Walking the Track and Inspecting the Surface
I always walk the RC track before I go out with my RC car, the main thing I watch out for is puddles. At a lot of the tracks I race at there are corners that have hidden puddles behind them, nothing will ruin your day more than spinning out after a long straight and ending up in a puddle, very few RC cars will survive this, while the chassis will just be a bit dirty the electronics will be shot.
The other things I look out for on the track are:
- Stones that could throw the RC Car off balance
- Defects in the track that might make the RC Car bounce and loose traction
- Any unmovable obstacles, I have found nails and bolts imbedded in the tracks before, if you were to hit these at high speeds it would be the end of your day.
I never used to do this, it took a couple of broken RC cars to learn the value of walking the track before hand, even if you race on the track every other weekend you should still have a quick look and make sure that nothing has changed since your last visit.
Water is the critical thing, especially on dirty tracks as they are often not visible until 50% of your car is submerged.
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