{"id":34,"date":"2002-05-16T16:16:33","date_gmt":"2002-05-16T23:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/?p=34"},"modified":"2008-09-12T12:49:07","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T04:49:07","slug":"slot-car-racing-3-2-1-squeeze-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/2002\/05\/16\/slot-car-racing-3-2-1-squeeze-em\/","title":{"rendered":"Slot Car Racing: ‘3-2-1, squeeze ’em!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"slotcars2.jpg\"May 16, 2002 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I inspected the car Mark Taaffe built for me. I had my doubts as to whether it would withstand the beating I was about to put it through.<\/p>\n

The car was yellow. It had a big blue “0” emblazoned on its roof.<\/p>\n

“Zero is as close as I could come to a bullseye,” Taaffe said with a smirk. “The new guy always has a bullseye.”<\/p>\n

And then he placed the car in my hand. It was time for my introduction to the scaled-down world of slot car racing, where the cars are small … and the thrills are big.<\/p>\n

“It’s frustrating at first, there’s no doubt about that,” warned Taaffe, proprietor of Bullet Raceway, which occupies the back section of the arcade at Bumper’s & Bogey’s on Jesse Jewell Parkway in Gainesville.<\/p>\n

“You can get discouraged. Because it looks so easy.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>The regulars who race at Bullet Raceway every Friday and Saturday night do make slot car racing seem rather simple. Just press a button and watch your car go.<\/p>\n

But there’s much more to slot car racing than that. It’s the turns that make it tricky. Slot cars, which buzz around the track so fast they become bright-colored blurs, don’t always stay in their slots.<\/p>\n

I learned that early during my practice session. Take a turn wide open and you’re headed into the wall … or over it.<\/p>\n

“You built me a pretty sturdy car,” I said to Taaffe, who apparently anticipated the torture I’d inflict on car No. 0. It happens to every beginner.<\/p>\n

“It’s a tank,” Taaffe said with a knowing nod.<\/p>\n

We were racing cars 1\/24 the size of real cars. For those of you — like me — who have no idea how to visualize that ratio, we were racing cars about the size of an adult male hand. A motor is the size of a match box.<\/p>\n

Taaffe’s road-style track, built in 1964, is full of twists and turns. It’s about 100 feet long and eight lanes — or slots — wide. Each lane is marked by a different color and has a corresponding control terminal along the straightaway.<\/p>\n

Cars are powered electronically. Each “driver” has a controller that hooks into the track and operates a particular lane. Squeeze the trigger, and the car goes. Release it, and the car stands still.<\/p>\n

Good racers find a rhythm, somewhere between reckless and reasonable. Great racers run awfully close to reckless, only without all the wrecks. Fast drivers at Bullet Raceway average less than four seconds per lap.<\/p>\n

“If you watch the fingers, you can see the finesse,” Taaffe said.<\/p>\n

Terry Kelly played his controller like it was a musical instrument. His finger squeezed the same song lap after lap. He kept the beat with his head, back and forth, following his car around the track.<\/p>\n

Kelly was my coach. And I couldn’t have asked for a better one. He’s a reigning United Slot Racers Association national champion, a title he won in April at a race in Anderson, S.C. He’s also a regular at Bullet Raceway.<\/p>\n

“Here, everybody will help you,” said Kelly, 48, of Alpharetta. “Until the race starts. And then you’re on your own.”<\/p>\n

\"slotcars3.jpg\"Luckily, Kelly remained my crew chief even after the green flag dropped.<\/p>\n

Races are split into eight three-minute periods. Each driver runs one period on each lane. The driver with the most laps after the last period is the winner. A computer does the counting.<\/p>\n

Beginner races take a little longer to complete. The clock stops with every crash, and there are several. Thankfully, the “corner marshals” — the drivers waiting for the next race — are there to quickly return the careening cars to their proper slots.<\/p>\n

Then the public address announcer barks: “3-2-1, squeeze ’em.”<\/p>\n

The cars and minutes went by so quickly, though, it was rather easy for me to lose track of how many laps I was losing by. Trust me, it was a lot.<\/p>\n

After each round, Kelly took my car back to his body shop (he has a large, portable wooden equipment box that travels with him) and made adjustments.<\/p>\n

This is serious stuff for Kelly. His story is similar to that of several slot car racers. He got into it as a child, lost interest as a young adult, and rediscovered the hobby in middle age. But slot car racing is more passion than hobby for Kelly these days.<\/p>\n

“It’s just like any other sport,” Kelly said. “I like the competition.”<\/p>\n

Kelly constructs slot car parts at his home and sells them over the Internet and at Taaffe’s store. He has his own racing team (he wore a “Kelly Racing” T-shirt on Friday) and boasts a roster of racers from California, Michigan, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. The Kelly Racing team won five national titles in April.<\/p>\n

Kelly said he put nearly 400 hours of work into his car leading up to nationals. He won about $400 for his efforts.<\/p>\n

\"slotcars4.jpg\"“You don’t cover your costs,” Kelly said. “But you do make some money.”<\/p>\n

Kelly, who often swaps out tires on his car based on changes in humidity, asked me if the car felt “loose” at one point during my race. I just shrugged.<\/p>\n

Of course, Kelly is just an extreme. You can buy a car from Taaffe for as little as $45 and rent a controller for $2. Just like that, you are ready to race.<\/p>\n

“We bought cars and just dove right in,” said Kevin Umstaedter, 46, of Gainesville, who started slot car racing with his two young sons almost a year ago. “It’s a great hobby for kids. And it’s a kick in the pants. It’s a heck of a lot of fun.”<\/p>\n

Twelve-year-old Brandon Howorth, a sixth-grader at Chestatee Middle School, has his parents drop him off at Bullet Raceway every Friday night.<\/p>\n

“I just like racing,” said Howorth, who stumbled upon the hobby six weeks ago and, by the way, soundly defeated the yellow car with a “bullseye” on its roof. “It’s fun coming here every Friday to race.”<\/p>\n

You know Brandon, you’re right. Just watch out for the ol’ No. 0 car next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 16, 2002 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I inspected the car Mark Taaffe built for me. I had my doubts as to whether it would withstand the beating I was about to put it through. The car was yellow. It had a big blue “0” emblazoned on its roof. “Zero is as close …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}