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July 30, 2014, 6:40 a.m.
7/30/2014
By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com
Why does every track have to be as sticky as flypaper these days?
If you wanted to bicycle around every corner, why not race bicycles?
I started thinking about this after listening to the racers at my local indoor track, which is made of sticky clay, whine about track less-than-ideal track conditions that fail to produce the level of grip they'd prefer - as though it must be as adhesive as industrial-strength Velcro in order for them to have any fun.
But it's not just the local racers - surely, everyone remembers the drama of
last year's IFMAR Worlds Warm-Up, during which the top pros in the world were so frustrated with the lack of grip that the track crew was forced to blanket the surface in sugar.
Silver Dollar R/C Raceway -- during sugaring.
Photo via Facebook -- Credit: Joe Pillars (Orion/Kyosho)
Today's cars are more capable than ever of working on a wide variety of tracks, and tire technology far exceeds any other time in this industry, yet track crews from local races to World Championships are spending increasingly more effort to create a track and maintain a track surface that is as abrasive as 24-grit sandpaper. Doesn't anyone else think it's silly to use brooms and leaf blowers to remove every last speck dirt from...well, more dirt? Then, of course, when they succeed - there's a very expensive side effect.
Blowing out tires in two runs is bad enough when you get them for free. It's worse when you have to pay for them with your own hard-earned paycheck.
It's not like the racing is any better when the track is sticky and sugared, either. The main events are a crash-fest, with drivers spending more effort trying to make their cars not fly off the track when they enter a corner than they do actually pushing harder for fast laps. The main events are a one-line freight train in which the pursuing driver can do nothing but wait for the leading car to crash - and we see it happen often, as it seems the TQ wins less often now than in previous years.
And just like every other variable we've seen change in this industry, it has no effect on the finishing order - the top drivers still finish on top, it's just that everyone used up more tires and destroyed more parts.
Do 4WD cars really need to wheelie?
Last weekend, I was laughing about this trend in off-road racing with a fellow San Diego-area local who I've known for over twenty years - except that he wasn't laughing, because he runs a facility as well. We were reminiscing about the days when we ran step pins on a watered, loamy surface that actually changed throughout the night - and it would throw dirt into the air, too!
Yes, believe it or not, people used to run these - in 2WD buggy!
But there was also another very real difference - we talked about having to use throttle control, and not just to keep the car from flipping over backward from too much power. Today's LiPo batteries and brushless motors have certainly increased the speed of racing today, but they've also increased the racers' expectations - that they should be able to use every bit of what's available. The tracks are faster, the jumps are bigger, and in order to be able to use the power that's behind your trigger finger, you need to have more grip. In fact, that's the single biggest problem with today's way-too-fast "stock" class. If the tracks weren't so darn sticky, and you couldn't use all of that power, running illegal stock motors wouldn't be so much of an advantage.
Hot button discussions in racing right now are efforts to "curb innovation" and "slow down progress" of racing - which keeps leading to cars that are faster, conditions that make competitive racing more difficult, and existing rules that are bent to allow new products. Many of the changes in direction that the racing side of this hobby have taken over the last decade haven't so much been about "progress" as they've simply been about making changes - and not always for the better.
A regression in track conditions may not make everyone happy, but it will fix a lot about what's currently wrong with racing - and it's going to change the strategy of the way that people approach qualifiers and main events. Can't control that 6.5 installed in your 2WD? Tough! You might realize you would've been faster with a 10.5 all along. I'm not advocating go to back to loamy dirt tracks and step pins (though I think it'd be awesome), but I am insisting that racers take a bit more responsibility for being able to go straight down the straightaway without demanding that the track be packed, watered, swept, blown off, sprayed, and manicured finer than your girlfriend's fingernails.
Who am I kidding? That glossy surface would be way too slick by today's standards.
The discussion of off-road racing decades ago was that, especially at big races, the tracks were too flat and didn't have enough jumps or elevation changes - and people whined it was like "racing on-road with jumps." And yet here we are, racing on tracks that have more grip than the average parking lot.
Doesn't anyone miss punching it and throwing a rooster tail?
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