Best Slot Car Racing

Wikihome; Best Slot Car Racing Sets of 2021; Best Slot Car Racing Sets of 2021. With the support of artificial intelligence technology and big data, as well as the objective reviews from 4,359 consumers, we ranked the top 19 products you may be keen on the Best Slot Car Racing Sets. Differences in track width, slot depth, surface texture and ease of assembly may determine what slot car race track set is best for you. Carrera and Scalextric’s slot race car sets for adults and children have emerged on top of the pack because of their quality. All slot car racing sets come complete with everything necessary to begin racing. Our collection of high-quality Slot Car Racing Products is designed for optimal durability and performance. Shop Slot Car Racing other hobby products online at Tower Hobbies.

Slot car racing is an exciting, interactive hobby for automobile fans and anyone who likes speed and competition. Slot cars make a great alternative to video games because they tap into similar skill sets—hand-eye coordination, risk-reward thinking, competition, manual dexterity—yet remain physical, i.e. hands-on, three-dimensional and face-to-face.

We carry two high quality slot car brands: Carrera, which tends to appeal to younger racers, and Scalextric Sport, which attracts an older audience and enthusiasts. In other words, Carrera is a little bit “toy,” while Scalextric is much more “hobby.” In this post, I’ll explain some of the features of each brand to help you make a better purchase.

Digital vs. analog

Both Carrera and Scalextric offer analog and digital formats. With an analog set—the sort that has been around for half a century—you can only race as many cars as you have lanes. Your controller adjusts the current sent to the track lane, which speeds up and slows down the car in that particular lane. With a digital setup, the controller is programmed to control the car itself. Digital sets have crossover sections that allow you to switch from lane to lane for passing, blocking, and overtaking. These tracks also support more cars, so that three or four (with some sets, up to six) people can race at the same time. I’ll come back to that a little later.

3 Questions to Help Decide What's Right for You

There are a few things to consider up front if you’re looking at a slot car set:

How old are your racers? I do not recommend slot-car racing for very young children. Ideally, a child should be eight or older, and certainly no younger than six or seven. Eight might even be pushing it for the more technical demands of an advanced Scalextric set.
You need a good deal of skill and finesse to navigate the track, especially around turns, and practice is absolutely necessary. You can’t simply haul back on the throttle and expect the cars to zoom around flawlessly. They will hop out of the slot and skitter away. Of course, that’s part of the fun. If there were no skill involved, you would get bored pretty quickly. For the most part, a child younger than 8 simply lacks the dexterity and coordination to grasp the finer points of adjusting speed to stay on track, and may not have the patience to put in the necessary practice.

Where will you put your track? The three-dimensional, hands-on, physicality of slot racing is great, but this does mean that you need space to dedicate to your layout. Even the smallest tracks are several feet across. You don’t want it in the middle of the living room where it will get stepped over—or on!—bumped, full of cookie crumbs and pet hair. The track pieces are generally pretty flexible and robust, and are designed to withstand a trodding or two, but they aren’t indestructible.

How often will you be racing? It's not a good idea to set up the track, race a few laps, and then pack it away again. The tracks are designed to be assembled and disassembled without too much effort, but only infrequently. Pulling track pieces apart is usually a little tougher than clipping them together, and can require a good deal of force. You want to make sure that you tug evenly so you don’t snap off the connector tabs that hold them together. Repeated assembly and disassembly will also eventually wear and loosen the connectors, when what you want is a snug fit.
Your best option is to set up the track in a place where it can be left out, ideally on a table or platform of some sort. Take it apart only when you want to add to or modify the layout.

Carrera

Carrera has two product lines: GO!!! (analog) and Digital 143. Both are 1:43 scale, so a little on the smaller side. Carrera GO!!! is a perfect starter line. With fun themes like Mario Kart, and Disney/Pixar’s Cars 3, and exciting “action” features like loops, jumps, elevated banks that run up walls, the tracks are ideal for children around eight years old. Sets and accessories are modestly priced, too.

Digital 143

Digital 143 is more advanced, and pricier. Digital cars, for instance, are about double the cost of analog. However, if this is the first track, starting with a digital set can be a good investment, because upgrading from analog to digital requires a bunch of new equipment, including a new powerbase, new cars, and some lane-changing track. The good news is that standard track pieces are universal, so the majority of a GO!!! setup will be ready to go should you decide to upgrade to Digital 143.

The benefit of Carrera’s digital sets is that it supports up to three cars at once and allows for lane switching. Lane changes are done by holding a button on the controller before reaching a special crossover track. For the Digital 143 line, Carrera makes crossover tracks red (or green on the MarioKart set) rather than black so you can identify them easily. Crossover tracks can be single (right-to-left, left-to-right), or double (“X”-shaped).

Scalextric

Our Scalextric sets are the better choice for hobbyists. Scalextric sets have bigger, more detailed cars (1:32 scale), some of which sport cool features like working lights and, in the case of James Bond’s Aston Martin from Goldfinger, ejector seats. They let you build bigger and more technically challenging track layouts, and offer bigger and better opportunities for customization and modification, especially with Scalextric’s digital sets.

There is even a dedicated community of Scalextric racing hobbyists, who conduct full-on tournament racing with rules and regulations. With this in mind, you’ll find that Scalextric tends toward more realism—you won’t find jumps and loops here—and more technical demands.

A Note on Track

Scalextric makes a wide range of track pieces to customize your layout. Straight tracks come in a number of lengths and formats. Some of the unique pieces that are available include starter grids, crossovers for making figure-eights, side-swipes for bumping other racers, and single-lane tracks to run alongside pit lanes. There are borders and guardrails that clip along the side of just about any piece of track to help prevent you from jumping the track. Because the track is flexible, you can give some height to your layouts with elevation supports, banked curve supports, and elevated crossovers.

There are numerous options for curves, from lazy wide turns to harrowing hairpins, crossovers and side-swipes, letting you add a ton of variety and challenge to your set.

The track selector wheel demonstrates the range of curves available. You can find lots of support atscalextric.com/uk-en/, including a download for a Track Designer to help build your layout. It’s also very easy to find online forums and communities to get ideas for customizing your setup.

Scalextric Digital

One of the nice things about Scalextric is that the transition between analog and digital is pretty smooth. Upgrading an analog set will require a new power base, transformer, and some lane-changing track, but the cars are not hooked into one or the other exclusively. Analog cars will run on a digital set with a few button presses on the power base. Lane-changing will be disabled, obviously, but it’s nice to know that your old cars won’t be obsolete if you upgrade. You can do the opposite, too: a digital car will work on an analog set, should the need arise. Most of the analog cars we stock from Scalextric come “digital ready,” and can be upgraded to digital with the simple installation of a microchip. And yes, like Carrera, standard track is compatible between digital and analog; only lane-changing elements are exclusive to digital setups.

Most digital sets from Scalextric come with a power base that supports up to four cars, and can do a few neat tricks like set the cars to run either clockwise or counterclockwise. Stepping up to the Advanced Six-Car Power Base brings a ton of features, like the ability to program various racing modes, set speed caps on individual cars, set cars to reduce speed or even pause in the event that one racer jumps the track, and so on. As far as I’m concerned, however, the coolest feature is the ability to run ghost cars, so you have some competition even when you’re racing by yourself.

ARC systems (App Race Control)

The ARC ONE, ARC AIR and ARC PRO (for digital sets) are the latest additions to Scalextric’s product lineup, which takes advantage of hand-held smart devices to add a whole new dimension to slot racing as a hobby. Set up a Bluetooth-enabled device opposite the power base and use the free iOS or Android application to create and control races, track your statistics, manage and share your collection, and more.

Before you start, you can choose from several different types of races, including Quick Race, Practice, Grand Prix, Endurance, Tournament, Drag Race, Arcade and Pace Car, although not every race is available in all ARC systems. As you play, the app monitors just about anything you can think of, from lap times and lap counts, to speed and penalties. There are several cool additions to mix things up. Turning on fuel consumption, tire wear, or car damage, means that you have to keep an eye on the condition of your car and make a stop in the pits when necessary—or risk disqualification. There are even random “incidents” like engine blow-outs and punctured tires that can bring another measure of unpredictability and realism to the race. After the race, you get analytic breakdowns of your speed, start reaction times, fuel use, and so on, which you can post to Twitter or Facebook.

Best Slot Car Racing Track

Finally, there is a “Garage” mode, in which you can catalogue the cars in your collection, save track layouts, and post photos. You can also log your track pieces and accessories and use the app to explore possible layout designs.

The ARC Systems each have their own exciting features.

ARC level ARC race control system

Hard-wired hand controllers
Core app functionality
Analogue system
2-car racing

Key features:

Pit stops
Post-race statistics

Mid-range ARC race control system

2.4Ghz wireless hand controllers
Intermediate app functionality
Analogue system
2-car racing

1 24 Slot Car Tracks For Sale

Key Features:

All of the features of ARC One plus:

Wireless controllers (plus rumble)
Variable race conditions
Braking button

Premium ARC race control system

2.4GHZ wireless hand controllers
advanced app funcitonality
Digital system
Multiple car racing (up to 6)

Key features:

All of the features of ARC AIR plus:

Lane changing
Multiple cars
KERS boost

On your mark, get set…race!

Do you feel the need for speed, but do not want all of the dangers and risks that are involved when driving a real car at high speeds incurs? Not to mention the cost to repair a real racing car when you wad it up in a crash. If this is you, then try your hand at slot car racing. You see, model slot car racing has been around since 1929 and has gained immense popularity, nationally and internationally.

Today, model slot car racing is in a group of model car racing which include radio controlled, better known as RC racing and others Slot Online Indonesia

THE VERY, VERY BASICS OF SLOT CAR RACING

Model slot cars are powered electronically by either batteries or from some source of electricity, which is furnished to the car by a metal strip on each side of the slot.

The tracks on which slot cars run are made up of groves or slots(hence the words ‘slot’ car) into which the cars are guided with the help of a pin or a blade like apparatus on the under carriage of the cars. Only one slot car is to occupy one slot. So for example, if you have an eight lane track, you can have up to eight cars circulating the track.

Each slot is connected to a power source, such as an electric power pack or batteries which maintains that the power supply remains stable throughout the whole time the slot cars are on the track. To prevent the slot cars from jumping out of the slot, some of the slot cars under carriage have some sort of magnets which keep these electric model cars in constant contact with metal strips even at high speeds. Some model car blades are even magnetized to achieve the same effect as the undercarriage magnets. The speed of the cars are controlled by the squeezing of the trigger way on a pistol-grip joystick placed in the hand of the person who is controlling the slot car. Squeezing the trigger increases the speed of the slot car and releasing the trigger slows the electric model car down or stops it completely.

Slot car racing is truly international. International competitions are held annually in the United States and abroad. The United States has 2 HO scale car organizations called the United Federation of HO racers Association (UFHORA) and the HO Professional Racing Association (HOPRA). Each year both organizations hold national and international events around the country. These events are not only for racing the slot cars, but also to raise general awareness slot car racing in general..