Report from:

Northland 500

2002-06-29

We are some people in the club that likes model cars and we got the splendid idea that we should race in a Nascar model car race. So we checked around which one was closest and it turned up that there where some people in Germany doing this on a regular basis. I got contact with Matthias Parke who recommended us to come to Northland 500 which is a race for 500 laps with a grill party afterwards. That sounded like a really good idea, here is the report what followed!

We where three people from our Club, The Stockholm Slot Car Club, that decided to go: Mats Hummel, Torbjörn Lundkvist and me.

The race was in Kiel in Germany, which is rather close to us, “only” 900 km away, or roughly 11 hours car drive through Sweden and Denmark and then ferry into Germany.

With the help of Matthias by email we got the rules and some tips and ordered chassis and bought Nascar bodies and started to build the cars. We started more than a month before the race and each day we got a little closer but the time ran quicker than we could build. Through the building process we had constant contact with Matthias over email who tried to sort out and answer all our questions. Finally the day before departure at 01 in the night we where finally finished and went to bed and got 4 hours of sleep before going up and driving away to Germany at 07.20 in the morning.

We arrived at the German ferry camp at 18 o'clock and Matthias kindly met us and assisted us to the track in Kiel/Flintbek. It is a very nice track with landscape and all! We made the final setup of the cars and put them on the track for the first time! They didn't run any good. With the kind help of the club members with tuning them they started to run quiet nicely.

My car brand new, waiting for the maiden voyage!

Mats car.

Torbjörns car

Volker had been at our hotel earlier and checked in for us and retrieved the key already. The hotel was some distance away (30 minutes with car) from the track due to the "Kieler Woche" which is a big festival and finding a hotel was really hard. At midnight Volker escorted us to the hotel, which was situated in a little village with very nice nature. We didn't have any normal hotel rooms but actually got apartments. We went to bed and slept for some hours.

Part of the apartment I slept in

Part of the apartment Mats and Torbjörn slept in

Volker came to us at 07.30 with breakfast which wasn't included in the rent. He had bought fresh baked bread in the morning - what a luxury! Volker also arranged that he and we got a lift to the track with his daughter so we could take a beer or two at the grill party after the race!

We came to the track at 09 and started to tune and train some more. Mats and me changed the rear tires to a softer compound, which took rather long time since you must glue the tires to the rim and true them. I didn’t get enough driving time afterwards before qualify to tune the car to the new grip I got. Model cars are rather heavy things, 215 grams actually and they behave rather differently than wing or Flexi cars that I was used to.

My pit area before the race.

In qualify I did rather badly. Torbjörn and especially Mats did much better. The 22 drivers in total where split into groups. I got into the slowest group, Torbjörn in one of the middle ones and Mats in the fastest one.

My race was first. We drove for 13 minutes on each of the 5 lanes. With 7,8 seconds average lap time you will get 500 laps and the goal is of course to get as many laps as possible and to get over 500 is of course very honorable. My car was very instable and tilted out of the lane. Very hard to drive a car like that but I figured out how I should do the best of the situation and actually ended 2nd in my group.

Mats in the middle of the picture running in his race.

The track is nicely landscaped

Torbjörn drove quite well in his group but had some problems with the car bouncing in the back, he also came in second in his group. Mats in the fastest group drove as good as he could but it wasn't enough, he ended 5th in his group.

After all the groups had raced for more than 65 minutes each the final results was put together. And this is what came out:

1  519.06       Parke, Matthias.....  1:04:29.38
2  509.50       Badenkopf, Jens.....  1:04:45.34 - 9.56R    
3  506.69       Geue, Manfred.......  1:04:41.80 - 12.37R    - 2.81R   
4  500.69       Beeck, Oliver.......  1:04:37.61 - 18.37R    - 6.00R   
5  499.01       Reimann,Dennis......  1:04:41.53 - 20.05R    - 1.68R   
6  485.69       Skottke,Bj”rn^......  1:04:38.81 - 33.37R    - 13.32R  
7  482.55       Schwaar, Pitter.....  1:04:37.31 - 36.51R    - 3.14R   
8  480.32       Veenbur,Christoph...  1:04:47.49 - 38.74R    - 2.23R   
9  477.41       Jahnke, J�rgen......  1:04:49.24 - 41.65R    - 2.91R   
10 472.98       Hummel,Mats.........  1:04:36.79 - 46.08R    - 4.43R   
11 472.12       Kosolowski, Thomas..  1:04:50.46 - 46.94R    - 0.86R   
12 469.67       Rieger,Ralf.........  1:04:48.74 - 49.39R    - 2.45R   
13 463.90       Wiesel, Stefan......  1:04:39.14 - 55.16R    - 5.77R   
14 457.69       Lattermann,Anders...  1:04:33.04 - 61.37R    - 6.21R   
15 455.85       Jacobs,Volker.......  1:04:45.58 - 63.21R    - 1.84R   
16 454.33       Lundkvist,Torbj”rn..  1:04:41.53 - 64.73R    - 1.52R   
17 448.54       Springer,Thomas.....  1:04:47.27 - 70.52R    - 5.79R   
18 446.68       Lafrentz,Dennis.....  1:04:36.67 - 72.38R    - 1.86R   
19 441.52       Stapelfeldt , Dirk..  1:04:19.16 - 77.54R    - 5.16R   
20 436.27       Drkosch, Volker.....  1:02:22.79 - 82.79R    - 5.25R   
21 303.16       Drkosch,Steffi......  54:09.43   - 215.90R   - 133.11R
22 220.00       Haufe, Bernd........  33:02.04   - 299.06R   - 83.16R  

            SPUR1      SPUR2      SPUR3      SPUR4      SPUR5     

1.Parke, M 102.00     105.06     105.00     104.00     103.00    
2.Badenkop 101.50     103.00     100.00     103.00     102.00    
3.Geue, Ma 102.00     103.00     103.00     100.69      98.00    
4.Beeck, O  98.00      99.00     101.69     102.00     100.00    
5.Reimann,  99.01     100.00     100.00     101.00      99.00    
6.Skottke,  97.00     100.00      96.00      97.00      95.69    
7.Schwaar,  95.00      97.00      97.00      95.00      98.55    
8.Veenbur,  93.32      97.00      99.00      98.00      93.00    
9.Jahnke,   95.41      97.00      95.00      97.00      93.00    
10.Hummel,  91.00      94.00      99.00      92.00      96.98    
11.Kosolow  91.00      98.12      94.00      95.00      94.00    
12.Rieger,  92.00      94.00      95.00      94.00      94.67    
13.Wiesel,  91.00      93.00      94.90      93.00      92.00    
14.Latterm  87.00      96.69      92.00      92.00      90.00    
15.Jacobs,  87.00      92.00      93.00      93.85      90.00    
16.Lundkvi  89.33      91.00      94.00      91.00      89.00    
17.Springe  95.00      95.00      98.00      98.54      62.00    
18.Lafrent  89.00      91.00      93.00      89.00      84.68    
19.Stapelf  89.00      88.00      89.00      89.52      86.00    
20.Drkosch  73.00      93.00      84.00      93.27      93.00    
21.Drkosch  91.00       9.16      33.00      76.00      94.00
22.Haufe,   96.00                 89.00                 35.00 

Mats and Torbjörn after the race.

After the race there was a very nice grill party and we talked a lot about slot racing, Swedish mooses (“Elk” in German) and just had a good time. Matthias also showed us his large collection of model cars and we also got to test a lot of them.

Here is Matthias Parkes slot box, with lot’s of nice cars he have built.

Around midnight it was time to go back to the hotel and we got once again lift with Volkers daughter. In the morning after he once again came with fresh bread. What a service!

Our hotel was really nicely located in the middle of the nature.

Time to pack the car to go home again

A last glimse of the view from the window

Time to go home

We checked out and said goodbye to Volker and headed back to Sweden. And came just in time to see the real Nascars on Eurosport channel running the road course at Sears Point. What a weekend!

Finally I'd like to thank all the folks in the Kiel club and Volker especially and also Matthias that made our trip so good! See you again, hopefully in Sweden in the Germany - Sweden duel we talked about on our six-lane track with three Swedish and three German cars in a six hours race - yeah that could be nice!

Congratulations to Matthias Parke for the victory this year – next year it woun’t be so easy – course we will be back!

Anders Lattermann