G'day guys
I recieved an email today regarding a track or possible race on a new track in the area as part of our regular season. It concerns me a little that there is a suggestion of possible queue jumping as far as racing on members tracks is concerned. The track in question is owned by a keen respected slotcar enthusiast and as far as my contact is concerned a genuinely nice guy, but, in view of the fact that we have reached saturation as far as tracks to race at is concerned, it would mean dropping one of the existing tracks we already use.
I know we have a possible of two tracks being decommissioned for maintenance and other reasons and, as a short term fix, it would fix a hole in the rosta. but that hole may be a lot smaller than we think. What compounds the problem is that the track owner does not, and never has raced with either the Q32 or Slotcar Legends group!! It is some while ago now that we rejected the use of a perfectly adequate and useable four lane board track located at Kenmore simply because the owners weren't regular racers. They had been, for some time!, off and on, but had lapsed for a couple of years.
When the two members tracks in question are repaired there will once again be no space available in the regular rosta. The scenario would be that a regular racer and track owner would be dropped for an outsider's track. In the future, both near and distant, there are a potential THREE! tracks possibly coming on line. I am told that Glen's track seems to be making progress, Norm has a track coming in the near future and there is a potential new venue on the Northside the property of a newcomer to the group!! although this is conjecture at this stage. But that potentially gives us nine tracks owned by regular racers for possible use!! Legends and Q32 both race a six meeting season, the rest of the maths is simple. So who do we tell, 'sorry mate, but you're dropped from this season'? Knowing all the track owners, I would find that would be a hard choice!.
From the pictures, the track seems to be adequate but it is possibly more suited to womp and plafit racing. There was a three lane track previously at this venue and the owner invited us to race here on a weekday evening. I turned up along with a good few and was perplexed and disappointed when the owner and the couple of his follow racing mates disappeared for the evening and left us to it!! Only to return for the closing minutes of the evening. The other problem was that the race management system could only cope with bracket racing which is an old outmoded form of 1/24th racing local 1/32 racing left behind many years ago.
In conclusion, I can only speak on behalf of Slotcar Legends, but if Q32 want to factor this track into their rosta, fine. But don't make it on a regular Saturday race night. Like before, leave it for a week night.