I was inspired to build this HO slot car track after a trip to the real Daytona Raceway in Florida. Daytona is the most famous of the banked tri-oval tracks in the United States. The turns and straights which form the oval are banked at about 30°, which doesn't sound like much, until you try to walk up the bank. The real Daytona racetrack has an infield section that is used in some non-Nascar races. I decided to model the oval, the banking and the infield section to build a FAST/SLOW track. My goal was to build a compact 4' X 8' track that was light and portable. I wanted to be able to carry and set it up easily at remote locations, even outside! Here is the track diagram that I designed:

I decided to use TOMY brand track sections because they make very nice 9" and 12" bank curve sections that allow for a four lane version of the real Daytona Race banking, and the track is known for its ease of assembly, durability, and good electrical conductivity. TOMY track is also banked about 30° and the track pieces are readily available. Once I collected all the track pieces, the next and most important consideration was to keep the weight down. I didn't want to use the typical plywood table construction, because it's quite heavy and not easily portable. The banking of the tri-oval also makes a thick plywood base less than ideal because, like the real Daytona, I wanted the outside of the track to be completely banked all the way around, including the straight-aways. With the addition of an overpass, it's hardly a flat track. To keep the weight to a minimum, yet build a strong table structure, I decided to use a sort of "backbone" for the tri-oval. I cut about 45 matching wooden triangles that fit nicely under each screw point of each track piece, usually two triangles were needed per section. Each triangle was the same, a 30° angle, 6 inches wide to match the width of two track pieces, and height of the banking. These gave me consistent banking on the curves and the straight-aways of the tri-oval section. This is a picture of the starting grid area on the banking near turn eight, and the flat infield of turn four:

For a base, I used a 1/8" X 4' X 8' sheet of mahogany plywood, the same material used to make hollow-core doors. It is very light in weight, but anything but rigid. This didn't matter since the wooden triangles would give it a strong backbone. I first cut out the final shape of the track (see the dotted-line around the track above) from the 4' X 8' sheet. I assembled the track temporally on top of this sheet of plywood, then glued the wooden triangles one by one, to the plywood directly under the screw points in the plastic track. I didn't take a photo of this, but imagine the tri-oval with a "spine" of wooden triangles all around the outside of the board. The next step was the most difficult. From another sheet of 1/8" plywood, I cut pieces to make a "skin" that would connect the tops of all of the triangles and form the actual base to mount the plastic track sections. The straights were easy, but the banked-curves required a math formula to compute the proper cone shape (banked curves are essentially partial cones) I needed from a flat template. Luckily all the curves were banked at the same angle, so once I make one correctly, the rest were easy. These pieces were then glued on top of the triangles. I used white carpenter's glue which is great for wood-to-wood bonding. Once this was done, the track base gained real rigidity. Here's a picture of one of the 30° banked-corner in turn one. You can imagine the wooden triangles and the thin plywood skin directly beneath the track sections:

The last thing I did to strengthen this light-weight track base was to take 8 foot strips of 1/8" plywood, as wide as the bank is high (about 5") and bent them around the OUTSIDE of the entire track, gluing and screwing the long strips to the last open side of each wooden triangle. This effectively formed a wall around the entire track and effectively connected all of the wooden triangles together. With this continuous wooden sheeting of the perimeter of triangles, the base was very rigid, yet still very light. Without legs, the whole track, minus buildings, weighs about 40 pounds! It has four handles that allow one or two people (even weak people) to carry the track easily.

With the base done, I was ready to mount the plastic track. I counter-sunk the holes in the track sections and used 1/4" flat-head screws to fasten the track pieces to the wooden triangles around the perimeter of the track. The track sections of the infield were assembled, then simply glued with silicone glue to the base sheet of plywood (I didn't want any screw-points sticking through the bottom of the thin plywood sheet). For the over-pass, I cut two more pieces of 1/8" plywood sheeting and formed them into an overpass and a tunnel for the underpass. When I glued these into the center of the board, it made the track even more rigid. Here's a view of the overpass and underpass (the thin plywood is underneath the race sponsor stickers):

A lot of the track had to be "bent" to make the transition off the banking and onto the flat infield. TOMY track will bend without breaking tabs off, but would come apart when I forced flat. Since I wasn't worried about reusing the track, I simply super glued the whole infield together. This kept the sections together tightly when I torqued on them. Below is a view coming off the banking from turn two, over the overpass and into the infield section of turn three which is flat. It passes under a pedestrian crossover "Dunlap Tire" which I salvaged from an old Scalextric lap counter. I added a battery operated quartz clock on both sides of the crossover so the time is visible from both sides of the track (I designed the clock faces and the race fans in the "observation decks" on my computer):

Once I had all the track pieces screwed and glued down, I wanted some simple landscaping. In keeping with my goal of a light, portable track, I went with the lightest, most flexible covering I could find, in-door-out-door carpeting. Some people don't feel carpeting is "real" scenery, but it fit the bill nicely for this track and was easy to lay down. It looked nice on the hills and valleys created by the high banking. To fit the carpet, I simply laid a piece over a large section of track, then used an Exacto knife to poke gently until I found the edge of the plastic track. Then I used the knife to cut along the edge until I had pieces that fit between the tracks perfectly (sort of like tracing with a knife). I found that two layers made the "grass" perfectly level with the track height. I used two colors of carpet, green for grass and gray for asphalt, and glued the pieces down with carpet cement. The carpet added next-to-no weight. This is a view of the Grand Stand area showing both colors of carpet between turns six and turn two:

The outside lane is more than two feet longer than the inside lane giving the track pretty unequal lane lengths (each lap is about 32 feet, + or - ). However, the outside (and longest) lane is also the fastest. It has only two 6" radius turns each lap, wtih the rest 9" in the infield and 12" banked turns. It's also fast because I put fencing right against the outside edge of this outside lane, all around the banking; I had seen too many cars fly across my basement. I used gray rubber bathroom floor molding as fencing, partly because it was forgiving to crash into, partly because it has a lip at the top that's curved in and tends to throw the cars back onto the track when they climb the walls, and partly because it's pretty light. It also gave me lots of billboard space for my sticker collection. Once again, I know this isn't the most realistic scenery, but I didn't want this track to be my life's work (the track took up my spare time off and on for a few months). You can see the rubber fencing and the billboards in all of the above photos. This photo below shows the "wall" above the track and the other clock face and the "fans" watching from the cross-over tire:

The inside lane is, of course, the shortest length. Not surprisingly, it also takes the most skill to drive because of the tighter turns, even on the banking. The middle two lanes are the most fun to drive because there's more room to slide around. My current favorite chassis is the AFX Magnatraction chassis, which gives me just the right amount of speed (not a blur), just the right amount of stick (won't slide off the banking), and a nice amount of power-sliding action. I wanted to make the outside lane challenging in the infield, so I used some old TYCO yellow track borders around the outside of turns in the infield. With these borders, the outside lane can spin out if the car comes in with too much speed (very easy to do on the outside lane). I made the borders into "rumble strips" with clear transparency graphics I printed on my computer. They even say, "Danger. Stay back!" I fenced around the borders with old AFX sponsor-printed billboards, which fit nicely between the borders and the "grass" and keep the cars where they are supposed to be. Here is a shot of the borders and fencing on turn five:

You've probably noticed that my track is a bit crowded with buildings. I've managed to find and restore a whole bunch of the Plasticville, Atlas and AFX HO slot car race buildings, and the track gives me space (though small) to display them. In all of the pictures you'll see some my buildings. None are fixed to the track; all the buildings can be removed and put into a box in minutes, and put back onto the track just as quickly. I even found I like to rearrange the buildings occasionally; I guess it's like moving furniture in your house. One of my race structures of which I'm the most proud is the scoring/timing tower in this picture taken between turn one and turn five:

It should look a bit familiar to some. It is TWO AFX two-lane lap counters and timers, kit-bashed into a four-lane device. I also did all the graphics for the tower. I realize it's not nearly as sophisticated as a computer, but given my goal of light weight and portability, this device is battery powered (in the base at the lower left of the tower), and light weight. I also added the electronic guts from a Scalextric Starting Gantry; whose LED's you see at the top. When the red button on top of the tower is pressed down (it's actually a blinking LED to remind me to switch off the power when I'm done racing), it starts the count-down from the yellow LED's on the outsides, going on one at a time until they reach the middle. Then the two large LED's switch from RED to GREEN, and the race is on! This was a lot of work to assemble and trouble-shoot, but it's great for counting laps and times for the four lanes. It's connected to reed switches in the track by wires in the clear column at the right. It has quick disconnect connectors to make it easily portable. Below is a picture of the electronics guts inside the scoring tower. The two circuit boards at the top are from the AFX towers, and the module from the Scalextric Starting Gantry is in the upright arm. The LED start switch is located top right, the battery connector on the lower right, and the quick track connector on the end at the left):

The last problem to solve was where to put the cars that weren't racing. I thought a Pit area might do double duty, both as scenery and a place to hold the extra cars. For this I kit-bashed four !/64 scale die-cast pit scenes. I removed the die-cast cars and cut off the pit scene roadway, and then fixed a couple lengths of old HO plastic track in their place. The steel rails hold the cars down nicely, and Pit Lane adds a nice touch to the scenery. Here's a picture of two cars racing between turns four and five, next to the pit wall.

This track is fast, but still takes skill, especially the transitions off and onto the banking, and the infield (just like the real Daytona). The track works for every chassis from Magnatraction to TOMY Super G plus (T-Jets slide off the banking). The Super G plus must slow down quite a bit in the infield, but are a blur on the banking. As I said before, the AFX Magnatraction cars are my favorite on this track, with TOMY Turbos a close second. All in all, I'm glad I built this track because I can take it other places easily (I have a small pickup that it fits in nicely). Here's a picture of the whole track:

I even built a portable battery pack to power the track; it uses three 6 volt motorcycle batteries (22 volts at 10+ amps). I made an easy-to-carry wooden box to enclose the batteries, and added a reostat to vary to voltage from 12 to 22 volts, a volt meter, and an on-off switch and light. Here it is:

My Daytona Slot Raceway has just enough scenery and elevation changes to make it interesting to look at and fun to drive. If I had it to do over again, I would probably not do it again; I never realized how much work a scenic, non-flat plastic track could be. I think the experience has taught me that this is the last permanent plastic track I'll build - my next track will be a routed one. I'm sure my self-imposed challenges made this track more difficult to build, but in the end, it did meet my goals very nicely. I'm both glad I have it, and glad I'm done with it.

Paul Giganti, January 1, 2002