Racing Topics > 10th Scale World GT

The Great Pro10/World GT Debate!

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DekelzMan:
Pro10 has been around since the early to mid-1980’s where it was an extremely popular class. Like Touring Cars today, there were many flavours of Pro10, spanning the capabilities, and pocketbooks, of every racer. In North America, Pro10 died a slow death in the mid-90’s when most of the beginning and average racers gave up, as the speeds were beginning to get out of hand, they became costly and even dangerous.

Pro10 continues to grow in Europe and is still an incredibly popular class. They have one major advantage over us here in North America; they have some really REALLY nice 1/8th scale tracks they can run on and really let them see their true potential.

We are not so lucky...

This year in Pro10, in my opinion, we are starting to see some cracks in our formula. Our numbers were not down, at least not uniquely, all classes have shown signs of weakness, due in part to the economy, but mostly due to a lot of our, shall we say, middle-aged group of racers buying houses, fixing houses, getting married, getting un-married, all of which have taken their toll on the week to week numbers. Pro10 held it’s own in terms of numbers, but we started to see a pretty healthy gap from the top of the leader board on down, almost like we were running two classes.

Thats not good...

Trying to analyze why this is happening, you can pinpoint a few factors:

Technology, Money, and Skill level

Technology:
This year was the year of the programmable speed control and all it’s intricacies. We embraced LiPos and Brushless the year before but this year was all about getting the most out of the little black boxes. There were more Laptops than tire truers in the pits this year!

Money:
Pro10 was a secondary or even tertiary class for most drivers this year and as such funds needed to be allocated to two or more classes. Me, I could throw all the money I wanted into it, and quite frankly it showed...I had nothing exotic, but I did have a brand new car and enough tires to run a different set every run, including practice time and that in-itself is a contributing factor to a successful, and believe it or not, economical season...and I’ll explain that part to anyone who wants to hear it, just not here and now :)

Skill Level:
Like any other class, and in any other sport for that matter, you cannot replace good old practice, practice, practice, when it comes to getting better. That being said, when you’re dealing with a rear wheel drive car, a ballistically fast motor, high downforce bodies, and a smallish sized track, you have a formula for disaster. The difference between the fastest and slowest cars on any given race day was as much as 5 laps in a 5 minute race. Quite frankly, thats no fun for anyone. Those of us that have had the years of track time have developed a decent respect for the speed whereas some of our newer drivers have not yet had enough time to really get a feel for and understanding of what it takes to keep these things running fast and consistent. I have done everything possible for as many guys as I can this year to get their cars handling reasonably well but teaching someone how to drive is simply not easy to do.

So all that being said I would like to propose some major changes to this class which will hopefully help it to grow, bring the costs down, and promote better competition throughout the field.

Enter World GT.

When this class was first introduced a few years ago I was the first to call it a lame duck. “Lets slow them down, put big GT bodies on them, run one tire compound and narrow them up.” Wee....

Now, 4 years later and seeing first hand what happens when you let things get a little out of hand I’m starting to see the light...

All these factors make perfect sense if the goal is to have a highly competitive, economical class which promotes good driving, not deep pockets, and I think thats all that a racer is looking for really...

On to the proposed specifications as per ROAR:


____________________________________________________________________

Length: 560mm
Width: 205mm
Minimum Height: 104mm
Weight: 930gm
Rear Wing: Chord Width: 45mm Min, 200mm Max
Rear Wing Side Dam: Length:45mm, Height: 20mm
Tire type:
Foam only
World GT shall use the World GT control tires for Level 3, 4, and 5 events.

Battery Cells:
World GT Pro: 2s, 7.4v nominal lipo battery
World GT Standard: 1s, 3.7v nominal lipo battery

Transmission: Single speed only

Rear suspension and drive:
Single, one-piece drive axle only
No independent suspension allowed

Body style:
Can-Am/GTP/WSC, GT/GT-1/Trans-Am or World GT

World GT body rules:
Bodies must be based on production front engine - rear drive autos
Body must be a replica of an original, 2 door sports/gt production car or based on
a full sized auto which has been raced in a major series (Speed World Challenge,
FIA GT Championship, ALMS GT1 + GT2, Japanese GT Championship, etc.)
Bodies must be of a model year no older than 10 years prior to the year of
submittal.
Bodies deemed unrealistic or out of scale will not be approved. The burden of
proof lies with the manufacturer to provide documentation for submitted bodies.
Acceptable documentation for proof of scale realism shall be pictures of original
1:1 car from the top, front, rear and sides and or manufacturers dimensional data
for production vehicle
Overall roof height shall be measured with the car ready too run.
The rear of the body must be trimmed no more than 40mm higher than the ground
level with the body mounted.
Minimum dimension, center base of body windshield to intersection of hood and
front grill 135mm
Minimum body width at the base of the windshield 145mm
Maximum body width: 205mm
Minimum body material thickness .030” to be measured by a cut out in the upper
rear or front windshield

World GT wing rules:
Wing must be fastened to the rear deck of body
Rear Wing may not be higher than roof height

Wheel arch cut-outs: Maximum 0.375” over tire diameter

Ground clearance
Minimum 4 mm under all parts of the vehicle excluding the spur gear.

Roll Over antennas are not allowed

_________________________________________________________________

Now those are the ROAR rules and we can align ourselves completely or we can make changes for our club races. If we wanted to take part in a sanctioned race those are the rules we’d need to abide by.

Personally, I’d like to see us run the new World GT with full rules compliance on chassis and bodies but continue to run 10.5, with 1 cell or 2 cell, with the control tire, which means, there is ONE compound of tire only, so no one can run anything but that one compound of tire. There are I believe, 4 different manufacturers for these controlled tires but all will yield the same traction. If and when we wanted to run these cars indoor, we would run the 13.5 motor recommended.

OK, enough blather from me, this should be an interesting discussion and one we have plenty of time to discuss before the Spring!

Lets try and keep this discussion to IROCC club members only please!

RC51:
Thanks for the thought you have put into this, Mick.

My two bits are pretty straight forward: Keep the cost and speed down, tighten up the field and completely spec the class with the exception of the ESC.

First and to your prime question, I fully support a WGT complete spec move with a clear view to keeping costs down in the club. To achieve this, I would propose ensuring as much cross-over from indoor and TC racing as possible. To be specific, what if we kept the WGT specs as endorsed by ROAR, but allow two-cell LiPo and 17.5 only. Less weight and the same power plant would make these faster than TC 17.5 with the speedo technology. I am sure we can all agree that the 17.5 and speedo technology make the TC as fast as 19T used to be (or faster). We could use one battery type for outdoor and the same motors.

10.5 and 13.5 motors are, in my opinion, completely arbitrary and have nothing to do with any particular class. Unless we kept both of these motors to one-cell, we are perpetuating the problem of speed/cost/fragmentation with a narrower chassis and body. In the event that we run a WGT spec event, throw in a 13.5 if need be, but there would be no need, in my mind, to buy another single-cell battery type solely to satisfy this class. If this is too much of a departure from WGT standards (just the motor, really), then I would suggest going to WGT expert standards with single cell and 10.5. This has super fast straight speed but is very drivable from what I have tested.

My $0.02.
P.

RC51:
BTW - good to see ROAR allowed 205mm for chassis and body width. This allows Corally NGX 10 to be allowed (204mm) with a simple purchase of axle and hubs. Holes are pre-drilled for front width.

P.

Falcon:
I like this idea of having a SPEC class because everybody is in the same boat. Also the cost is better and we might even have more people racing. This is the real reason so that we have a large amount of people having FUN out there.

IROCC

Blake:
Thanks for preparing all the background info Mick; very well presented.

The point that hit home for me was your comment about there being 5 laps between the slow and fast racers in a 5 minute race.  Definitely not good for anyone.


Without giving it too much thought (yet), I like the idea of the World GT Standard spec: 1s, 3.7v and our existing 10.5 motors.

This arrangement lets everyone use their existing 1s batteries from indoor, and their existing 10.5 motors from Pro10.  This would have the least impact on most racers because the only thing they would need to purchase is a new body and tires.

Phil, you have claimed to have done some 1s/10.5BL testing.  Can you tell us how fast this setup is?  I would hope for something faster than Stock TC 17.5 but slower than existing Pro10.


My biggest concern is that there are some racers that have wide chassis that CANNOT be narrowed to 205mm for World GT.  I'd like to hear from these racers.  Would you buy a new chassis?  Or, stop racing pan car?  Or, stop racing with IROCC altogether?


Blake

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