Dyson goes to Porsche! & Slot rumor....

SCNews wire-POUGHKEEPSIE, NY– Porsche and endurance sports car racing; Dyson Racing and Porsche: synonymous phrases. Dyson Racing and Porsche are back together: the Thetford/Norcold team will be running two LMP2 RS Spyders in the American Le Mans Series in 2007. The team ran Porsche 962s in IMSA GTP from 1985 through 1991, winning a dozen races with nineteen podium finishes and four consecutive Porsche Cups. They won the first race they ran with the Porsche at Lime Rock in May of 1985. In the two decades since, they have not relinquished their title as America’s premier sports car team.

“The 962 was an exquisite looking race car,” noted Rob Dyson. “And like the old air plane adage, if it looks right, it will fly right. It was a great car to drive and that is what Porsche does best, building ultimate customer race cars with their renowned engineering and support behind them. To combine that Porsche perfection with our successful tradition brings a whole new level of enthusiasm to our team for the upcoming season. This is a reuniting of old family members, building on our partnership of mutual respect and a shared winning history.”

Hartmut Kristen, head of Porsche Motorsport worldwide, was pleased that a team of Dyson’s caliber has decided to embrace the RS Spyder program. “When we announced our ALMS participation, it was our target to have the RS Spyder being raced by customer teams in 2007,” said Krisen. “We will continue our development work together with the Penske Motorsports team. The results of this work will be made available to our customer teams. The RS Spyders for Penske and Dyson are exactly the same 2007 models, and the engines we are providing to the teams are identical as well.”

“We will be competing next year with a proven package that has race data and advancement behind it,” Chris Dyson said. “Porsche won the ALMS championship last year and that is a strong selling point. Our team will be racing at the most competitive level in ALMS, where new teams, drivers and manufactures are going to be focusing their considerable resources. We will be able to showcase who we are as a team and concentrate on winning races and championships.”

Dyson Racing has sixteen team and driver championships and sixty-one wins since that first GTP win at Lime Rock twenty one years ago. Anchoring this new package and era for Dyson Racing will be the familiar #20 blue and white Thetford/Norcold entry driven by Chris Dyson and Guy Smith and #16 with Butch Leitzinger and Andy Wallace. The team will be testing their first car at the January 21 – 24 ALMS Winter Test at Sebring and racing both at the first race of the season, the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring March 17.

News/images used with permission from Dyson Racing. No reuse without their permission.
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So how does this relate to slot cars you ask????? Well there may be yet another Porsche RS Spyder slot car announced in the not to distant future.

DaveK
Publisher, Slot Car News

Change in posting

"Anonymous" post will not longer be allowed because of a lot of spam recently posted by non registered commments. Sorry

DaveK

1965 Targa Florio video

This is a must watch and it will take only 5 minutes of your time.

Silver

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Corvette Z06

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Audi R8

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Car of the year and predictions for 2007

Slot Car News Car of the Year-Carrera Corvette C6.R
Why? Well it was such a good car in many ways. The detail level was exceptional as was the paint and printing on the car, but what really sold me on this car as a stand out was the high quality of the build. The mechanicals on the car all worked well. The wheels on this car were perfect and that's what did it for me. So many cars with plastic wheels can't even come close to the wheels on this car, they were concentric...actually concentric. Which is saying something when you're talking about running a slot car on a wood track. I run this car often and it's still got the original rear end, gear, axles, wheels...everything (sorry not the stock tires though). And with only a tire change the car was amazingly fast and very, very fun to drive.


Trend of the Year-kits, glorious kits!
What else can you say! This year companies came out with so many kits that you had your choice of great kits from Slot It, Fly, Artin, Spirit and don't forget all those plain white bodies from many manufacturers. We can only hope that this trend continues into the new year.


Pleasant suprise of the year-Spirit
Seemingly out of nowhere Spirit has come to the US market with force and some interesting upcoming models. And they promise more in the next year. Another reason for this is that Spirit makes some really nice parts. Hopefully the coming year will find those parts in the hands of racers that need some great set screw wheel and motors that are torquey as hell! Also there may be some new models coming that will surprise some people.


Disappointment of the year...Ortmann tires.
Finding out that most Ortmann's appear to be so out of round that they're useless...shattering, just shattering.

2007 fearless prediction...this is the year of Nascar...yes Nascar.
Believe it or not, finally the slot car hobby's focus is shifting to the US market...oh crap now what do we do? We in the US have been whining for soooooo long about getting good Nascar slot cars and now guess what, WE'VE GOT THEM! Between Scalex and SCX making current (or nearly current) liveries of our weekend heroes and Carrera making all the vintage Nascar's anyone wants to buy, and Artin making low-buck plain bodies for the scratch builders out there, there's just about enough Nascars to go around.

Soon, very soon, there will be an announcement related to this post from a major company that will make many guys very happy I think...can't say what it is yet but it's an important car that will be made.

This is the year that a largely European hobby will finally take hold in the US...or fall flat on it's face because of lack of money put into marketing it. There is so much money tied up in tooling for US-specific slot cars this year that frankly I really hope that there is actually money being put into MARKETING HERE IN THE US and not just the vague hope that somewhere someone will stumble into the quickly vanishing local hobby shop to behold the latest Nascar slot car.

DaveK

And Happy New Year!