Practice
The new track layout at Tacoma R/C Raceway is here, and this was my first time driving on it. My main focus is on coming up with a good racing line and figuring out the track features.
Track Layout
[Panorama from the driver’s stand] If I ever figure out how to embed panoramas, I’ll do that instead.
The back straight leads into an extra long sweeper. You can almost keep the throttle pegged here as it loops completely around to the drivers’ stand. This should be taken as one large arc, rather than two discrete turns.
The following two doubles are pretty trivial. Letting off the throttle right before the first one should be enough to slow you down to make the landing. Be wary of the shallow table-top immediately before the triple. You will need to take that slowly to make the sharp turn after it.
The triple in the center is a tricky bit for stock SCT. I don’t think there’s any way to clear the whole thing, the two options are going inside and doing a double-single, or going wide, skipping the first jump, and doing a double instead. I ran two 6 minute sessions trying out the two variations, and found that going wide was almost a second faster. I think that the first option, the double-single, could be faster, except that it’s hard to hit constantly. The area to land is very small, and you would have to hit it very precisely. It might be a viable passing option if there’s a battle going on outside. Also, be wary of the pole that divides the two lanes; the dirt surrounding it swells up on the sides, and cutting it too close will cause you to roll over.
The step-up section near the driver’s stand is annoying at first, because it must be taken very slowly. Dropping down the steps is fairly slow as well; if you take them too quickly, your car will not have enough time to settle, and will be very unstable as you enter the straight.
The “V” shaped double before the straight seems like it was designed to work for a slower, inside line as well as a fast outside one, depending on where you land off the steps, but I try to keep as close to the inside as possible, to avoid coming up short on the landing.
Overall, I’m not too thrilled with the layout for stock SCT. Compared to the previous layout, which had a huge triple and a fairly large double immediately after it, there’s no “big air” for stock trucks here. The fast part is the straight, and the rest of the track is very slow and technical.
Setup Changes
I switched from the VTS slipper back to the normal “V2” slipper on my SC10. I didn’t get a chance to do any runs before or after to compare, as it’s a new layout anyway, and I don’t have a performance baseline. It should be faster, as there’s less rotating mass in the V2, than the VTS. Apparently, the VTS slipper is better for mod though, where slippage is more frequent.
Racing
Fairly large field for Stock SCT this time. 8 racers; 2 groups of 4 in qualifying, one big 8-man main. Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to battle with anyone. I tried to carefully watch what the top guys were doing, particular on the triple, and down the stairs. I eventually started going slower down the stairs, which was more stable, but I still think it was slower. I didn’t roll over much either in these races. The new track is just kinda slow and deliberate. No videos this time, so no post-race analysis.
