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Club History by Jim Kinder Updated July 14, 1998 1962: Formation The Monaco Gran Prix Miniature Racing Club (MGPMRC) of St. Louis, Missouri, in its original form was the AMP Chargers, founded in 1962 by a pair of very likable gentlemen by the names of Mike Venegoni and Paul Calahan. Mike Venegoni's track was a Strombecker plastic track with a wooden curb on both the insides and outsides of the turns. As we recall, the lap length started about 45 feet and ended up at 67 feet by 1964. Inside of each curve was completely landscaped scenery with trees, plants, shrubs, buildings, flagmen, cameramen, grandstands, etc. Those were the days of total scale realism in all aspects of model car racing. The first cars and track were by Strombecker and the cars cost $4.00 at the time! The chassis were made of durable plastic, the wheels were plastic, the steel axles "popped" into the chassis with a little force applied to them, the motors were up in front with a long motor shaft leading to the rear wheels, the tires were very, very hard rubber with about 4 or 5 treads. In fact, the cars could be put togher without any tools whatsoever! Racing was close and exciting in those days because the cars were slow and almost equal. Also, the cars were very easy to maintain. There was one guy who arrived with his cars all apart in a paper sack, then put each one together before practice! And after the races, he would disassemble them all and drop the parts back in the bag. Sometimes he would get pole position, and sometimes run dead last! 1964: The Alton Club During this period, the "Drifting Thunderbolts" from Alton and Woodriver, Illinois would visit us and blow our doors off! These guys had to be some of the best 1/32 Scale racers in the country. They had, and remember this was 1964: o hand carved balsa-wood bodies o hand made aluminum wheels o hand made threaded axles o variable resistance ohm controllers o variable battery powered brakes o scratch built brass chassis o home made tracks. Eventually, we began to catch up to them as more scale speed stuff became available. Occasionally, we would visit them at one of their tracks and we would play host to them also. We can remember one terrific meet at Mike Venegoni's track that totaled 94 cars entered for only 4 classes! Back then, you had to race 4 cars at a time and the top 2 would advance to the next race. With this method you can see that only half of the cars would be eliminated with each heat race so that in order to get to the final, you had to race quite a long time! 1965: Second Track As the commercial tracks opened up, some of the members raced in 1/24th scale and the club moved forward with some hand built tracks by a man named Tom Moss (a dead ringer for the real A.J. Foyt) so that both scales could be run. 1966: New Club Name By 1966, the club, now named the Riverside Model Racing Club (RMRC) had many classes of cars, some of which were: Hard plastic bodies: 1/32 Formula 1/32 Sports 1/32 Stock Cars 1/32 Grand Touring 1/24 Formula 1/24 Sports 1/24 Stock Cars 1/24 Grand Touring 1/24 Monogram Midgets. Clear plastic bodies: 1/32 Formula 1/32 Sports 1/32 Stock Cars 1/32 Grand Touring 1/24 Formula 1/24 Sports 1/24 Stock Cars 1/24 Grand Touring 1/24 Minis ('Mini-Mothers'). If you're counting, that's 18 classes of cars! And believe it or not, most of the members had a car (or two) for each class. Fortunately as a number of the commercial tracks began to dwindle, the number of classes were reduced to the four 1/32 classes, in clear plastic of course, but retaining the 1/24 Monogram Midgets. 1968: More Tracks Then in 1968 along came a man named Norm Leigh who built two very exceptional tracks, so the club now was running on these tracks as well as the last commercial track, Checkered Flag in south St. Louis County. Later Norm went off to try his hand at 1/1 scale and joined SCCA. The club thankfully inherited both tracks from him and also picked up a 100 foot, 13-turn track from the Illinois club when they folded in 1972. Unfortunately one of the Norm Leigh tracks went to a member who lives outside the St. Louis area and no longer races with us. 1968: New Classes Because of the costs and advanced technical aspects of racing, a new class of motor/chassis was devised to allow even competition. Identical chassis were built by Darby Vreven and Jim Kinder. The motor selected was the $4.00 Mini Muscle by Mura. Only minor modifications to the motor and chassis were allowed, and the chassis were owned by the club. The new class was called "Group 32" and because of a variable wheelbase front-end, it allowed the use of Stock, GT, Sports, or Sedan bodies. The new class enjoyed great popularity from 1971 through 1973. When the motors went out of production, the club started a new Group 32 class with the Mura Group 12 motor and new chassis designed and built by Jim Kinder. The new class was very similar to the old, except that no chassis modifications were allowed in order to preserve the chassis. This Group 32 was much faster because of faster motors, and the Club Class continued through 1978. 1974: Another New Club Name! In 1974, a new club name, Monaco Gran Prix Miniature Racing Club, was decided on by Bob Samuels when he became club administrator. The first race was run on Bob's track, which was the original Norm Leigh track in a new configuration. The race was dubbed the Monaco Grand Prix (the track was very twisty like Monaco), and Bob had the nerve to run away with the race, which was two hours long. Bob's track survives now at Gil Field's house in a different configuration, which is similar to the original configuration! 1978: New Club Chassis About 1978, it became obvious that the newer drivers could not handle the power of Group 12 motors right away, so Bob Hopkins built an all new Club Chassis based on the $3.50 "Johnson" Mabuchi motors that became available. Accidentally, he set them in the chassis so that the motors would turn the wrong way. But, because of this so-called error, it made the cars almost dead equal down the straights as well as the turns! We think they turned out terrific! The Club Class was very popular and allowed the new member to be very competitive at his first club class race. The competition has been tight and often as many as four top finishers have finished on the same lap! 1981: New RTR Class In 1981, the club added a new class, the Ready To Run class, or RTR, because the cars could be purchased over the counter and be ready to race. The cars used were the Parma stamped steel chassis RTRs and run on "low power", which is accomplished by adding an extra resistor to each lane to bring the power down to 1960s levels. During the first racing season, some chassis weaknesses were discovered, so now they may have certain limited modifications made to them. 1982: New Vintage Class In 1982, the club added a new version of the RTR chassis, to be dubbed "Vintage", without deleting the Parma RTR class. These cars came from Auto World and are the old Atlas inline chassis from the mid 1960s and were also run on low power. This new class allowed the cheapest car yet, at only about $16.00 per car. The first body class raced was called Vintage Formula One with bodies from 1960 to 1970. Many other body styles, such as Sports Cars, Indy Cars, Trans-Am, Can-Am, GT Cars and 1/24 USAC Midgets, would also be used in future racing series. 1982: Still More Tracks! In 1982, we began racing on John Brussman's track - an American Orange commercial 4-lane track with the "doughnut" removed. It was basically and oval with a set of esses on the back straight. Because of the "vintage 1960s" power supply, we were not able to run Pro Club or Open cars. However, we had a lot of fun running Vintage, RTR and Club cars. Just before John retired and move to Idaho, we staged a special "Vintage Indy 500" on his track as a going-away present! In 1984, Pat Clifford finished a new 13-turn, 130-foot road course track. This track was very much a challenge, with all of its tight turns and short straights. The club raced on this track for about 2 years, until Pat moved out of town to pursue a new career. 1985: New Pro Club Class In 1985, Bob Samuels and Path Clifford came up with another class to be called "Pro Club". It would be run along with the regular Club class, in the same race, but would be scored as a separate race, such as IMSA does with its various GT classes. This new class consisted of a scratch built chassis (or any chassis), but can a stock 16D motor or the very popular Mura Wasp. From the very first race on, the competition was fierce! First place for the season was always to be decided at the last race of the season, between two or sometimes three racers! 1986: Another New Track! In 1986, another new track was built by club member Mike Zimmerman. It was also a tough road course, consisting of 12 turns, 3 banks, and 110 track footage. This track was finished just in time to replace the now missing Clifford track. The first race was an Open enduro, utilizing GTP bodies on Nov. 19, 1986. All racers took home trophies and attendance prizes, but Jim Kinder and Jeff Woeber stole the race, finishing 92 laps ahead of the 2nd place team! 1987: IROC In 1987, the club was handed over to Mike Zimmerman, from Bob Samuels. The new administrator decided that some kind of an special race, such as an International Race of Champions (IROC) was needed, and began to build 5 cars with scratch built chassis and hard plastic bodies, such as in the 1960s. These cars would be set on the track in a designated lane, and left there for the entire race. Only the drivers were rotated from lane to lane, using a different car each time. This created the most even racing possible and the best driver would usually win. The class is only run once in a while but is always fun and challenging. 1988: New Sprint Cars Class In the spring of 1988, Bill Wessels noticed that another class was gaining popularity in the U.S.A. It was the "Sprints Plus" RTR sprint cars, using wings, just like the real ones. This class is very similar in every way to the Parma RTR, only it is open wheel, instead of full bodied. The class was very successful the first season, and continues to be very challenging. 1989: "Bodies R Us" Starting in 1989, Gil Field decided to try his expertise producing bodies, because there were a number of bodies we wanted but were no longer available. Gil would use a scale plastic model or slot car body to make a master mold, using modelers clay to seal off the holes and imperfections. Then he would pour liquid latex over the master to produce a female mold. Next, he would make a male mold by pouring in Plaster of Paris. Finally, he would coat the mold with expoxy to prevent the mold from deteriorating during the body production process. He also built a simple vacuum machine to produce the boides using butyrate plastic. He tried using Lexan, but the machine did not have enough suction. In 1993, Jim Kinder bought a Vac-U-Form machine in order to make these new bodies out of Lexan. Some of the bodies produced by Gil and Jim are: o 1/24 USAC Midget o 1954 Mercedes W196 F-1 Streamliner o 1954 Mercedes W196 F-1 o 1957 Maserati V-12 F-1 o 1960 Cooper-Climax F-1 o 1962 Watson Indy Roadster o 1963 Lotus 29-Ford Indy o 1965 Lotus 38-Ford Indy o 1966 Corvette GT Coupe o 1966 Lotus 43-BRM F-1 o 1969 AMC Javelin Trans-Am. 1991: New Pro RTR Class In 1991, after Parma introduced the Flexi-Womp chassis, we introduced a new class called "Pro RTR" in order to use this superior chassis, which featured an angle-winder design with flexible main chassis and floppy pans. We run this class on low power also. 1993: New A Production Class In 1993, a new class, called "A Production", was developed because our Pro RTR chassis were beginning to be out of date. We decided to rename the Pro RTR class to "B Production" and the RTR class to "C Production". A Production uses the Parma "16D" motor and any manufactured "stamped" chassis, with minor modifications. Today, everyone uses the ProSlot "Demon" chassis because it is by far the best. Because of the excellence of this chassis, we are able to run this class on full power. We have run several different body classes on these chassis very successfully and the racing has been extremenly close and exciting. 1998: Historic Racing Class Historic Racing is for 1/32 and 1/24 scale 1960s kit cars with hard plastic bodies and hard rubber tires. "These cars really slide, slide, slide"! The general idea is to encourage the use and enjoyment of these cars in a friendly club atmosphere. A parallel is drawn here from full-size racing in which the "Historics" are different from the "Vintage" classes in that the Historics must adhere to much stricker rules for replacement parts, such as engine parts and tires, and are generally older cars. The focus of this class is on: o the birth and growth of slot car racing in this country o the special historic nature of the cars and tracks of the 1960s o the accuracy of the detailing on these cars o the enjoyment of wheel-to-wheel racing with cars that slide! We will also try to discourage the escalation of prices of sealed "mint" kits, as is frequently the case today. In other words, don't pay ridiculous prices! Because re-manufactured kits are available now, and some kits and many used cars are reasonably affordable, the costs should not be a major factor. |