Some of us got together this morning and did some practice with our new Super G-Plus Champ Cars, in prep for the series coming up next month. After truing up the tires of the new cars we all grabbed a lane and were running some really nice, clean laps....until Yoshi noticed we were only running on 9 volts. After bumping up to a full 12 volts all Hell broke loose.

Lap times were flirting with the LifeLike stocker times, fast time was run by Yoshi's "Nissan" powered entry at 1.05 seconds. But as with all open wheel racing once cars got side by side things began to happen. I'm not saying anyone was driving dirty, but it seems everyone has now become a graduate of the "bump and run" school of restarts.

Before a wheel is turned in competition Sequoia Speedway will have to have a new perimeter fence installed, from the track entrance in turn two all the way around through the exit of turn four. More than once the cars locked tires and someone cleared the single row of Armco that has successfully served to keep the NASCAR cars inside the park. Twice cars even cleared the 3" high billboards in turns one and two, landing in what is the off track pit area. On one particularly grinding 4 car restart everyone got tangled up and a car got into the main grandstands. Track safety coordinator Smokey Cat was busy catching the cars that did find their way completely out of the park, and every human driver made it off the layout at least once.

Only one race is set to run at Sequoia in the short series scheduled for August, between new fencing and possibly requiring restrictor plates (9v) it should be somewhat safer.

Smokey was marshaling the cars but I'll bet he still doesn't have his own yet?? !! HUH ?

I haven't painted a Lowe's Champ car yet. He don't like the SG+ cars as much as the LifeLikes for some reason, maybe the smell funny since they're still new. But once he figured out where everyone was crashing he went and stood on the boxes outside turn 1 and 2 and just waited for the cars to come flying over the fence.

We're organizing this series and working on an extended schedule that will start later this year. This is the logo we came up with, sort of a take-off of the AFX lettering.

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z262/FresnoPete/af1x-small.jpg

We've been researching the track layouts in the Super International and the current F1 season, we've come up with a 16 race season including Sequoia Speedway but having to substitute a few of the more recently added Grand Prix's with our own diagrams for a flat 2-lane Daytona and a flat 2-lane Laguna Seca. Yoshi is the big F1 fan so I'm listening to him carefully in the planning of this series.

. Yoshi is the big F1 fan so I'm listening to him carefully in the planning of this series.

If you want to emulate F1 you must of course have a kinky sex tape of yourself, Yoshi will have to start bad mouthing Silverstone and all tracks must be made with a cookie cutter or not be allowed in.. lol.. Oh having a young lad who dad always looks like he about to pull of his belt and tan him is a good addition too.. Oh a a couple maybe 12 drivers who are not near as fast as they think they are would make it very F1'ish..lol.. I love the series too.. but you have to have really messed up politics..


Dave lol

That cat cracks me up , too funny !

Sex tape, check. Although Pam Anderson to this day still says that's Tommy Lee and not me. Yoshi is a helmet thrower so his finishes are very interesting. Now that he's dating my daughter he has to control himself or else. Cookie cutter tracks, check. We're going top use the templates that come with the Super International (see Greg Brauns site for more details) and add a few rounds at Daytona and Laguna Seca. We already have a 12 year old that is amazingly fast and very good on road courses, this kid gets the concept of braking and where to begin driving out of the corners. The most interesting thing is his name; John Lewis Hamilton. He looks like a mini-me version of Hamilton as well. I've already promised him a Vodaphone paint scheme on his car. Remember the developmentally disabled kid who won second in the stock car race? He's back and is doing better than most of the other kids on braking and corner control. But he's a gearhead anyway so I wouldn't expect anything less from him.

Politics. Yeah. When I began this thing I had 15 kids sign up. When I announced they had to "qualify" for the race by doing some research and submit a report I lost a few down to 11. Thursday I had 6 turn in their work, only two of them submitted more than one essay on the chosen subjects. I read them yesterday and one has been disqualified for cut-and-pasting virtually her whole report. She didn't even change the font size or type between sections to make it believable. I've extended the deadline a week, we'll see what the others can come up with.

Anyway, here are the 4-lane layouts for flat Daytona and flat Laguna Seca. The tracks have to cover an area not to exceed 8' wide and 12' long, or whatever 3 sheets of plywood would normally cover.

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z262/FresnoPete/LagunaSeca-1.jpg

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z262/FresnoPete/NewDaytona-1.jpg

Hamilton, that is too funny.. Let him know I have a set of Vodaphone Decals in the box for him lol.. now which kids mubbles like Kimi and his teammate reminds me of a red clad smurf..lol...Package goes out Monday Pete will se what else I dig out of the decal Box to help get the cars acurate for you.. Good luck hope the other kids come through with some good reports...

Dave

Pete -- Here is a passable version of Silverstone for a 6 x 16 space (We set it up on sawhorses and plywood).

http://photos.hobbytalk.com/data/500/stone.jpg

'doba, we're probably going to run the one Greg Braun has on his site in the Super International diagrams because of space requirements and because it is 4 lanes. We're limited to a 8' wide by 12' maximum area, or basically a parking lot car space. The largest footprint we have of the Super International layouts is 4x11.5 for Canada (length) or 8X8 for the 4 lane flat Laguna Seca. Most of the Grand Prix circuits are from 5' to 6.5' wide so we're good until we get to our planned layouts. We have 3 sheets of tongue and groove plywood that lay out to a 8X12 area, that's the biggest we can go.

I have spent a lot of time on Wikipedia last night and this morning. Of the 18 rounds you can build with the Super International only half of them are still current F1 tracks. Some, like the United States Bonus Round 2 took some research to find the real world track, which was the Phoenix Street Course. Right now if the season is run with all the track we have templates for it would be 22 rounds (20 road courses, 2 ovals) that would last 26 weeks. That's 6 months folks. I don't know about you but as a driver I like shorter seasons, like 10 or 12 rounds at the most. Yoshi and John Berry from Jamba Juice are both big time F1 guys and they want a long, protracted season, 20+ rounds on mostly real world tracks. That makes it nearly impossible to have the kids involved for an entire season mainly because their attention span isn't going to last more than a couple of weeks. Right now we have 6 adult racers, maybe a 7th after tomorrow. I have 5 kids that have made the committment of at least writing the necessary essays to participate in a 4 race series. The 6 month long series would almost certainly have to wait until next year to run. By then the MG+ cars will be out and we'll have to consider upgrading the teams to the new cars.