With barely a week since Race 4 at Bruce’s track, we all scrambled to clean, setup, and (in many cases) repair our cars for the December 12th race at Sherman’s “New Glen” raceway. It’s always best to arrive early at The New Glen to ensure that you get a good spot for camping:Bruce, Larry, Ian, and Ron all arrived early for plenty of practice, as did “Porsche Joe,” who is Ian’s Dad and is seen in the shadowy background.Ian is a very capable slot car racer, and Joe keeps him supplied with well-sorted cars. (I suspect that Ian also has his eye on Joe’s 1:1 scale Porsche 911!) Here, Ian is clearly testing the limits of adhesion with a Porsche 962 on the green lane.At the other end of the track, The Doctor himself appears ready to swat any car going by that fails to meet the club’s stringent rules. (Actually, while the IHSR rules are stringent, we seldom if ever bother to check whether cars comply. It’s more fun to race them!) Bruce appears unfazed by Sherm’s swatting activities.Sherm and Joe were conferring on the optimal setup for Joe’s new scratch-built Porsche RSK when a wandering photographer showed up and flashed a picture right in their faces. Bruce appears unfazed by the wandering photographer, the camera flash, or anything else!Ron, Judge Keith (not “Kieth”!), and Larry are all intent on doing well. I don’t see any cars on the track, however, so it’s possible that they’re just pretending to do well, setting imaginary lap records with their “air slot cars.” (You never know with this gang…)Larry replaced the “Over Two-Litre” motor in his vintage Corvette with the proper “Under Two Litre” 14k version. It seemed to run very well, but he wasn’t entirely satisfied.Therefore, Larry set the car up on Sherm’s sanding block to get some more “miles” on the motor and wear in its brushes. This is yet another of The Doctor’s Diabolical Speed Secrets.When Ian and Kendall (Keith’s son) weren’t racing or marshalling, they could be found pushing the limits of the latest soccer, football, and general shoot-’em-up online games. Their fathers are well known for an ongoing battle of wise-guy remarks, fanciful insults, and general abuse directed at each other—but Kendall and Ian set a much-needed example of cooperation and team efforts (while mowing down soccer opponents or blowing away space aliens to a well-deserved oblivion).This is my new Carrera Corvette C7R at the Turn 8 hairpin. It’s a beautiful car, although it doesn’t (yet) run as well as my faithful BMW Z4.This is not my new C7R on the Pit Straight—it’s Ron’s. He added three red stripes to the hood of the car to help distinguish it from all the other yellow no. 3 ‘Vettes that are now circulating at IHSR events. Also, his car still has its mirrors; I removed mine to ensure that they wouldn’t get lost in crashes. (But now I wonder where I put them…)“Porsche Joe” comes by his nickname honestly. This is his tidy 911 GT3 RSR, as raced in the 2011 Le Mans 24 Hours.The Carrera GT race got underway promptly at 10:00 AM. We all enjoy racing these bone-stock slot cars. They’re fun to drive and are fairly predictable, so it’s possible to concentrate on fast, consistent laps. Note that I said it’s possible—but not necessarily guaranteed, as several of us usually find out! Lane by lane, the differences between the fastest laps for the top three-fourths of the drivers was generally less than 0.5 second, which is pretty tight. The hot tip for this class is to use NSR tire oil to soften up the rear tires to within an inch of their lives. Ron has mastered this technique, and he immediately started turning very rapid lap times and setting a benchmark for the rest of us to try to achieve. Keith and I were having our usual close battle with BMW Z4’s, while Larry’s C7R initially looked like it needed just a little more of the NSR oil. Team Porsche (Joe’s 911 and Ian’s 918) were a bit farther back, possibly hampered by the somewhat narrower width of these cars. And then The Doctor rotated in, with rear tires that were so soft that the rubber was practically melting off the wheels. Almost immediately he was turning times almost as fast as Ron’s—but by the next heat his tires had gone off. (Or maybe the rubber entirely dripped off!) While that was happening, Larry suddenly picked up some speed and managed to set two of the second-fastest laps by lane (on red and green). On red, however, Something Bad happened, and he lost about 4 laps. At the finish, Sherm eked out a win over Ron by 2 laps, while I managed to “eek” out a slight margin over Keith for the last podium spot. Larry would have been right in the podium mix but for whatever happened on the red lane. (There’s a rumor circulating that he was going so fast that he lost air pressure in his head and had to sit down for a while…) Here are the finishers, except for Bruce’s Mercedes SLS which somehow failed to arrive at parc fermé.Of course, the race report would not be complete without mentioning that The Flying Ron had demolished the Carrera GT lap record. Congratulations (and try not to do it again)!So far this season, Ron’s beautiful and well-prepared Racer Maserati 450S has been the car to beat in the Vintage Sports Car category. But suddenly there was another Maser in town… This one appeared out of Sherm’s racing box, and it, too, was a joy to behold.Racer’s resin bodies are notoriously heavy. Ron had cut away half of his interior and covered it up by a nifty tonneau cover. Sherm went a step better: he ditched the interior altogether and replaced it with a vacuum-formed version of the original! Naturally he carefully transferred the gauges, shift gate, and so forth onto the vacuum-formed version. It was indistinguishable from the original.Racer cars are widely considered to be closer to 1/30th scale than to 1/32nd, allowing a wider rear track (but only up to the maximum of 2¼ inches allowed by the rules). After struggling with proper 1/32nd scale Porsche Speedsters and 550 Spyders, Joe decided to build an “upscale” Porsche RSK to compete on even terms with the Maserati’s. This is the result. Note the proper Porsche-style steel wheels: Joe’s wife made them for the car, by printing out color images onto plain paper—clever!Underneath the RSK, Joe had soldered up an ultra-lightweight chassis from scratch. While he was there, he ground out a considerable amount of the car’s resin bodywork for further weight savings. It ran quite well on its first outing and will no doubt do even better with further tuning.Now, speaking of Joe, we’ve all witnessed (and enjoyed) the extravagant repartee that goes on between Joe and Keith. (“Repartee” is French slang for insults, taunts, outrageous slander, and assorted grave threats.) It’s all in good fun, of course, and it has yet to end in fisticuffs or other violent actions. (So far, anyway…) And the record shows that Keith is the instigator far more often than Joe. Here, however, Joe is staring fixedly at Keith in a none-too-subtle effort to rattle him, while Keith is thinking “Nerts! What will this guy try next??”The VSC race began as usual, with Keith characterizing Joe’s RSK as being 1/18th scale, Joe responding that Keith didn’t know his scale from a hole in the ground, and so forth. Then Joe rotated out, and Keith’s rapid Cobra spun its pinion gear right off the motor. How did Joe respond to his arch-rival’s misfortune—did he laugh hysterically? Or comment on Keith’s car-building skills? Or ancestry?? No, he said, “Keith, you want me to fix that for you?” And, while Keith continued racing with my Ferrari GTO, Joe disassembled the Cobra, retrieved the wayward pinion, reglued it to the motor shaft, reassembled everything, and for good measure adjusted the body screws so that the car wouldn’t chatter while cornering. All in the space of a single 4-minute heat! The Cobra was back, and, collectively, we actually heard Keith say “Thanks!” to Joe. What’s the world coming to?? Up front, there was a hellacious battle going on between the Maserati 450S’s, while Larry’s Corvette was fighting with Joe’s RSK. Keith had lost a lot of time with my pokey GTO, but he was determined to regain the laps. I was soldiering around with my Ninco Porsche Carrera Speedster, which looked fantastic, accelerated quickly, cornered fair, and was incredibly touchy to drive. When I tried taking the kink in the overpass without lifting, I promptly rolled it the entire length of the straight! Ultimately, Sherm’s Maser prevailed over Ron’s, with lap times that were a few hundredths faster. Thanks to the extra break-in time on his motor, Larry nailed down third place, just ahead of Joe, with Keith close behind.After the race, Joe appeared happy and content, having helped out The Dread Judge while simultaneously beating him in the race! A new era of Harmony and Peace had clearly been established.At this point, pizza magically arrived, and a maniacal feeding frenzy broke out as we elbowed each other out of the way and wolfed down quantities of excellent pizza, donuts, potato chips, and everybody’s favorite—Fritos. (Trivia question: Why do hiking and camping websites recommend that you take a package of Fritos with you on trips? Answer: Because you can light them and they make excellent fire starters as they burn. Honest!) When last we saw my long-suffering Slot-It Mazda 787B Group C car, its rear wing had come adrift and ended up as a snow plow at the front of the car. In preparation for Sherm’s race, I carefully applied several ounces of hot glue to the rear of the car and reattached the wing. However, that angle just don’t look right!The SCCA corner workers at The New Glen were rather more excited by Larry’s Toyota 88C entry. It ran much better than my Mazda, probably because it had the proper rear wing angle.After his Cobra’s mechanical failure, Keith was anxious to do well in the Slot-It Group C race. Here, as best I can tell, he has resorted to absconding with his competitors’ cars. Fortunately, Larry has caught him in the act.Joe’s Shell Porsche 962 is a force to be reckoned with in this class, and he immediately started the race with excellent lap times. And Keith immediately began to distract Joe with comments and jibes. I was aghast, I say aghast, and I asked Keith, “Didn’t Joe just bail you out in the VSC race moments ago? Why are you now taunting him again??” Keith responded, “That was the last race—this is a new one, so it doesn’t count any more!” Yep, we were back to normal! Joe was unfazed, however, and proceeded to achieve an excellent 94% “perfection ratio” while driving to a solid podium finish. And ahead of Keith, we might add! Ron and Sherm were having another classic battle at the head of the pack. Both were smooth, fast, and consistent—but was this the race where Ron’s car shed a front wheel and axle? And Sherm ran into his own otherwise-unheard-of mechanical problem? I think it was, but they nonetheless finished 1-2, with Sherm just narrowly edging out Joe. The Doctor’s fastest lap of 6.102 seconds failed to set a new lap record by just 4 thousandths of a second!We had wisely decided to make the unlimited 1963-1981 Classic Le Mans cars the final race of the day. Previously, we’d been running these ultra-fast cars immediately after the relatively slow VSC category, and the abrupt transition was more than most of us could handle. Keith practiced with Dan Gurney’s McLaren M8D Can Am car, but in the end he borrowed Sherm’s fearsome Avant Slot Mirage. (For all you Can Am fans, be sure to check out the video where Dan Gurney describes driving this McLaren M8D at Mosport in 1970, his last season of racing .)Having loaned out his Mirage, Sherman decided to join Team Porsche and selected his equally fearsome Penske-Sunoco-Donohue Porsche 917/30 Can Am Spyder. The Judge immediately sought an injunction against this action, citing Sherm’s statement from a while back that he was retiring this Porsche, as it was unfairly fast. The Doctor may have responded with words similar to, “That was the last race—this is a new one, so it doesn’t count any more!” Ron and I opted for our Avant Slot Mirages, while Joe went with a beautiful Porsche 935, Ian had a Ferrari 312, Larry piloted his Can Am McLaren, and Bruce ran his nice-looking red and gold Ford GT. It was a powerful-looking field. In practice, my Mirage was preposterously fast and relatively easy to drive. I was cautiously optimistic that I might have a chance of repeating my victory from the prior weekend at Bruce’s race. My optimism faded, however, when I saw how fast Sherm’s 917/30 was going in the first heat! It looked positively unbeatable. Not only that, but Ron was circulating very rapidly as well. When I rotated in on blue, much to my surprise, I immediately began passing both Sherm and Ron—repeatedly. The heat seemed to go on forever, and I knew I was at least 4 to 5 laps ahead of them both. Hah, I was going to win this toughest of all race categories! I should have known… First, Keith noticed that the race clock had stopped with 1:36 left to run in the 3-minute heat, and laps were no longer being recorded. The race-management system had frozen, we’d been running for nearly 10 minutes(!), and the entire race had to be restarted. And second, Keith. As in, Keith hadn’t rotated in yet. While Sherm restarted the laptop and reset the race, I proudly proclaimed that I had won the Classic Le Mans Endurance Race! As usually occurs, no one paid the slightest attention.Soon enough, the race was underway all over again. Ron’s Mirage stripped its gears, and he replaced it on the fly with his Emergency Backup Avant Slot Mirage, losing only a second or two in the process. (Such calm and dexterity under pressure!) And then Sherm’s Porsche left the slot, landed in the adjoining one, and crashed under full throttle at the end of the main straight. Its rear body mount was broken, and the term “body float” took on a whole new meaning. Eventually Sherm gave in and switched to his Porsche 917LH. Meanwhile, Joe and Larry were having another good battle, Ian was getting around in good form, and I finally rotated in. My Mirage had lost a little of its grip, but it was still an awesome car and was still going faster than Sherm or Ron. Hot diggity! But then Keith rotated in for the final 4 heats of the race. His best lap times were immediately a bit faster than mine, but I knew I had driven very consistently and fast, with only 1 or 2 off’s during the race—I later calculated a 95% “perfection ratio”—so I was still hopeful. When 5-time Formula 1 champion Juan Manuel Fangio was racing in the 1950s, sports writers would introduce his latest win, extraordinary drive, or impossible escape from harm by saying, “Fangio being Fangio…” Well, Keith being Keith, he drove impossibly fast and extraordinarily consistently, achieving a 96% perfection ratio with these difficult cars and winning the race by 5 laps!It was a superb performance and victory (not that I would ever acknowledge such a thing!) In the following photo, Sherm and Ron’s cars are posed “double decker,” reflecting the mechanical problems they encountered and their replacement vehicles. I suspect they will both be loaded for bear at Hellanbach Raceway on January 9th.Finally, I suppose it’s only fair to mention that Sherm’s 917/30 broke the existing lap record for this class—only to have his new record eclipsed by Keith late in the race!It was a fantastic day of racing, with a wonderful crew of friends (aka “competitors”). Thanks for putting on a great event, Sherm, and let me know if you need any help with the leftover donuts.Rick F.