Ah, The Smell of Dirt.....Indoors!!!

Every Labor Day, it feels like we can keep racing outdoors forever in Michigan  The sun is still shining, the water is warm and the windows stay open in my house all night long.  And every year like clockwork, the nights start to cool down, the weather becomes dodgy immediately afterwards.

Just when you think you have something figured out for the raceplex, Duke closes up shop and sends us packing.   If he wasn't such an awesome guy, you'd think he had it in for us dirt racers cutting us off like that.  I can't wait until next year out there.

Anyway, the weather in Michigan is what it is and fortunately for the RC Dirt Oval scene BFG has stepped up and built a new indoor track in it's facility at the Rivertown Sports Complex.

The new track is completely separate from the the offroad track now which should work out great for fans of both sides of the hobby since practice will be open now on any night that the facility is open instead of a single night during the week.

The track itself has much the same measurements as the old track at roughly 60 x 40 feet.  The primary difference is going to be that the new track has some decent banking on it.  I'll admit, Geometry class came right after lunch when I was in high school, so I may have missed the lecture where they told me how to figure out angles, but I did Google it and if my math is correct, the banking is somewhere around 18-19 degrees.  If you want more specifics, the wall is about two feet high and the dirt comes up to about 6 inches from the top so that's how high the banking is.

(Sorry for the quality of the pics.  Not sure what happened on that)

Chris has been working his ass off at the track for the last couple of weeks to get the track to where it is now.  Moving, leveling, tamping, dragging, picking rocks, leveling again, tamping again, dragging again.....   You get the picture.  If you see him, you should thank him and think twice before you offer too many suggestions for the new track since he, John, and a very few others did all of the work.

In my opinion, the track is turning out great.  The surface is already good enough to run on.  It's a little rough for foams or slicks, but I've definitely raced on worse.  If I was to compare it to another surface, it's probably right about where Stateline was when I visited there this spring.  Good, racey, but not perfect.  I'm told the plan is to roll it some more, run it in, rinse and repeat until perfect.  It's going to be awhile before it's where they say that they want to get it to.  If they do get it that smooth, look out.   This could be one of the best indoor facilities within striking distance.

Here's a video of Chris running his Custom Works GBX3 on the new track.  To be fair, the part where he runs into the wall is obstructed by a tractor in the video.

I'm looking forward to racing there this winter.

I'm also hoping to travel again this winter.  I think that's one of the most enjoyable things about this hobby.  Meeting new people and racing against some of the best racers in the country has really helped me in my racing.  Any time I've seen the Custom Works guys, they have been more than willing to answer questions and help me out.

With that in mind, the first trip of the year is going to either be to Monee in two weeks for the fall roundup or out to Omaha for a rubber tire race where CW is giving away a free set of tires with every entry that same weekend.  My preference would be to go to Omaha since I've never been there, but work may get in the way of taking the two days off that would be required to travel that far.   

Monee wouldn't be a bad deal either though.  They tell me that the fall roundup is the longest running dirt oval race in the country and that place is awesome.  I love that track!

I've got this thing on my phone where I can post pictures directly to this blog, so if I do travel, I'll be able to upload pics here instead of trying to navigate through the painful process of trying to get pics up on Hobbytalk.