March 29, 2018

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. 127 of those students, 11 more than last year, were signed up to compete in the Racing to the Future™ competition, a new 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.

2018 Racing to the Future™ Champions
L to R Front: Samual Cooper, J.P. Taylor, Corabeth Collins, Ty Clark, Joshua Baker, Noah Bunch
L to R Back Row: Matthew Grzynkowicz, Sydney Shelby, Stan Shelby Jr.

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 2018.

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 2018’s Design Competition.

The Design Competition – Elementary School Champions

Ty Clark – First Place

Joshua Baker – Second Place

The Design Competition – Middle School Champions

Sydney Shelby – First Place

Corabeth Collins – Second Place

The Design Competition – High School Champions

Stan Shelby Jr. – First Place

Alayna Collins – 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. We seeded the brackets using a random placement of entrants, replacing the qualifying rounds. We also use the bracket system by Challonge™ to keep track of all seeding and match-ups.

We use a Trackmate timing system that allows us to capture Elapsed Times (ETs), Reaction Times (RTs) and actual MPH on each pass down the 20 foot, 7 inch, 1/64th scale quarter mile track. This has allowed us to keep records on the ETs, RTs and MPH and we continue to award prizes for the fastest ET and MPH for each age group in the event. Nick and Sandy at Super Tires have continued their support by donating the prizes for the ET and MPH awards.

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

Ty Clark – First Place

J.P. Taylor – Second Place

The Racing Competition – Elementary School

Statistics and Records

2018 Records:

Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………………….0.574 Seconds (New Record)
Tysean Bigbee

Fastest MPH……………………………………………31.57 MPH
Tysean Bigbee

Current Record Holder: J.P. Taylor…………..32.47 MPH (2017)

The Racing Competition – Elementary School

Racing Action

2018 Racing to the Future™ Elementary School Student Racers (Wow they look so serious).

That’s more like it!

The race for the Elementary School Championship and the Champion: Ty Clark!

The Racing Competition – Middle School Champions

Samual Cooper – First Place

Sydney Shelby – Second Place

The Racing Competition – Middle School

Statistics and Records

2018 Records:

Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………………….0.567 Seconds (New Record)
Samual Cooper

Fastest MPH……………………………………………31.42 MPH (New Record)
Samual Cooper

The Racing Competition – Middle School – Racing Action

2018 Racing to the Future™ Middle School Student Racers.

The race for the Middle School Championship and the Champion: Samual Cooper!

The Racing Competition – High School Champions

Matthew Grzynkowicz – First Place

Clayton Land – Second Place

The Racing Competition – High School

Statistics and Records

2018 Records:

Fastest Elapsed Time (ET)…………………….0.600 Seconds
Stan Shelby Jr.

Current Record Holder: Alayna Collins…………..0.597 Seconds (2017)

Fastest MPH……………………………………………29.52 MPH
Alayna Collins

Current Record Holder: Alayna Collins…………..30.44 MPH (2017)

The Racing Competition – High School

Racing Action

2018 Racing to the Future™ High School Student Racers

The race for the High School Championship and the Champion: Matthew Grzynkowicz!

Fastest Elapsed Times and MPH Awards – Sponsored By

Left to Right: Tysean Bigbee, Samual Cooper, Alayna Collins and Stan Shelby Jr.

Congratulations to our 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. A big thank you to Nick and Sandy from Super Tires for the prizes!

Elementary School Winners
Tysean Bigbee- Fastest MPH – 31.57 MPH
Tysean Bigbee – Fastest ET – 0.574 Seconds

Middle School Winners
Samual Cooper – Fastest MPH – 31.42 MPH
Samual Cooper – Fastest ET – 0.567 Seconds

High School Winners
Alayna Collins – Fastest MPH – 29.52 MPH
Stan Shelby Jr. – Fastest ET – 0.600 Seconds

2018 Racing to the Future™
Champions

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 handling questions from our Student Racers and teachers. 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 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.

Awards Presentations

The Kentucky STLP program had an additional level of coolness by having the event streamed by the Kentucky Education Television network. The events and award ceremonies were all recorded and available for viewing this year on the KET and STLP sites.

Below are the pictures from the awards presentation on the big stage at Rupp Arena. All of the Student Racers had their opportunity to be recognized for their achievements at the day’s competitions.

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.

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 those celebrations!

Paul Shoemaker
Owner/Director: Racing to the Future™