THE CUP: A PIECE OF ART

An event as IMCA's Nations Cup can be compared with nothing else in slot-racing. Take the Cup self. It is a piece of art, a sculpture made by André Chaudy, estimated to be worth € 35,000. It is a ... 1/24th scale copy of a gigantic piece of art being 16-metres high. Last year the Cup was surprisingly won by Team Holland (with on the picture from left to right: Dennis Vogel, dad Hugo Dekker, son Desmond Dekker, Arthur de Kok, John van Hoornaar and Anko Stok. Dutch racers are not the best in the world, but they understand as no one else, the tricks to win: scoring a maximum of points at both the Mello Yello Junior Worlds and at Concourse.
The Nations Cup is a challenge cup. Only if a national team can win it three times ownership goes to the team coach. Meanwhile the value of the statute is increasing year after year. The combination of postmodern art and slotracing is only one of the several unique aspects of IMCA's Nations Cup racing. Another aspect is that races at the Nations Cup can easily be followed by TV-cameras, because the speed of the cars is low enough to do so. It is the unique slot-racing event in the world going at the national television network. For the public the races are easy to follow, since all participants receive before the start a t-shirt in their national colors, with on it the name of the racer and his IOC-rank number. Race directors are dressed in a black dinner jacket and as easy to discover as the arbitre on a soccer field. Race directors this year will be Lambrto Bosch and Kristof Klinkers, themselves two model car racers.

THE CARS: ATTRACTIVE AND EASY TO RECOGNISE

Prize gving is another specific aspect of the Nations Cup, always done by the major of the organising city in presence of the national miss (this year: miss Belgium). In the racing premises you find not only several tracks, but also grand stands for 2,000 persons and several race cars (among them JPVR's newest Ferrari 360 Modena). 

The model cars themselves are 1/24th scale copies of all race cars seen at last year's Winston Cup Nascar Series. The team race (Old Timer World Trophy) goes with 1977 Group 2 Touring Cars seen at the European Championship. By using the same motors, same wheels and tires and same controllers (fixed to the track) racing conditions at the Nations Cup are very equal for all entrants. Year after year the best racers are the winners. It is one of the rare occasions where you find wing car racers, scale racers and model car racers ALL together. The races can be followed on line at the Internet. No less than 6 webcams offer a unique opportunity to follow worldwide what's going on. Complete results are published immediately after each race.  Last year no less than 315,000 spectators worldwide could follow the Nations Cup at the Internet. That's the way to collexct enough sponsoring money to cover the largest part of transport costs of most teams, especially the plane tickets of those racers coming by plane. All this aspects are very typical for IMCA racing, another approach of slot-racing. The rules are made in such way that even at the main event - the IMCA Model Car World Championship - always 4 non-IOC-ranked amateurs and 4 non-IOC youngsters or kids can take the start among the 36 qualified racers. 

THE ENTRY: ALWAYS THE BEST RACERS OF THE WORLD

But the most typical characteristic for the IMCA Nations Cup is that it brings year after year the world's best slot-racers together. Of the top-30 of the world ranking of active racers no less than 21 subscribed. Among them the three world champions: Juha Yli-Sipola (wing-cars), Vladimir Horky (scale cars) and Salvadore Noviello (model cars), also such slot-racing legends as "Gugu" Bernardino, Giovanni Montiglio (I), Lasse Aberg (S), Mario Schöne (D), Fred Hood (USA), Einari Fyhr (SF), Paolo Trigilio (I), Josef Korec (CZ), Frantisek Poledna (CZ), etc. But out of the top-30 we find several other top racers, among them Gustav Heymann (RSA), Georges Baikry (B), Jozef Miskolci (SVK), Josef Lapcak (SVK), Paolo Niccolai (I), Chris Radisich (NZ), John van Hoornaar (NL), etc. Apart from them we receive each year the best youngsters: "Piki" van Rossem, Dennis Vogel (NL), Matt Zenovitch (USA), Daniele Malagone (I), Andrew Aynsley (GB), John Brown (GB), etc. New is that we receive this year several strong amateurs, among them the top modelists Matthias Parke (D) and Russell Sheldon (RSA), but also the new racers from Portugal (with Pedro Mizarela) and Austria (with Thomas Csoka).