1st SOUTH-AFRICAN MODEL CAR NATS, DURBAN (RSA)  - April 27-8, 07 (NO IOC RACE)

JAN ROESTORF IN THE ROLE OF HAWKEYE

May 2, 2007 - Thanks to the efforts of Al Paterson and his friends model car comes in the picture in South-Africa. Up to now only sale racing and 1/32 plastic racing were popular, but after excellent perfor-mances at the Barcelona Worlds (by Paterson himself having won the modeler's world championship, and by Gustav Heymann having won the EuroNats) model car racing is growing in the South of Africa. It's not already the type of model car racing as we know it from the rest of the world since they race lexan bodies instead of hard plastic, resin or GFK bodies. Main reason for that is the weak position of the national cur-rency: prices asked for some resin bodies are completely out of budget of the most racers. A way out could have been racing Tamiya JGTC or Autobacs Super GT bodies having the advantage that they are relative-ly cheap, that they are easy to assemble, and above all that they are fully legal, what's not the case with most handcraft resin bodies on the black market.

South-African racing is above all linked to the country's great past in racing. That past that remains the Springbok Series where top racers from England, Australia, Belgium and Holland were present with very attractive cars as the Ferrari 512M, the Ferrari 330 P4, the Ferrari 250 LM, the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Ford GT40, the Lola T70 Spyder and T70 Mk3 GT, the Ferrari 312P, the Porsche 917, the Porsches 906, 907, 908 and 910, the Ferrari Dino 206S, the Mirage Ford, etc. More info about the former Springbok series can be found here and here. Since most of those cars exist in the cheap lexan version, it was decided that only lexan copies of former Springbok cars were allowed to enter. Then you expect that someone should have entered at least an Elfin or a GSM Dart (typical South-African cars existing in lexan at scale 1/24th), but nothing of that. Instead two top racers showed with the Sunoco Ferrari 512M having been never raced at the Springbok Series. Some other showed with a horrible Mirage M1 in the wrong colours. None of the Porsches 906 was in correct colours. Although two of the four races were called a model car version of the famous Kyalami 9 Hours not half of the cars were true Springbok cars. However it was a first attempt to promote model car racing in the country and it deserves all our respect. Perhaps they should learn how to laminate lexan bodies. Once they manage those technique the quality of the bodies can be strongly improved.

After Rudi Oldendaal won concourse, one started the first of the four races. Coming from Australia Jan Roestdorf was the fastest man on the track, the Paul Hawkins of the meeting, but unfortunately not with Hawkeye's Team Guston Ferrari 350 P4 Canam, but with the Sunoco Ferrari 512 having won ... the Sebring 12 hours. Craig Strydom with the correct Hawkeye machinery was runner-up and Paul Erlo on another Sunoco Ferrari third. Of the other entrants only young Tyrone Strydom on a Porsche 917 could follow the three leaders. Annetje Walburg - also responsible for the catering - caused a stir by finishing a fine fifth at the first race.  The second race was again fully dominated by Jan Roestorf, now finishing ahead over Craig Strydom and Paul Erlo. Since Tyrone Strydom was delayed with technical woes fourth place went now to Dave Greer with ... an orange McLaren M8 of the Canam series instead of the Springbok series.

Australia's Jan Roestorf - a former RSA citizen - with Ferrari t-shirt receives his prize from Al Paterson. I have no explanation why Gustav Heyman was absent at the meeting. Why he refuses to promote model car racing in his country?

1st CANADIAN GRAND PRIX, TORONTO (CDN)  - May 12, 2007 (NO IOC RACE)

CAMPBELL, CZERWONY & KOO WINNERS

May 20, 2007 - In Canada Mark Campbell and Ernie Mosetti are working hard to promote model car racing. For the Canadian Grand Prix Mark prepared six identical Corvettes of Carrera on a Schöler chassis equipped with the ProSlot Mk1 motor. Here follows the report on the race we received.
It became clear during the one hour team practice prior to the start of the race that the 2007 Corvette Challenge would be extremely close and the Team logistics of who could best drive the more demanding inner and outer lanes at ‘race pace’ may end up becoming the deciding factor.  All six Corvette C6R’s (along with a backup car to avoid the possibility of delaying the race) where performing equally, a perfect spec race that would be all about driving the duration with as much consistency as possible. The Villeneuve Road Course is a tight circuit and has little more than 10cm of lane spacing, so the race start going into the first turn and at least the first few laps require a steady hand and some careful handling until the cars start to get a bit of space between them.  The opening challenge comes back to the drivers in attempting to lap cars that can often require two to three laps of close following to attempt a safe pass on an inside lane.  After the first round of six heats and a full rotation of all team drivers, 5 of the 6 teams remained with 2 laps of each other and three of the teams had best lap times within 2 one thousands of a second.  With the cars so evenly matched, the race looked wide open.

However by the mid point of the race (heat 18) the three leading teams that would eventually find themselves on the podium surfaced with Team Goodbody (836 laps), Team Plachecki 2 (835 laps) and Team Campbell (834 laps) in first through third positions respectively.  Team Walker in fourth place was only seven laps back with their leader Chris Walker the only racer to break 48 laps in a heat to that stage of the race and the racer that would eventually post the fastest lap of the race.  By mid race the track surface had also settled in and the Proslot motors where hitting their stride as lap times overall dropped by 2 tenths with the lead racers pushing to go under 6 seconds.  Team Goodbody took a two lap lead at the end of heat 22 that they were able to maintain until heat 30 with Team Campbell and Team Plachecki trading second place from heat to heat.  With a two lap lead going into the final round of 6 heats it looked as though Team Goodbody had the race, but Team Campbell took back a lap on heat 31 and another on heat 32 to come even with Goodbody going in to heat 34.  On heat 34, Team Campbell with Peter Czerwony pulling the trigger on green lane drove a flawless heat as Team Goodbody encountered traffic and deslotted putting Team Campbell ahead by a little more than a lap.

The last two heats would determine the winner with both Team Leaders, Mark Campbell and Brad Goodbody facing off.  On lap 35 Campbell found himself with some back markers and no chance for a safe pass and Goodbody was able to make up the better part of a lap.  Going into the final heat, the win was still open as Goodbody found himself on the fast green lane and Campbell was left to drive his last heat on the tight inside yellow lane.  Lap by lap, Goodbody was clawing back the lead however Campbell was able to push the yellow lane to within .011s of Goodbody’s lap times.  As both racer’s entered the final minute of the heat, it was clear that Campbell needed to continue his pace and not deslot.  A collision between some backmarkers in the final few seconds of the heated threatened the result, however Team Campbell hung on to take the win by a little less than 2 meters over Team Goodbody (see image SRC_Corvette_14.jpg).  A duel to the finish after 3 hours and 1680 laps of racing!  The final place on the podium went to Team Plachecki 2 seven laps back of the leaders.  The 2007 Corvette Challenge will go into the record books as great race and a pivotal event.  Canadian Model Car Racing has been running for many, many years on a club level however this was the first major event held by Scale Racing Canada to IMCA specifications . . . and also one of the best!

The next major SRC event will be the RACE FOR HOPE to be held on Saturday, December 15, 2007.  The RACE FOR HOPE will be a special event to race money for the Children’s Wish Fund, a great charity organization that grants a special wish to chronically ill children.

LEFT PICTURE: Mark Campbell (right) and his co-driver Peter Czerwony. Roger Kroo is missing on the pic.

12th DIETER JENS LE MANS CHALLENGE, SIEGEN (June 23-24) (D) (NO IOC RACE)

12th LE MANS CHALLENGE TO DIETER SOMMER

Something seems destroyed now Spicker is no longer coming

July 21, 2007 - It's pretty late, but not too late to write a short report on the 12th Dieter Jens Le Mans Challenge. Let I repeat that I consider Jens as the founding father of modern model car racing. Although he co-operates closely with the Chief-Rabbi of the Amish people of North-Germany, there is quite a difference among them two. Jens is a full pro, a former wing car racer having contested dozens of international races. Still in 1995 he finished as fourth at the USRA Nats, what's an excellent visit card. Earlier, in 1988 he won the first round of the 1/24th Model Car Endurance World Championship in Chicago. Contrarily to the Chief-Rabbi of the Amish, being a simple-minded peasant, an amateur without connections in the world of pro racers, Jens is highly respected b y nearly all pros of the world. So it remains for me a mystery why his Le Mans Challenge became never an international event. In 2004 I did an effort to bring Nick de Wachter and "Piki", two world champions in model car racing to Siegen, hoping that this could be the start of an internationalisation of the Le Mans Challenge. Their entry, however, was a big deception: in such style of racing without aggressive motors, they could not defend their chances. They had to drive some old cars which I bought at the last minute from Thomas Spicker and from others, and although the road holding was far from good, both counted on the fact that they never deslot, to move up in the rankings. However, with such motorless cars nobody deslots, so there was no way to take any advantage from their professional experience. In 2005 I tried to convince Salvatore Noviello, Dani Gonzalez, Tamar Nelwan and many others to do the Le Mans Challenge - especially now that we had our own cars with excellent road holding - but nobody was hot to show.
Eventually there are two reasons why professional non-German racers refuse to do the Le Mans Challenge. The first reason concerns the Ortmann-Wiesel tyres. That's a commercial trick giving not the smallest guarantee that all tyres are of the same compound. In international racing tricks with tyres are excluded: everybody races since 1995 handout ProComp Scaleauto tyres, where any form of tyre dressing is forbidden. With old cars that principle cannot be maintained, because, dependent on the type of body, the height of the tyres need to be different. The second reason is the motor. I fully understand that using powerless Fox motors is a good protection to avoid damaging bodies on which hours and hours were spent, but professional racers hate such powerless motors.
For those reasons the Le Mans Challenge will probably stay forever to be a pure German event. But even as pure German event the Le Mans Challenge is not longer what it was now that Thomas Spicker and Uwe Steingraber both retired from active racing after the disaster with their Slotvision chassis. With its plastic bolts and nuts the expensive Slotvision chassis was never popular among racers. In international racing nobody uses such chassis. So we even don't know exactly what it is worth in competition. But the fact that Spicker himself practiced with it at the (disastrous) 2005 IMCA Worlds in Aalst, and retired before the race started was some signal that it's not the chassis to buy if one wishes to win a major international race.
Probably disappointed by the bad commercial results of their new chassis, Spicker and Steingraber are no longer racing. But they were the guys giving so much colour in the past to the Le Mans Challenge. Without them the races are perhaps close, but boring. This year 26 racers showed at the 12th edition, among them some Amish as Rüdiger Krieger (no racer, just a back-benching jerk) and Stephan Wiesel (driving with his teeth after he lost both hands). However they are the last you need to have exciting racing.

For the first time in the history of the Le Mans Challenge someone succeeded to win the three classes: Dieter Sommer. As far as I can see it was his first entry in the Le Mans Challenge. In the three races he was outstanding, winning once three laps ahead, once one lap ahead and once one and a half lap ahead over his nearest competitor. So there was only close racing for the three our four following places. Contrarily to former years the three races went over 6 x 7 minutes instead of 6 x 5 minutes. It stirs that most of the so called "modern" prototypes went all slower than the pre-1964 GT & T cars. With the years the Le Mans Challenge got something droll. Among the "modern" prototypes no Audi R10 TDi, no Bentley EX 9, no Pescarolo C60 Judd, even not one actual car, but nearly exclusively cars being a quarter century or more old. The most recent cars, a Ferrari F550 Maranello and an Audi R8 finished ... at the two last places.
Although the entry was higher than in 2006, there were no more some star racers. Last year we saw still Michael Niemas, Christoph Kremer, Philip Kremer and Dieter Jens himself, but except for Jens none of them came back this year.
There must be something wrong with the general formula that drivers, having been at most former editions were all missing this year. No Jürgen Janke, no Emmanuel Vandereyt, no Ralf Schaffland, no Ralf Rieger, no Peter Berg, no Uwe Geißler, no Patrick Fisher, no Pit Schwaar. Of the old glories we found only Dieter Hartmann, but not with the most competitive cars. Three classes are perhaps too much. Why not opting for two classes with in class 1 all the famous cars seen during the famous Ford-Ferrari combat of 1964-1967 and in the second class only Le Mans cars seen since 2003. Now that the French racers are all hot for 1/24th Le Mans racing it could be a good injection of new racers and above all new cars. This year nearly no new cars could be admired at the Le Mans Challenge. It became too much a business for nostalgics. If I see the success of our 124 Le Mans 2007 concept (where we had to refuse more than 60 racers, to hold over 62 of 23 different nationalities) there can be no doubt that Le Mans racing is again popular among model car racers. But please, let them not race with motorless cars, just because the stock of Fox II motors remains so big. And let the swindling with the Ortmann/Wiesel tyres in all kinds of compounds be stopped. On going with modern Le Mans cars one can use handout Scaleauto ProComp tyres, ensuring a much more fair racing. When at 2004 I was in Siegen I remember two racers having received from Ortmann "special tyres". But in model car racing tyres are 50 per cent of victory. If one cannot ensure equal tyres for all entrants there is something wrong. Same with the Fox II motors. In 2005 Pit Schwaar gave Robby Cuppens a very special Fox II for the Le Mans race with oltimers. Cuppens, who never earlier TQ-ed, couuld at onve TQ much faster than anyone else. If the Le Mans Challenge wishes to survive better handout motors and handout tyres will be a must. [JPVR]

DIEPENBEEK 24H OF SPEEDLINES (June 30-July 1) (B) (WAS CANDIDATE IOC RACE)

DE KOK, MINHEERE, VOGEL WIN SPEEDLINES 24

Simple fairground attraction, not deserving any IOC status

July 1, 2007 - Scheduled as the second IOC model car race of 2008, the 9th Diepenbeek 24h absolutely not deserved such status. More than half of the cars should have been refused since model of nothing existing. There were only racers from Belgium and Holland (not of minimum six nations as stipulated by the IOC rules). A decent final result was not available: we even don't know exactly who were the racers; of some entrants only the first names were published, etc. Fully understandable Racing for Holland decided not to enter such race having more and more the status of a simple rural fairground attraction. No wonder that racers from Spain, Germany, Denmark, Norway, etc. all preferred to do some-thing else than smelling the perfume of fatty Flemish frites. The several teams showed even without team shirts, being all but publicity for slot-racing.
Of the nine times that the Speedlines 24 hours were organised, this year's edition was undoubtedly the poorest. If theclub continues that way they can be sure to find no more competent racers for the following edition. The race has been won by the Dutch team of Arthur de Kok, John Minheere and Dennis Vogel, finishing 174 laps ahead over last year's winners. The new model car team of Blondiau/Kuhn with Björn van Cam-penhout and Kristof Huys seriously disappointed by finishing last. No hour per hour standings were saved on the club's web site, only lots of pics fully proving at what degree the Speedlines 24 hours have been downgrated to some village happening without any sportive value. Races of that type are boring and completely off-time. NO IOC-points have been attributed to such non-event. [JPVR]