra G’s between my 2 fleets, many of which never see track duty. Of course there are ways I could deal with this, such as rotating some in and others out, and I’ve been doing just that, but somehow that’s unsatisfying to me. Even so, I would probably be OK with it, were it not for the second problem…
As much as I love being a big kid and playing with my toys, I am a “working adult.” I’m more fortunate than a lot of guys my age since I’ve configured my life to maximize my leisure time, but even so, there are only so many hours in a day…or a week, or a month. And I’m finding that running a 64-car tournament takes a loooong time. Even running races of only 5 laps, Drag City Raceway is a long track, and with record keeping as well as restarts after the inevitable crashes and deslots, I will often spend a week or even more before finishing one, depending on my motivation and what other issues are vying for my time and attention. This drags the action out and sometimes makes finishing a full-fleet tournament feel like more of an obligation than fun.
What I need, I’ve decided, is smaller, more manageable races with fewer cars…but of course, I keep buying cars! So…what to do?
Well, let’s see… as of right now I have three 48-car cases filled with Ultra-G’s; one is all muscle cars, one is all sports cars, and the 3rd is split between the two categories, holding 16 additional cars for each fleet to hit 64. But of course, half of 64 is also divisible by 2 all the way to 2, and when I’ve raced a 32-car tournament, I’ve found the experience to be much more enjoyable. So, over the X-mas holiday, I decided to give in to my constant car buying and building, and acquire a fourth 48-car case, so that I can fill 2 of each case with muscle cars and sports cars. This will give me a total of 96 cars in each of the fleets; while it may take some doing to hit that number with the sports car fleet, I’m already there with the muscle cars! And it just so happens that dividing 96 by 32 gives us 3…which would work out just peachy, if I were to divide each of my 2 categories into 3 groups, and race them in rotations.
Dividing each of the categories into groups of 32 cars will allow me to run shorter tournaments, alternate as I currently do between each category (muscle and sports), and further alternate between groups A, B and C. It seems only logical that these groups will be divided primarily by performance, with a “lower tier” for the slower cars, a “top tier” for the highest performers, and a “middle tier” for those in between, all of which can be based on quantifiable lap times and/or race times from 2 years of racing records, since I spreadsheet all my tournaments. This will make the races more competitive and more “fair” for the cars and drivers, and it will allow me to race all my cars without leaving any out as “overstock,” and still give me shorter, more easily managed tourneys. Of course, I may also mix this up a little for the sake of variety so that each group of 32 has a share of the various makes and models that are often repeated multiple times in my collection, so some thought will need to be put into finding the right balance. Which, of course, will be part of the fun! And on top of all that, there will even be a chance for exceptional performers to migrate from one “team” to another, as well as “penalty” movements for those who don’t cut it. More fun! Sounds like a win/win all around!
Of course, none of this is necessary; this is all the result of my powerful Obsessive Compulsive Disorder! But hey, that’s who I am, and this is my hobby and these are my toys…so there! Having reached this conclusion, I feel utterly satisfied…especially since I am basically giving myself free reign to keep buying and building slot cars for the rest of my life and just add more groups of 32 to no end! And frankly, that’s probably exactly what I’ll do…at least,for as long as my available space and available funds allow! I may not always have it as good as I do now, but I’m going to enjoy it while I do!
You have this down to a science my friend! While math has never been my strong suit either, you seem to have this all worked out. I can see how the big tournaments could get too big, if that is possible. The races will be exciting!