Midnight Raceway Park (1)

Details

• Style: Drag strip
• Total length: 20.6 ft.
• Lanes: 6
• Built by: Dancing_Penguin

About

Newbie here.  I started to get into Hot Wheels in early 2024 after I retired early for health reasons. I’ve always loved racing – from when I was a kid and my dad’s paving business sponsored a local modified driver, to my love of NASCAR (big Rusty Wallace fan growing up), to my 5-year “career” in iRacing.  Thus, it made sense that I would be involved with some form of racing in my older years (not old, per se, but aging). It was during this past summer that I started building my track design at home.  It went through a few iterations before I got it to where it is today.  I have a 2-lane and a 4-lane drag strip, and both of them are ¼ mile scaled down (so just under 21 feet).

I also recently finished setting up a road course, which is about 45 feet long (just over ½ mile) with four segments on two lanes (the starting gate can accommodate up to three cars in each lane. From the starting gate, the first segment uses the standard orange track pieces, has two inverse 45° curves, and ends with a 180° turn.  The second segment also uses the orange pieces, and it is a straightaway ending in another 180° turn.  The third segment contains the transition from orange track pieces to an open AFCR style track, and it ends with an open 180° turn. The last segment is an open straightaway with a chicane and a jump.

My racing environment is called Midnight Raceway Park. I do not consider myself a collector, but rather a racer. I have just over 500 cars (steadily, albeit slowly, growing), but after lots and lots of time trials, I have selected about 430 to make up the race pool.  The only mods I do are lubricating the wheels and axles with a 2 to 1 mix of 99% alcohol and ultrafine graphite. It’s been so much fun setting this up, but now I want to start running tournaments. I’m not interested in hosting mail-in races (though I do enjoy watching them!). However, if there is interest, I was thinking about running my own tournaments (subject to change, of course) using these tentative rules:

I mostly prefer 16 car tournaments, but they can go as big as 64.
                On Mondays, I’ll post 20 vehicles that are randomly selected from the pool, and “participants” would choose a car via YouTube comments – one car per participant and one participant per car. Cars would be available to be selected until all cars have been selected or Thursday, whichever occurs first.
                On Thursdays, I will put those 20 cars through time trials on my dragstrip, and the cars with the top16 fastest times would compete in the main event (typically the road course). I would post a video of the top few time trials and announce in that video which vehicles have qualified for the main event.
                On Fridays, I would run the tournament. Over the weekend, I’d edit the video of the tournament and post it on Sunday. The “participant” who picked the winner will receive one free Hot Wheels Mystery Model.

I have watched other’s diecast racing videos on YouTube and have seen some amazing tracks and watched some fun racing, which have inspired me to pursue this hobby.  When I start posting to my channel, I will send out kudos to those who have inspired me. My plan is to run some test tournaments in January without “participant” involvement (I need to determine the best setup for my cameras), and then run my first official tournament on Jan 27th.

I’d love to get feedback on my ideas from those of you more experiences folks. 

-Steve
“Midnight Raceway Park” (https://www.youtube.com/@MidnightRacewayPark).