State of the Sport.

[SoloGraphix]

I just wanted to let you all know that at my local track for a regular Sunday race we just had 180+ entries for our season opener. It was a long, hot, but absolutely perfect day for RC Racing.

Our club tends to do things a little differently than most, we have quite a few classes that run and we only get time for one heat and a main, but we never have to turn someone away, we can find a class to fit their car into. This past Sunday we had to run 31 mains, including up to D mains in the 2 largest classes Slash Spec and 4x4 Mod SC Truck. We have both an oval and an off-road course and run them both the same day back and forth between classes.

I personally ran 5 classes; 2WD Mod Buggy, Sprint Car Mod, Slash Spec, 4x4 SC Mod & My Favorite 1/8 L8 Model.

I hope that a lot of you get to see wonderful turnouts like this at your home track this summer!

[Halgar]

Wow! I've seen what it takes to organize a group of 30 or 40 racers, I couldn't imagine trying to control 180 of them!

[SoloGraphix]

Well its not technically 180 people, its 180 cars. I don't know the exact amount of people. Most people run a few classes, so assuming an average of 3 classes, possibly 60 people.

[Halgar]

I don't know, add in the wives, girlfriends, friends, kids, and dogs, you probably got every bit of 180 ...

[DerbyDan]

Good to hear that some clubs are doing well....

My local Friday night club up until recently, was on its knees, It reached its lowest point when for a couple of weeks there was only 4-5 people turning up.... not even enough for a heat

I think the combination of the recession & a pretty hard winter had hit alot of our drivers, & having got out of the habit of coming were quite happy to sit indoors in front of the telly once they'd got in from work on a Friday evening.

However after a bit of a rallying call on the club's forum (basically saying that the club will close if we did not get an improvement in attendance) & hey-presto .... we are back up to having enough people to run three or even four heats, which in our little hall is enough.

What has helped is the introduction of the Mini class... which has really taken off, this class is basically a low-cost formula to encourage new-comers as we found potential new members would often visit the hall on race night, to watch, but be put off once they'd found out how much it cost to get set up with a touring car. In the Mini class you can either run the M03 or M05 Tamiya chassis.... with the appropriate shells, silver can motors & Nimh cells of up to 2000mha only are allowed with chassis mods limited to fitting proper oil filled dampers & ball bearings to keep the performance even.

Our track

[JK Racing]

While not truly "club" racing, I run in the JBRL series here in SoCal. In the 3 events I have attended in the last 2 months, we had 280, 275 and 250. The 280 was a 2 day race, but the next 2 we churned out in a single day...2 qualifiers and main. Electric offroad only, no nitro, no oval.

The track most local to me has been having 100+ on race days and just under 100 on practice only days! I went to go practice and they had put employees out on the track for controlled practice only...grouped by type of car and limited to 15 at a time!! Needless to say, didnt get much practice in, I think I hit the track 3 times in 4 hours.