# Manta Ray Enduro Race



## MantaRay (Jun 10, 2015)

Manta Ray Enduro Race
Manta Ray Reunion is a group of slot car lovers in N. Ala. Hot Slots is in Columbia Tn. For info: MantaRay on personal mail 

The Hot Slots Facebook Page reported: “We had a fun race on the Black Snake this afternoon!! I failed to get a picture of our winners. Top spot went to Keith, James in second and John in third. Mary, Mark and Pete completed the lineup*. Thanks to Crystal, Cindy and Gregg for helping Tommy turn Marshall. Thanks to everyone!!!” Leslie Pewitt, Hot Slots Raceway
(*Finish order below.)
The Tennessee weather was warm, the fan-swept room was sultry and racing was in the air. The drivers were milling around with the controlled nervousness they always have before a race. It was just after 3:00 and I was trying to herd them into a Driver’s Conference to get things going. Mostly it was to get them to congregate and tell them that there were nearly no rules. Everything had been waived and they could run anything on a Flexi chassis, swap cars if they need to and be sure to have fun. Leslie Pewit of Hot Slots gathered names and fed the computer while I made sure new drivers had (and understood) the lane sticker sheets. Tommy Pewitt helped with the race parameters and talked softly with the turn marshals. There was the usual group shuffling around getting controllers in place and the cars on the grid before Leslie asked “Ready?..” and the rest was a blur of color and motion.

It was a fun race. It is the first race I've been in where everybody stayed on through the whole first segment and then started falling off throughout the remainder of the race! Leslie and the marshals did a great job with the track calls to accommodate a field made up of experts and newbies. I was able to dice and slice with John and David and the other Mantas in the middle segments. Toward the later segments we were more relaxed (tired?) and were tossing jokes back and forth. 

The more experienced racers were probably better at long races than we were. Keith was 'Helloovaaa Fast' all day which is no surprise and James, who borrowed one of Keith's cars, was no slouch either. James commented that he was driving to ‘save the car’ but the white machine was passing people all day. Keith got a little disconcerted about the fifth time he had to pull the pucker-mouth out of the front of his yellow car. He had just bought the body the day before and was worried about damaging it. I told him I hoped he signed up for the extra insurance along with the body! For some reason the lane rotation on this track is linear so everybody just shifts left to right. That meant Keith was always next to me and I was in his path almost every time I de-slotted throughout the afternoon! Keith’s body was getting turned inside out slamming into the back of my car! It takes a lot of speed to hit something that hard and he even vaulted over wall few times as well. Fortunately his car was very rugged and kept right on streaking like yellow lightning. The crashes sure didn’t keep him from winning! 

John, a fellow Manta and a former Champion of Chamblee racer, only agreed to enter if it was a fun race. He was clearly taking it easy on us. He drove a car with a silver paint job under the clear body that looked just like chrome! The thing glittered all around the track distracting everybody! Now I know what a fish sees with lures in the water! If his miniature driver had a scanning red laser for eyes it would have been a Cylon! It is a beautiful car.

David ran really well for a guy who had not raced formally since 1967 when he was a local Pro in Huntsville. David’s new machine suffered a body clip departure allowing the whole body to swing up flapping in the breeze! After a short search they found the clip and got it slapped back into place. He resumed the race without further incident. 

(Manta Note: Inch and a half body mounts were first introduced on the Classic Manta Ray in 1964. Clips this size became a standard on RTR chassis and Flexis ever since.)

My new extreme wedge Shelby Cobra drove very well. It's a .005” thick body I vacuum-formed myself mounted on a lightened flexi frame with a Hawk 7 motor. I had not raced formally since one time when I got roped into a Flexi race at Port Jefferson Raceway, NY in the '90s. My car also suffered a body clip departure flipping my body into the air where it buzzed angrily down the straight! I repaired it under green with a wide swathe of clear package tape. “One size fits all!” I thought as I slapped the body back in place! It held the rest of the race. I finished second (second to last!).

Mary joined us for her first formal slot car race and kept us mesmerized with the bright pink car she ran (a loaner from Tommy). She collected her first start and finish flags igniting a track-wide celebration with ice cream for all! 

Enduro Driver Finish	Turn Marshals
Keith 1st Tommy Pewitt
James 2nd Cindy 
John 3rd Crystal
David 4th Gregg
Pete 5th	
Mary 6th


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