26 Sep Slot Car Championship: September

The popular FMM Slot Car Club’s new four-lane track became operational in September and an excellent turn-out of racers thoroughly enjoyed the night’s racing. The extra lanes and the now computer-controlled race programme meant each competitor had more races during the session than the previous two-lane track allowed – each car raced on all four lanes and the total laps covered determined the overall winners in the three categories. The circuit – designed and laid out by Jon Lederle – is longer than before and offers different challenges, and still requires concentration and a sensitive trigger finger to put in consistently quick laps. Importantly, the layout proved to be marshal friendly – just extra awareness needed to avoid putting a crashed car back in the wrong slot, helped by the cars and slots being colour coded.

The ‘anything goes’ Formula Libre category was the first to take to the grooves and Pieter Venter emerged the winner with his Jaguar XKR-S with a total of 61 laps, recording the fastest lap in the process. Michael van Niekerk was second with his Mercedes SLS AMG fractionally ahead on the same lap as Albie Venter with his Porsche 934.

The hotly-contested Formula Carrera category once again proved to be a duel between Jon Lederle’s Audi RS5 DTM and Mark Venske’s BMW M4 DTM. Jon covered 114 laps while Mark did 105 while recording the fastest lap. Thys Roux was third and Jackie van Wyk fourth with their Mercedes AMG GT3s, both on 103 laps.

In the non-magnetic Formula FMM category, Jon won again with a Porsche 911 GT3 with on 80 laps, followed by Jackie with his Porsche 917 on 78, and Thys third on 76 with his Porsche 962C.

Racing is likely to be more competitive at the October meeting as racers get to master the intricacies of the new track, increasing the intensity and excitement of this popular FMM event.