Slot Cars - Tips For Rug Racing

I'm a rug racer, balancing that fine line between living in a small apartment and still trying to get some kicks. I've been doing this now for three years and have gotten it down to what I'd like to believe is a science.
So here are some tips on how to have a successful career sitting on the floor in your living room:

1. Start with a clean track - there's nothing worse than having to crash a car because of a giant nose hair caught up in the axle. The car goes slower, runs rougher, and has a freakin nose hair in it. Best thing to do is to take some kind of lint-free cloth and give the track a once over before running cars on it. Swiff it. Whatever works. The idea is that if you get the stuff off the track first, you won't have to pick it out of your cars later.
One way to get a clean track is to vacuum the area you're going to put the track on. I know this is a controversial topic because vacuuming, but it's ultimately worth it. Besides, my wife likes that I vacuum the living room every day. Yes, every day. That way I can run my cars when she's gone. Works out, and she has no complaints.

2. Build in sections - Once I know what I want to make, instead of hunkering down on the rug and assembling, I assemble track pieces three or four-at-a-time while standing. With Carrera it's actually quite easy to build sections and clip them without even looking once you get the hang of it. Since doing it while standing means assembling pieces vertically, any crud that has collected in the slots drops to the ground.
Overall, it's a much better system on your back and knees.

3. Spend some time with your cars - there's a truth in slot cars....not all cars are great right out of the box. There's a chance that the two cars you got in your kit are mismatched. It happened to me. And with the three other cars I've added since, they each have had their own idiosyncrasies. When I was a kid I used to race HO cars, and they required work because they would get so smashed from crashing at high speeds. Even then they felt too small. Now that I'm running 1:32 cars I have a lot more convenience while working. Everything is larger and easier to work with, and it's much more simple to dial in. I know that if I do something, it'll have an effect. With HO cars I just crossed my fingers and hoped all the parts were in the right place.
Once you discover that a clean car is a happy car, you'll notice that it'll run better and won't be so noisy or uncontrollable.

Post-race cleanup of a car that has put on quite a few laps in the short time I've had it.

A car that hasn't been cleaned in awhile.

I clean my cars after every session, and I get great enjoyment out of it. I find that doing this makes them run very consistently and competitively with each other. The more time you spend under the hood, the more you'll realize what can be done, and then the experimenting starts. Squeezing that extra .1 of a second, or getting a car to grab better in the corners, or just making the damn thing sit right...all are possible. If you look at the rest of this blog, you'll see I've done loads of experiments with the cars to make them faster, and have had good results. I've got two cars running exceptionally well and one more on the way.
Messing around with the cars is my favorite part of the hobby.

4. Learn how to drive - figuring how when to let off the gas going into a turn is crucial to getting good lap times. It's one thing to drift the car out in the corners, but consider this; every time you drift, you're going slower through the turn than if you didn't. And if you slide out at the exit of a curve, you'll lose traction on the straight. So there's a balance there.
I like to approach each track layout in segments. Find a good speed, then try particular points of the track to improve. Then once you've figured out that point, move on to the next segment and improve there. By the end you'll have braking and acceleration points figured out, and you'll be going through the turns without pushing out.

5. Try them without magnets - here's the thing...when I run cars with magnets in them, they go real fast. Insanely fast. I get used to that speed, and push harder. Then the car comes off the track, and it crashes spectacularly. End over end, all the way into the far wall 3 feet away. These cars cost 50 bucks apiece. Every time one of them flies off the track like that, my stomach sinks.
When you take the magnets out, a few things happen; your driving style changes to adapt to a more realistic style, the car is harder to control at high speeds, and most importantly [to me], if you wipe out, you actually spin out most of the time as opposed to flipping dozens of times. There's no magnet grabbing the track until it can't hold on any more, so there's no snap-release of the car from the track when it finally has gone too fast for the magnet to hold it. Without magnets it simply spins out. A lot of times it won't go further than a car-length or two and come to a stop.
You might think you need borders if you run without magnets, but I run without borders and have a great time. There's plenty of space on Carrera track to run without borders [they're freakin expensive] and outside-lane advantages go away.
Once you have the magnets off, suddenly everything you do under the hood has an effect on the car. You'll notice the difference between properly-rounded, or "true" tires and uneven, untreated tires. You'll enjoy the corners more, as they're more similar to how an actual car would take a turn.
Bonus: if you are always waiting around for your kid to catch up, taking the magnets off your car and leaving them on his will make the competition more even.

6. Run races - whether alone or with others, competition is a good thing, and slot car racing is perfect for it. I've had a great time running races, as it has given me something to work towards, which makes it fun to try and squeeze better times out of the cars. Even if you run against the timer on your phone and count laps out loud, it'll be more fun that not doing anything at all.

7. Get others interested - low pressure, just having fun. The great thing about slot cars is that some of them are downright beautiful, and even to someone with even the slightest casual interest, it could be enough to get them involved:

My wife's car. She chose it out of a group of cars because she liked the color. Later I showed her Jacky Ickx footage on youtube. And even though she only runs occasionally, she asks about how her car is going quite often.

8. Use a track layout program - the nice thing about a layout program is that you can design a track before getting down on your knees and putting it together. It also gives you something to do when you can't set your track up. I like to make a layout a half-hour or so before I get the track out. That way I know what I want and how to build it, and that's important in my situation, as I've got limited space.

The design done on softyroyal.de track design software.

The final track. I moved the power piece to the other side as it was a better sitting place. Every track that I design for the apartment living room has to be roughly similar in that it goes from one corner to the other, unless I build a smaller track. There's normally a coffee table and piano bench there, but those get stacked against the wall when the track comes out.

9. Get more cars - I had the same two cars for over two years until finally getting some others. Each car is different, and many 3rd party manufacturers make cars that are better than the ones that come with the kit.

10. Have a good storage plan - I can clear my living room, unpack the track, build it and be running cars in fifteen minutes. All it takes is a system. I use the original box for the track, but I took out all of the other things I don't use; guard rails and rail clips. I stack curves with curves and straights with straights, and pack the power track separately. I have a "kit box" for my cars and various tools and lubricants. That way if I can't break out the track for some reason, I can still take out the cars and work on them. Plus I can take that box to a commercial track and I'll have all my tools at my disposal.

So there you go. Didn't think there'd be 10, but there they are. Hope some of them are useful.