Tuesday 3 July 2007

Newbie Slot Jockey




Greetings...

This is my very 1st post (...starting up engines...haha). As the title suggest, i'm still relatively new to slot car racing. I've been 'racing' for more than a month now on a weekly basis at Hartamas shopping centre.

Yup, i race alongside Moonseraphim & just like her, i found slot car racing to be really fun if not addictive. Time seems to pass by so fast while i'm on track. Vin Diesel was saying how much he feels liberated when he's racing on Fast & Furious and well, that really sums up how i feel. Every week i look forward to sunday afternoons just to race my heart out on track (did i mention it's addictive??). It got to the point where i even dreamed of it at night (slot car racing with Ayrton Senna...hence my nickname) I won't blame anyone for thinking i'm crazy... ;P

I do think many of us have played with slot cars at some point in our lives, whether it's the world famous Scalextric models or the RM39.90 plastic slot car sets you get at your local toy shop. I got my 1st slot car set on my 4th b'day i think. It was a simple 2 lane figure 8 track and it came with 2 cars, a Martini Porsche 911 & an Alitalia Lancia (similar to the ones pictured below). The track also includes a bridge, railing and advertisement boards. I forgot who the manufacturer is but it's a Japanese company. The entire set (including the 2 cars) have gone to slot car heaven now, sad to say. How i wish i had taken care of my toys...


What's the big deal about these little cars? Realism. Realism in terms of aesthetics, details, features and even the performance. Moonseraphim mentioned that different cars behave differently, just like in real life. True enough, there is a marked difference in performace between say, an F1 & A1 car, although they may look similar at a glance. Same goes for the Le Mans, GT, Jap GT & WRC classes. Each class is unique and each car in the class are replicated to recreate the same handling and performance of the actual race car.

The realism doesn't stop there though. With sufficient space, we can customize the race track as well. The tracks are sold in sets (that come with cars & accessories) and these can be extended by adding more pieces of track to it. These extension tracks are sold in packs and include pieces for corners and straights and even for the pitstop. Accessories such as buildings, railings and pit crew can also be obtained to make the track more realistic. Ultimately, we can even recreate the Sepang circuit or Silverstone or even our very own custom track with proper landscaping.

My pride and joy is a Mercedes C36AMG DTM class race car. Yup, i have only 1 car at the moment and that cost me RM100. I'll try to get the photos up and give a review of it in my future blog. Until then, keep the engines running...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ho sai lei ar!