[woodcote]

       

Hardware: As pit stops are such an important part of any endurance race, you definitely need a pit lane – and the pit lane needs to be long enough to hold all the cars racing. We’ll also be racing for a while, so it’s sensible to check (or change) the batteries in the controllers – if the charge runs low during the race, the driver will experience all sorts of odd throttle and brake behaviour! Likewise, the tablet or phone with the Magic app should be charged up - or plugged into a charger.

I also reckon it's useful to have two smart devices – one for the Magic app and the other to run a timer to indicate the start of the driver-change window. A pad of paper and a pen always comes in handy - whether it's to keep a backup of the race progress, jot down driver times, penalties or anything else you want to remember. It’s also good to have a basic toolkit available – cars can break down. During the race, teams might want to pit to clean the rear tyres and improve grip – especially if the track is laid out on the floor.

Cars: To run these one, two or three-hour races, we’ll need Scalextric cars with the traction magnets removed. Otherwise, we’d be limited to 10 or 15 minutes before the motor overheats and risks permanent damage. Scalextric cars aren't designed to run non-mag, so some careful set-up with a little weight and replacement tyres is never a bad idea. DiSCA's Gary Skipp gives an excellent walk-through on his YouTube Channel here:



Scalextric have produced plenty of tasty liveries from the British GT Championship over the years – including two more set cars in the 2022 catalogue. But you don't have to stick to those liveries - any GT car will do... although I would stick to one brand to give similar performance. I think Scalextric (or Carrera) cars are ideally suited for digital racing - not too fast and sufficiently robust. Most Scalextric GT cars are also very easy to convert to Scalextric digital using the C8515 digital plug.

I’ve chosen to race just four cars on my small living-room floor layout.  Any more and a small track does get rather congested. The full six cars need a bigger lap length. However, four cars does mean eight drivers – and a lot of fun. Three of the four cars are GT4 Mustangs (I do like them) and the other is the TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage V8. The RAM Racing AMG GT3 will be straight on the grid when it's released!

Okay, next is the Magic app set-up...