Need race advice

[Spacemen]

My son’s pinewood derby race is this Saturday. We raced last years car (which placed fifth in his pack) this past October in the Rookie Stock WIRL race. The car was Text Book Case. We ran it to get a benchmark on time. The avg. time was 3.0517.

We have since built and raced two cars, Wing It and Wing It 2 in the races in Oct, Nov, and Dec. Our best avg. time was with Wing It in December averaging 2.8699. This is the car we will run on Saturday. It is a three wheeler with canted rear wheels set up to ride the rail on the dominate side.

I have two questions; One, We improved our time from last years car to this years car by .1818 seconds. About how many car lengths does that equate to? and Two, We will be racing in six heats on a 40’ six lane Super Track. I am thinking of trying to get the car running as straight as possible for the alignment, instead of rail riding. Should I rail ride or let her run straight?

Thanks so much for all the great racing and advice. We have learned lots and caught the racing bug.

Spaceracer

[beakerboysracing]

Jan 22, 2009 16:51:31 GMT -6 Spacemen said:

My son’s pinewood derby race is this Saturday. We raced last years car (which placed fifth in his pack) this past October in the Rookie Stock WIRL race. The car was Text Book Case. We ran it to get a benchmark on time. The avg. time was 3.0517.

We have since built and raced two cars, Wing It and Wing It 2 in the races in Oct, Nov, and Dec. Our best avg. time was with Wing It in December averaging 2.8699. This is the car we will run on Saturday. It is a three wheeler with canted rear wheels set up to ride the rail on the dominate side.

I have two questions; One, We improved our time from last years car to this years car by .1818 seconds. About how many car lengths does that equate to? and Two, We will be racing in six heats on a 40’ six lane Super Track. I am thinking of trying to get the car running as straight as possible for the alignment, instead of rail riding. Should I rail ride or let her run straight?

Thanks so much for all the great racing and advice. We have learned lots and caught the racing bug.

Spaceracer

.05 is about a car length.

Not familiar with Super Track, is that a center guide rail or side rail?

Scott

Beakerboys

[Spacemen]

Super Track is a side rail track. We ran the past three months on the WIRL track which is a center guide track and now we have to adjust to a side rail track. I'm not sure what to do.javascript:add("%20:-/")