APRIL 12, 2017 –
Lexington, Kentucky’s Rupp Arena was the scene and 10,000 students from across the Commonwealth were in attendance, along with 4,000 parents, teachers and spectators. 106 of those students were signed up to compete in the Racing to the Future™ competition, a record number of registrants this year! And these student racers came to compete! We saw design and building efforts far exceed previous year’s entries.
Racing to the Future™ is a program where K-12 students build an HO scale slot car, document their build process, and compete in drag races with the car they built. The program has two competitions, The Design Competition and The Racing Competition. Students are entered into both competitions and the fun begins! Let’s meet our Student Racers for 2017.
Elementary School – Grades K-5 – Student Racers
Middle School – Grades 6-8 – Student Racers
High School – Grades 9-12 – Student Racers
The Design Competition
The Design Competition is where the Student Racer shows their talent and skills in building and designing their car for both appearance and racing competition. The entries are judged by age group and based on several aspects including the documentation (Design Sheet) created by the Student Racer. the Design Sheet describes what they have done to improve the performance of their entry. The entries are also judged on race preparation, build, appearance and overall impression. This year, we had Student Racers submit their Design Sheets online so they could be reviewed in more detail. We had excellent work submitted this year. Below are the winners from this year’s Design Competition.
The Design Competition – Elementary School Champions
Brylee Barrett – First Place
Ty Clark – Second Place
The Design Competition – Middle School Champions
Sydney Shelby – First Place
Jaxen Arms – Second Place
The Design Competition – High School Champions
Katie Dillard – First Place
Katy Kilburn – Second Place
The Racing Competition
This year’s Racing Competition had some changes as well. AS the program continues to grow, we are needing to allow for larger numbers of Student Racers to compete and still meet our time limitations for the event. The previous 4 years, the competition was based on a round-robin set of races, where every student races all students in their age group. The highest total of wins, won the competition. The 2016 competition took over 7 hours to complete and we barely finished in time for the awards ceremonies. For 2017, we moved to a bracket/elimination format to speed up the process and still allow for a lot of racing. 2016 saw the introduction of the Viper Scale Racing Drag Strip. This year we added a Trackmate timing and scoring system. This new system allows us to capture Elapsed Times (ETs), Reaction Times (RTs) and actual MPH on a pass down the 20 foot, 7 inch, 1/64th scale quarter mile track. So with this new data, we added prizes for the fastest ET and MPH to the event. And new sponsor Super Tires came on board to supply the prizes for the ET and MPH awards. We also used a new bracket system by Challonge™ to keep track of all our match-ups. We added a qualifying pass to mix and the Student Racers were seeded in the brackets based on their qualifying times.
This year’s competition was a blast to watch and the Student racers put on a fantastic show. Some of the match-ups were won by a mere .001 second. Here are the results of the Racing Competition.
The Racing Competition – Elementary School Champions
Joshua Baker – First Place
J.P. Taylor – Second Place
The Racing Competition – Elementary School
Statistics and Records
Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………………….Jerome Setliff – 0.589 Seconds
Fastest MPH……………………………………………………….J.P. Taylor – 32.47 MPH
Fastest Reaction Time (RT)………………..Samuel Cooper – 0.008 Seconds
Fastest Qualifying (Tie)….J.P. Taylor and Joshua Baker – 0.614 Seconds
The Racing Competition – Elementary School – Racing Action
The Racing Competition – Middle School Champions
Sydney Shelby – First Place
Dillon Ausbrooks – Second Place
The Racing Competition – Middle School
Statistics and Records
Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………….………..Sydney Shelby – 0.607 Seconds
Fastest MPH….……………………….…………..Emmanuel Gonzales – 30.44 MPH
Fastest Reaction Time(RT)…….…..….Dillon Ausbrooks and Jathan Briscoe
– 0.001 Seconds
Fastest Qualifying…………………………………Sydney Shelby – 0.607 Seconds
The Racing Competition – Middle School – Racing Action
The Racing Competition – High School Champions
Alayna Collins – First Place
Stan Shelby Jr. – Second Place
The Racing Competition – High School – Statistics and Records
Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………..…………Alayna Collins – 0.597 Seconds
Fastest MPH………………………………………………..Alayna Collins – 30.44 MPH
Fastest Reaction Time(RT)……………….……….Skyler James – 0.002 Seconds
Fastest Qualifying………………….……………….Alayna Collins – 0.625 Seconds
The Racing Competition – High School – Racing Action
Fastest Elapsed Times and MPH Awards
Sponsored By
Super Tires and Hardin Creek Slot Cars
Congratulations to our first time winners of the Fastest Elapsed Time and Fastest MPH Awards. Winners received a prize package with Super Tires latest new tires in a variety of sizes and a Life-Like Fast Trackers Car from Hardin Creek Slot Cars. A big thank you to Nick and Sandy from Super Tires and to Terry From Hardin Creek for the prizes!
Elementary School Winners
J.P. Taylor – Fastest MPH – 32.47 MPH
Jerome Setliff – Fastest ET – 0.589 Seconds
Middle School Winners
Emmanuel Gonzales – Fastest MPH – 30.44 MPH
Sydney Shelby – Fastest ET – 0.607 Seconds
High School Winners
Alayna Collins – Fastest MPH – 30.44 MPH
Alayna Collins – Fastest ET – 0.597 Seconds
Prizes and Sponsors
Racing to the Future™ would like to thank all of our sponsors that make this event so great. Without your generous donations and support we would not be able to pull this off every year or attract so many Student Racers to the events across the state of Kentucky and elsewhere. Thanks to Steve Russell at AFX and Racemasters for the race sets and the traveling trophies and for being our first major sponsor and sticking with us for all these years. Thanks to Tom Lowe at Auto World for the race sets and helping promote the events throughout our Fall and Spring programs. More thanks to Dan Cronin at Viper Scale Racing for volunteering his time to answer questions from students and teachers and for designing and delivering our awesome drag strip! Thanks to Terry Flynn from Hardin Creek Slot Cars for the great package of goodies from HC and Life-Like and also for handling questions from our Student Racers and teachers. More thanks to Andrew at Slots n Stuff and to our new sponsor Nicky Beedle at Scale Auto. And an extra big thank you to our other new family member of sponsors, Nick and Sandy at Super Tires and for jumping in and supporting the new Fastest ET and Fastest MPH awards!
Another big thank you to Jeff Sebulsky from the KY Student Technology Leadership Program. Without him, we would not have the venue or support to get so many Student Racers thinking about math and science in a different way.
Special Guests
We would also like to thank Jason Barrett from Barrett Racing, for bringing out their race car! Jason showed all the students all the details that go into engineering, safety and speed of building a competitive race car. Jason spent the day setting students in the car and getting them out, having them try on the safety gear and giving them a great experience of seeing the making of a race car up close.
Racing to the Future™ – Speed Team
Another special thank you to the volunteers that help set up the track, posters, cars, computers, sound system and everything else to make this program function. Here are the faces behind all that effort.
Paul Shoemaker – One of the Original 3 – Owner/Director: Racing to the Future™ (Left).
Dan Gorman – One of the Original 3 – Race Director – Racing Competition (Right).
Rob Grissom – Judging Director – Design Competition (Right).
Jenifer Hill (F) and Emily Shoemaker – Quiz Masters and Registration (Left).
Pat Seay – Veteran Event Co-ordinator and Cat Herder (Left).
Mark Vaughn – Sound Technician (Right).
Bob Maynard – Pit Crew and Stand-In Photographer (Left).
Justin Spinks – Go-For and Newest Member of the Team
And these Speed Team members were so fast, I didn’t catch their pictures this year, but we want to recognize and thank, Jessica Abbott for helping get the Student Racers registered and qualified. Also, from Queen City Racers, Jeff Harrison came down to assist Student Racers with repairs and Stan Shelby from Lexington Cup Series Slot Club and Cassidy Elementary School, was also assisting Student Racers with parts and repairs.
This year’s events were fantastic. The Rupp Arena personnel were a wonderful asset and were right there when you needed anything. The Student Racers were all outstanding examples of sportsmanship. The competition was close and the racing exciting. Our next adventure will be delivering the AFX Traveling Trophies to this year’s champions at their schools. Check back here to see all of that celebration!
Paul Shoemaker
Owner/Director: Racing to the Future™