Slot car racing is fun. While arguing with other racers about how many laps you’ve completed or whether someone jumped the gun too soon can be half the fun, it’s also exhausting. We need a more accurate way to manage those things and that’s exactly what the Scalextric RCS (short for Race Control System) does.
If you’re into slot cars, you should be familiar with Scalextric, which has been producing slot car racing sets for a good part of the last half century. And now, they’re injecting a good load of technology to the mix, allowing you to manage races directly from a mobile app (available for both iOS and Android).
Three sets are available in Scalextric RCS: One, Air, and Pro, each one offering different app functionality. The RCS Pro is the one we’re really interested in here, as it lets you operate up to six slot cars wirelessly, all while providing a rich set of race management features, including 10 different race modes, car settings (you can alter how individual cars will drive for handcapping or controlling speed for novice racers), in-race monitoring (including race start, jump start, start reaction times, lap counts, and more), and real time race stats (top speed, damage, fuel levels, tire conditions and more). You can even use KERS like in F1, as well as add random events to mix things up (such as making a car’s tire blow out like a God mode of sorts). Basically, it turns erstwhile traditional slot car races into a video game with a whole load of data at your disposal.
The Scalextric RCS Pro will hit stores in June. It comes in a set with six cars, priced at £500.