Including a bottleneck
Im building a track just now. I have a bottle neck to get the cars from 2 lanes into 1. Im wondering if its a good idea because more often than not at least 1 car crashes there.
Discussion
A couple things to consider;
If the cars are running into each other I'd think the only way to avoid that at a bottleneck is to stagger the start of each car sufficiently enough to prevent the possibility, which kinda defeats the purpose of side-by-side race.
If the cars are not running each other it may be a track design issue. Maybe the speed is to fast or the turn too tight at the merge point. Are the two lanes merging into a narrow or wide track lane?
Is there a type of car that fails at the point on a regular basis? Something with a long wheelbase or high center of gravity? I have a road course track with fully seperated lanes and long wheelbase/high COG cars can struggle on the turns vs other cars.
I myself dont have a track, but majority of track builders have their tracks end in a curve, not a bottle neck. The bottleneck could cause collisions and damage modded cars effecting their performance in tournaments.
- Thanks for pointing that out. Ive now taken it out and replaced that part of the track with someone else — HaggisGarage
Depending on the track.
I suppose the first question to ask is WHY do you want/need a bottleneck in your course? What reason are you funneling down to a single lane, as generally open-track racing does not include bottlenecks?
Could you upload some pictures to let us see what you're considering doing?
- It was to get them into a booster but Ive found a better way to do it by only having one of the lanes go into the booster and the other be slightly shorter to keep it fair — HaggisGarage
If you want to reduce crashes, keep the same width as two lanes of track but remove the divider between them, then have at least 30cm (1 foot) approx where it narrows downt o one lane width. This should reduce any hard crashes and allow the cars to more gently enter the one lane.
Or, if yours is a road course, rather than a drag strip, then like on our Possum Hills course, you have it merge to a single lane through a corner. At the end of our State highway 1 section, the cars go from 14cm wide open track to a single lane. There are very few big crashes/collisions, and the cars generally slot into line pretty well. We had to get them into one lane in order to put the cars through the boosters to get them back uphill again.
To my point above, I just saw this video from Cody Irons, it has a 4 lane to two lane merger at the end of the track youtube.com/shorts/DvwvuMigm3E?si=gaq80jQo0BdIfw6J
I use them sparingly at my tracks. I was planning on making them a permanent fixture but some feedback from viewers had me reconsider it. I have a 4-to-2 I plan on using for "Talladega" and 3-to-2 I plan on using for "Daytona" and "Darlington". I also a 6-to-2 I plan on using for "Tiburon Superspeedway" and "The Nurburgring" which I haven't used on my channel yet.
Personally, I dislike track pieces that are going to influence cars to crash. It's very disappointing to spend time working on/building a decent car, only to watch it be forced to crash. It kinda takes the"race" out of racing and makes it more about getting lucky. Maybe you could remove the bottleneck for some races and add it for specialized races or something...