SPRINT WORLDS - Rule Changes?

[Mark AKA ‘Wonder Boy’]

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s140/marcomotorsport/F430%20ALBUM/F430_CHALLENGE_01367492.jpg

There were availability issues for some of the International racers going into the 2008 WORLDS in HERENTALS, but I think it's fair to say that everyone inside and out of Europe had access to what they needed to put a competitive F430 CHALLENGE car together for the SPRINT CHAMPIONSHIP in TORONTO. So looking to 2010 we are soon to announce the car format for the WORLD SPRINT CHAMPIONSHIP. Excepting the body details, what in the existing Rule Set (http://www.scaleracing.ca/F430%20Rules.htm) really needs to change?

Mark

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s140/marcomotorsport/SCI%20POSTS/GRID_LOGO_60x60300.jpg (http://www.gridscaleracing.com)
.

[Springbok Racer]

Mark,

I'd like to see two principal changes:

- Only mass produced chassis available worldwide, including only parts for these chassis being those made by the manufacturers themselves - no after market bits.

- No modification of any part(s).

Basically, once the body has been decided we can consider the rules surrounding that - but please, let's try for a body with open wheel arches this time.

Cheers

Jan

[Nick AKA Cheater]

hye guys,

In my 17 years of slotracing, I've never seen a ruleset that has succesfully worked for more then 1 year trying to regulate more then 1 chassis, but keeping the parts standard.

The goal is clear: you wanna offer a lot of choices but keeping the aftermarket or self-made products out.
What is a massproduced chassis and what is official? Would my chassis, if I'd sell one, be official? what's the criterium? Would Fola's be? difficult to determine and actually wouldn't matter either.

What is clear is that, whichever car we choose, has to be available in almost every slotcarshop. A racer has to be able to buy a large portion of the required package at the same adress.


I've been in Trier last weekend, and saw a Formule 1 car, fully built, on the newly released Plafit F1 chassis. The chassis comes fully assembled with wheels, all you need to buy besides it are the body and the motor. Chassis is about 90 euros, but again, with wheels, bearing, holders, assembeld, everything.
I also know that Metris has a Formule 1 chassis developed.
I'm not totally up to speed on the F1 chassis that are out there, but it might be worth a thought of allowing only 3, 4 chassis, from different manufacturors (1 from Plafit, 1 from Metris etc) and do not allow any changes, therefore a ruleset as tight as the DPM for example. This way you can avoid a monstrous long homologation list which is impossible to check.
Plus, if you only allow a couple chassis, everyone will know all the chassis very well and therefore it's quite obvious if you did something to your chassis that isn't legal.
Must say, seeing the BMW F1 that Peter Oberbillig (designer of the Plafit SLP2 chassis) put together with that standard chassis without any 'fiddeling' was a pretty good sight.
Being the die-hard F1 Ferrari fan that I am, i'm gonna build a Ferrari soon :autofahrer[1]:


And by the way, we have to include pictures when rules are so strict!!! Again the DPM ruleset can serve as an example. It is so clear, so strict, leaving no room for questions.
The OEPS rules are very very open, and don't need picture clarification. But if one tries to describe how A certain screw in A certain plate can only be assembled in A certain way... it can easily get quite confusing.

[Springbok Racer]

Nick,

We raced the F1's in Japan earlier this year using the Revell bodies with flexible front and rear wings, However, with Cheetah motors in them they were a disaster. Therefor in November at the APC we'll again race them, but this time with Fox2's and lexan bodies - http://www.aplafitc.com.au/techrulesf1.php

Cheers

Jan

[Tim Da Slow Guy]

I know you have heard it from me before Mark... allow fantasy liveries. For the sprint race it would be hard to see ones car if you were only allowing the F1 liveries. In some heats their would be duplicates and anyone who has any issues of identifying their car it would be their job then to build/paint it accordingly. In some forms of 1:1 racing there is always a rule of promoter's option to allowing various colour schemes and decals (to keep it in good taste and mixed groups). Have anyone wanting to run a fantasy livery provide a pic or description of car and decals. Still include the rider that the Race/Tech Director can still decide on whether it is in good taste and can run at race time. This would hopefully keep someone from doing something stupid.

If the sprint race is with the plastic bodies (F1) and you are allowed to run a wing mounted with rubber, than why not have the front wing also be molded rubber and removable.

Tim

[Nick AKA Cheater]

hello everyone,

well first thing, rubber is hard to paint. I guess you can buy special paints for that too, but here's a couple pics of how the first F1's are built in Germany. My own F1 I expect to receive next week.

This is a carbon protection lip, designed to keep the wing intact in a crash. It's a very simple bolt-on, one-piece part.
If we are going to continue the F1 path, which is very likely that we will, we intend to have a couple hundred made and dispurse them to many slotshops around the world, so that everyone can easily buy one for a couple of euro/bucks.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_hjD4XV1hLeE/SqKMTwDvLrI/AAAAAAAAKj0/FgY6nBjY660/s720/carbonlip1.JPG
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_hjD4XV1hLeE/SqKMVB9jicI/AAAAAAAAKj8/vhP4G_yoIH0/s720/carbonlip3.JPG
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_hjD4XV1hLeE/SqKMX4O2e0I/AAAAAAAAKkM/vGTpLVY1tTE/s720/carbonlip7.JPG

[Tim Da Slow Guy]

Looks good. Small sugestion... make it a little wider to help protect the front wheels a little more. Maybe to the center of each wheel. It will still give a realistic look and help a bit for/if and when the wall comes a knocking.

Tim

[Mark AKA ‘Wonder Boy’]

I know you have heard it from me before Mark... allow fantasy liveries. Tim

To avoid 50 Ferrari's on the grid, we are considering to post a broad selection of F1 liveries from 2000-2009. First to pay their registration fees will have first choice from the list . . . or maybe just first choice from the era to keep it that much simpler. Start date for registration tba. Everyone has their favorite car or driver and it should make for a spectacular grid and an equally great Concours Championship.

Mark.

[Springbok Racer]

To avoid 50 Ferrari's on the grid, we are considering to post a broad selection of F1 liveries from 2000-2009. First to pay their registration fees will have first choice from the list . . . or maybe just first choice from the era to keep it that much simpler. Start date for registration tba. Everyone has their favorite car or driver and it should make for a spectacular grid and an equally great Concours Championship.

Mark.

To find 50 to 100 liveries different enough to distinguish on'e car from the next one is going to be impossible choosing only from the proposed period - afterall, how much did the Ferrari's change over 9 years, they're all still mainly red. This would be the same for most F1 liveries, even Renault did not change much.:p6639707:

Cheers

Jan

[Springbok Racer]

Nick,

I like the look of that carbon plate - it'll do wonders. We don't need more than that, it is F1 afterall.

Cheers

Jan

[Kai]

Hmm, have I lost something? Are we going to go to Formula 1 class in Sprint Worlds? I have to say I'm not very excited. I think this class is quite (too?) different as other classes (GT, Sport prototypes etc.) we have run before. I mean chassis set up etc. I also think these F1 cars are quite fragile?

My opinion is that current F430 is good class. Also techical rules are quite good. Some comments:

6.3 (b) is problematic. Almost impossible to control.
6.5 (a). I can't see the reason to allow steel axles only. Carbon and titanium axles are available via many web shops.
6.6 (b) Maybe all interior and glasses can be lexan? So B5, G7, G8 and L7 aren't necessary anymore. I also think H5 is unecessary.
6.6 (c) I don't understand this (no ballast weight on body). What is purpose of this?


Regards
Kai

[Nick AKA Cheater]

Hello Kai,

thank you for your post

no you haven't missed something, this F1 racing is new for almost all of us.
Which immediately brings me to a big advantage, which is that none of the - especially german - racers have any experience with setting up these cars, which makes it a very fair playing field for everyone, since we all start from scratch :nice:

Now, the 430's were only run by people that used to race at imca races. In the oeps series there are a lot of teams that never raced at imca, so it's quite unfair as some have raced these cars a lot and others never did.

F1's look fragile indeed, but in Japan and Australia this is a popular class of racing. And with this added carbon lip below, it protects the wing pretty well
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_hjD4XV1hLeE/SqKMUhh5NFI/AAAAAAAAKj4/nKAVyW8Qs6c/s720/carbonlip2.JPG
The rear wing is even smaller and more 'protected' cause it's partially between the rear wheels compared to LMP cars.

If we'd race 430's again, we'd have to write an entirely new rulebook. In Toronto the TECH guys followed every rule in it, and it took ages. Wasn't their fault ofcourse. So, IF we'd write a new rulebook for the 430's, we'd probably come out having a book dictating completely different 430's as to those we have raced in the past. And therefore, it's a new car again, just as the F1's are.


Jan Roestorf from Australia is providing a lot of experience on these cars, and I'm slowly building one to have an idea on what is what, and in the process Jan, Mark Campbell and myself will write the rulebook for these cars.

Our goal with the rules is providing a fairly simple chassis rulebook, mainly because this is so new, and none of us want to spend hundreds of euros or hours to test every possible plate or part. I mean, we have all the freedom in the world in the LMP cars. We are looking for nice looking F1 cars, which are relaitvely easy to build compared to the LMP cars. Also, where possible, we try to keep the F1 a bit cheap in terms of wallet-damage. The 430's were in my personal opinion pretty expensive, you always needed 2 bodies and they took ages to build, especially the interiorthing.

The F1 chassis from Plafit for example is 100 euro, BUT it comes fully assembeld and ready to go, with wheels, bearings, gears, everything, and you don't need anything else to buy but the motor and body.
http://shop.strato.de/WebRoot/Store8/Shops/61289239/4A05/66CD/9861/4995/3FA4/C0A8/28BC/80B1/Plafit_0020_Formel1.jpg

[Kai]

Ok, thanks Nick.

I only hope there is some kind of stability in the future and we don't change racing classes and rules every year. I think there is lot of work to built competitive F1 car. Everything (chassis, bodies etc.) are new. Maybe I have to start immediately :nice:

Are we running this F1 class with Plafit chassis only? What about F1 cars? Are they fast?

Regards
Kai

[Nick AKA Cheater]

Hello Kai,

Stability is EXACTLY what we want.
These rules are meant to stay for a very long time, both for the prototypes and F1.
We are working out the very basics right now, which chassis are allowed, which tyres, etc. But it takes a little bit of time as you'll understand.
We are working on it non-stop.

The people that race them in Australia, and the handfull people that built one here, are VERY enthousiastic about the handling and speed, and I can't wait to have completed my own.
As soon as I built my own, I'll also show pictures to help everyone as a kind of guide, so that we don't have to figure it all out ourselves. I'm taking the build slow, to not make mistakes.

[Springbok Racer]

Hi guys,

As Nick intimated, we have had a little bit of experience with these cars. In particular with the Plafit 2800 chassis. We have raced them in Japan earlier this year using the Plafit Cheetah motors but they were absolutely toooooo fast and not nice to drive.

In November we will again race them at the Australian Plafit Championships, this time with the Fox2 motor (which we've used a few times on short tracks and found very nice as the cars are only around 130grams). After this race we will have a very good idea what we can expect from this class as we will have a lot of guys then that will have raced them.

Here are a few photo's of my cars and hopefully it will give you an idea of how it goes together and how the body fits on it:
My two BMW Saubers ready to run............
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2144.jpg
The chassis with the wing mounted on the wing mounts provided with the chassis......
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2145.jpg
The body on the inside, showing the body mounting plates.........
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2146.jpg
....and from the side.
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2147.jpg
A close-up of the rear wing mounting........
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2148.jpg
...and the body mounts, close-up.......
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2149.jpg
...and the body mounted, close-up.
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/roestorf/IMGP2150.jpg

Let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to give you my impressions so far.........:popcorn::popcorn:

Cheers

Jan

[Gorm]

Who make the bodies ?
Where do you purchase them ?

Anyway, the F1 concept looks great.

Brgds

[Springbok Racer]

Mate,

We have been using the Revell kits. You can find them in most Hobby Shops and the 2005 models are mostly on sale and available at bargain prices.

Cheers

Jan

[Mark AKA ‘Wonder Boy’]

For the guys here in NA, I have also found them on eBay as well for about US$19 including the Renault, Sauber, BMW and two or three of the Ferrari from 2000 forward.

Mark.

[Kai]

Any news about F1 class? Is it one make chassis (Plafit) class? What about motor? Proslot Euro or something else?

Original wheel size of Plafit F1 chassis looks awful. Nothing to do with model car racing.

I waaaant to make F1 car...

-kai

[Springbok Racer]

Kai,

We are still working on them and I'm sure Mark will announce the rules in good time for the WSC.

Cheers,

Jan