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I have been offered an F1 car to drive on our local carpet track and I am considering it but have never raced anything but off road. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions to help with the driving difference between carpet and off road? I spent all day yesterday observing and I am definitely interested in this new discipline but I am a little tentative as there are some serious drivers at the track.

I hope more experienced guys will post but here's my 2 cents...

I've only raced carpet road course once (Vintage On Road Nats a few years ago in Nashville). Acceleration is crazy and the corner speed is certainly faster! That's what I struggled the most with … figuring out just how fast I could go through the tight sections.

In the last few years, we've added carpet oval in the winter. Very fast and takes a ton of precision. And terribly addicting!

If the F1 car you're going to race is already setup and fast, you'll really enjoy it. Biggest thing to be ready for : The car will turn in NOW! No sliding, no waiting.

Do it!

I spent all day yesterday at the carpet track. The VTA and F1 stuff was fast but the 12th scale looked like a they followed a slot car track.
I might even run the big F1 race coming up in about a month. I know I won't do well but I will be there anyway might as well have some fun. Oh and here is a cool pic I took yesterday.

I've probably raced more 'on road' racing now than off road buggy racing in my many years in the hobby. I've never run an F1 car but I've been racing touring cars at my local indoor club almost without fail every Friday night... here's a little You Tube video of a recent final race at the club

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM8hTHby3Mc

As already said - these on-road cars are very positive to steering input which can take quite a bit of getting used to - also the sheer intensity with the speed of the cars & going from one corner to the next means there's little or no time to gather your thoughts, but its sure exhilarating when you get it right! Once you get really dialled into the way these cars drive you will be surprised at how then you can dice & battle for position with fellow racers.

Is the class of F1 that you are looking into run on foam or rubber tyres? With these pan chassis type cars (with the floating rear motor pod) the main element of maintenance & tuning seems to be with the tyres, with foam tyres its all about making sure they are trued up, rotating sets of tyres, making sure they don't chunk - routines of when & where to apply tyre additive etc etc - of course as the foam tyres wear, they get smaller so gearing needs to be altered accordingly. This is why I prefer racing my Touring Car with rubber slick tyres, which despite still need some tyre management (additive still required & re-glueing tyres where they split from the wheel around the tyre wall) It seems alot less confusing than what is involved with running foams?

They are run on rubber tires. I am told a set of tire will last a couple of seasons. I have driven his 1/12th scale car but I was using his left handed controller so it was hard for me get a feel. He also has a VTA car I can use but currently there are not enough to make a class of it.

Where you looking to race? My cousins race F1 over in Carbondale and love it. The went up to Cleveland for the 2013 U.S. Indoor Champs and one of them placed 2nd in F1. They have raced a lot of off road and TC, but they say the F1 although slower is much more fun. They say the tires last forever.

Are the cox brothers your cousins?

Yup.

You should come by one sunday. I am pretty sure I can find you an F1 car to drive for the day. You will need to bring a radio but the guy who owns the place has I think four extra F1 cars.

biff85ta wrote:You should come by one sunday. I am pretty sure I can find you an F1 car to drive for the day. You will need to bring a radio but the guy who owns the place has I think four extra F1 cars.

I cruise up and stay the night on Saturday every once in a while. Maybe I'll hang around and race sometime. I've been thinking of buying an F1 anyway just to have one.

THEYTOOKMYTHUMB wrote:

biff85ta wrote:You should come by one sunday. I am pretty sure I can find you an F1 car to drive for the day. You will need to bring a radio but the guy who owns the place has I think four extra F1 cars.

I cruise up and stay the night on Saturday every once in a while. Maybe I'll hang around and race sometime. I've been thinking of buying an F1 anyway just to have one.

Give me a heads up and I will throw my totes of old school goodness in the car. You can go through it all.

Will do.

biff85ta wrote:I have been offered an F1 car to drive on our local carpet track and I am considering it but have never raced anything but off road. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions to help with the driving difference between carpet and off road?

If you are been given a car to race I presume it will already be set up for racing, Getting the right tyres and chassis setup is half the battle as they can be undriveable with the wrong tyres.

If you are using your radio use lots of expo to deaden the centre steering, the standard F104 front end is a bit twitchy unless you modify the geometry from standard. Be easy on the throttle, always brake in a straight line before cornering and smooth on the steering inputs. Usually you have to let the car start to straighten up before putting the power on smoothly coming out of the corner. Coming from off road you probably won't notice it but compared to other pan car classes the rubber tyre F1s just don't have the sharpness you expect, come into a corner too fast and the front end will just wash out and go straight on, put the power on too early and it will just swap ends.

For tyre treatment, use whatever the other drivers are using, no doubt they should have experimented and worked out the best additive and cleaning regime for your track.

DerbyDan wrote:As already said - these on-road cars are very positive to steering input which can take quite a bit of getting used to - also the sheer intensity with the speed of the cars & going from one corner to the next means there's little or no time to gather your thoughts, but its sure exhilarating when you get it right! Once you get really dialled into the way these cars drive you will be surprised at how then you can dice & battle for position with fellow racers.

F1s use 21.5T motors, they are quite often the slowest cars on the track and the rubber tyres take away all the sharp handling of a decent pan car.

With these pan chassis type cars (with the floating rear motor pod) the main element of maintenance & tuning seems to be with the tyres, with foam tyres its all about making sure they are trued up, rotating sets of tyres, making sure they don't chunk - routines of when & where to apply tyre additive etc etc - of course as the foam tyres wear, they get smaller so gearing needs to be altered accordingly. This is why I prefer racing my Touring Car with rubber slick tyres, which despite still need some tyre management (additive still required & re-glueing tyres where they split from the wheel around the tyre wall) It seems alot less confusing than what is involved with running foams?

I gave up touring cars when we went to rubber tyres, because I didn't like the extra work rubber tyres involve. You can't use the tyre additive routines used on foams as a point against them when rubber tyres use even more complex treatment routines. With foams just work out when to put the additive on, and for how long before wiping off. Rubbers, first there's cleaning them off, inspecting the sidewalls and regluing, additive, then tyre warmers if used.
You want a more docile car on foams, just stick a harder compound on the front. You want the back end to slide around a bit more, harder compound on the rear. On rubbers you have to start chassis tuning, shocks/springs/camber/roll centres/etc. I know which I consider less confusing. Foam tyres wear down, so you always have a fresh tyre surface, after a months use they will still grip as good as new and using too soft a compound they won't overheat during a race and go off like rubbers do.

The only real downside to foams in any class is that they wear, so you have to use rollout for gearing instead of gear ratios, and checking ride height, but it's not as if you wear 1-2mm off your tyres every heat or two. On a touring car I would usually get 2-3 months use out of a set of foams while some of our drivers moaned how they were getting through a set of foams every 3 weeks as they insisted on using the softest they could get. Now they are using wets on carpet, being the softest they can run for 5 minutes and only getting 3-4 weeks out of them at 3 times the price of a set of foams.



I've raced F1s since the early 90s, all the way up to national level. What has stopped me competing seriously with them is the move to rubber tyres, they take away all the characteristics of F1 racing I enjoy. You can't throw the cars around the track any more, you just end up spinning out or sliding off. At the last BRCA national I attended, every single foam F1 was faster than the FTD rubber f1.
On my rubber F1 I spent a whole club meeting changing front roll centre and springs to get the front end to turn in hard enough, then the next week I had to go through the opposite to stop it spinning out. To tune them you have to spend all your time chasing front and rear suspension settings instead of just changing tyre compound and additive treatment. An accident that would just chunk a foam tyre (so easily repaired with spare foam) means a split rubber tyre that's binned. I love my old foam tyred F103, so much more precise and consistent, and can carry so much more speed through corners and has so much more traction it can lap 20% faster than my rubber tyred car.

I used to race a Tamiya F103.

It's still a fast car, you can get them pretty cheap and you can race it with actual electronics. Finally I raced mine with 2s shorty lipos, LRP SXX esc and and a LRP 17.5T motor and it was simply perfect (for me). I used to race it with foam tires on carpet. Also used some grip fluid.

I have entirely abandoned the touring car and f1 scene...Now I focus only on my off-road cars and vintage stuff...

I also had a complete Tamiya F1 collection: Tamiya F101, F102, full options F103, F201 and a F103 Six Wheeler. I've sold them all except the F103 six wheeler. I should also have a new f102 in parts laying around