Racing

Racing is an event for two-person teams—the pilot and the pit crew. There are various racing classes of various levels of difficulty: F2C (the class flown internationally and at World Championships), Goodyear (semi-scale models of 'Goodyear era' full-size racers), Vintage classes and so on. However, the basic idea of all the events is that a number of models (up to three) fly together, aiming to complete a given number of laps before any of the others. The model is also required to make multiple pit stops during the race, where it is refueled, the engine restarted, and the model re-launched. This is the job of the pit crew. There are rules describing how the pilots must walk around each other, and how to pass (harder than one might think, as each model is on the end of a pair of control lines and travelling as fast as 140 mph). Pit stops require that the model be refueled and restarted - which can be a problem with a very hot racing engines. The best Team Race pit stops take around 2–3 seconds for the pilot to cut the motor and land, allowing the pit-man to catch the model which only moments ago was flying at 140 mph (230 km/h), fill the tank with 7cc of model diesel fuel from a pressurized tank, adjust the engine mixture and compression if needed, restart, and relaunch the model.