29/02/24: Slot.it DTM – Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers.

So to the first round of the much anticipated new Slot.it DTM class. With the rules allowing only Slot.it’s hard C1 compound tyres, there had been plenty of talk in the build up to the race of how to best prepare them. Oil? Sun cream? The Tomster’s special sauce maybe? He’d muttered something about it making his fingers sticky, but nobody had taken much notice.

After plenty of testing by those organised enough to have finished building their cars in time for a test session or two, the advice was that a gazillion laps was the only way to get any grip out of the tyres. Needless to say, not many drivers were sufficiently organised to have managed a hundred practice laps, let alone a gazillion, so carnage was widely predicted and, sure enough, it started early. David’s brand new Opel Calibra deslotted on its first practice lap, jumped into another lane and hurtled at full speed into and over the barrier before smashing into the clubroom wall, bits of once pristine plastic flying everywhere. The evening had barely begun and already there was one badly wounded car.

Arriving for only his second race of the year was the Tomster, bizarrely without a car to race and claiming his parents had refused to allow him to buy one. It sounded like the lamest of lame excuses, and it was. Still, we weren’t to know that until after the race, so in the meantime he’d scrounged a car from Julian.

Group 1 was the faster group this week (Lee, Julian, David, Simon, Chris and Alex) and confounding all expectations there wasn’t a single crash in their first heat. Lee headed the field, two seconds clear of Julian, with Chris third. Group 2’s first heat wasn’t as incident free, the Tomster doing his best to wreck Julian’s car, but there weren’t many more deslots and the racing was very close. Perhaps the tyres weren’t so bad after all.

And so it continued, heat after heat of close racing with none of the predicted carnage. Lee was the night’s winner, five seconds clear of Julian, with David third after a great four-way tussle with, Simon, Neil and Chris. Neil was the class of Group 2, half a minute in front of the Tomster and ahead of Group 1’s Chris and Alex too.

The drivers’ consensus at the end of the evening was that the cars were a lot better than expected. The racing had been pretty close and there wasn’t the yawning gap in laptime between the leaders and the rest that we see in some classes. For now, DTM looks to be an excellent class which promises some great racing. Time will tell.

And the Tomster and his lame excuse? When his mum arrived to collect him she spelled it out: he has plenty of his own money, but had spent it on other “stuff”. Tom, we’ve told you before about sticky fingers. Leave Only Fans alone.😜