40 Cars

 I can't believe I have 40 cars now. I remember writing a post about what would be considered a "collection" and how many cars can possibly be run in the format that I have chosen. Running time trials forces you to look at each car and figure out how to make it win. When you're racing against other people, you only need to focus on your car, which is much easier. Time trials also force you to not play favorites, since it's a matter of milliseconds and it's difficult to gauge the winning car while driving it. 

Back when I wrote that post, I was reaching a crossroads and needed to decide which direction I'd be going. I was prepared to switch to a different class of cars from Slot.it, when I started looking elsewhere. No knock on Slot.it. I love them. I just had picked up everything that was available to me. 

Moving to another brand took a little time, but I eventually did it. Now I have nice coverage of four brands with plenty of options to choose from.

Back when I had only eight cars. Seems like a million years ago.

Are 40 cars too many? For my style of racing, I'd say no, but I don't know if I'm going to hit a threshold or not. Thing is, I can easily split my racing into subgroups and have loads of great challenges. And if I want to do particular things, I can do them with the confidence that it's not too much to handle in one session. 

I still practice the method of tuning the cars that came in last place first, trying to get them back into the show. What used to be one car in the old days has worked up to 4-5 cars now. It's easier to focus on getting the slower cars up to speed than trying to get the frontrunners to outrun each other. Other than tape-cleaning the tires, the cars race as they are, so any car that dogs it or struggles for time gets looked at and tuned up. 

When deciding which cars to race in a session, I've been finding that a random selection process works the best. I purposefully will put 2-3 of the slower, freshly re-tuned cars in the race, and sprinkle the rest of the field with a car or three from each brand. I try to do it in a random sort of way: I have separated my collection up into same brands/models so I can reach in and grab a car without looking and be happy with the selection. Sounds kinda dumb and kinda forced, but it works. I can basically take one car from each box and have a great field. Sure, not everybody gets a chance to race that day, but everybody does sooner or later. And if any cars get through the cracks and don't ever get picked, then I'll force those cars into the next race. 

A Peck [?] of Porsches. 917/10k

I've been working a lot, so my time has been limited. I leave the track layout up for up to a week, and put cars on when I get the chance. Seems lately that I don't get more than about 20 minutes or so before I have to do something else, but at least I get some racing in. Annoying part is having to dust down the track every time I want to race a car. Leaving a layout setup for a week brings a whole lot of dust and debris. No chance to run without a thorough dusting first.

I have to say that what is really important to this whole process is that I stuck with Classics, even if they came from different brands. They're more or less outfitted the same, so it comes down to workmanship and the car's form. This allows me to be even more random in which cars I select to race a particular session. Gotta hand it to the car brands for keeping the integrity there. It would be super easy and super wrong to just start putting faster motors in a car, or something like that. I have to give the brands credit for sticking within the limits of each class. This gives me 40 competitive cars.

We'll see what happens when we get to 80.