Tournaments: Indiana Diecast Racing

by Josh Paufler

After a full month and a half of racing at Le Cellier in Indiana, the Westfield 500 came to its thrilling conclusion this week as the top 4 cars competed for the “somewhat nice hot glued and spray painted trophies”.

If you’ve been watching since the beginning, you’ve witnessed some spectacular crashes, incredibly realistic passing, last-minute heroics and the finish line camera getting smashed repeatedly. The championship had all that and more.

Jim Desaulniers of Indiana Diecast Racing started this charity event to raise money for his local library and the diecast racing community rallied around his cause. In total, 36 cars started the race in mid-July.

Groups 2 and 4 proved to be the best heading into the tournament as they produced all 4 cars in the final race. Group 2 brought us the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento of George Stackert and the Golden Ticket of Kit Kayem, who had the lowest points coming into the finals. The points-leading yellow Mustang of Nathan Desaulniers and the Color Changer HyperTruck of “Jimmy John” Hanson came out of group 4.

Nathan started with a commanding win on lap one and never looked back. Everything behind him seemed like utter chaos as Nathan won three laps in a row. After finishing second and third behind Nathan, Stackert’s Lambo needed to beat him for the opportunity to tie it up.

But Nathan also had to DNF on the final lap. Sure enough, the odds were in his favor and Stackert crossed the line first as Nathan had issues in the always troublesome turn one and wrecked just before two. This forced an exciting run-off for the championship.

Nathan took the inside lane as the driver with the most points in the semis and the run-off began.

WESTFIELD 500 FINALS -- Cars in action and taking action to raise funds for the Westfield (Indiana) Public Library.

Stackert had the best jump heading into turn one but, as tradition has it, the turn was cruel to him and slowed him down. Nathan saw his opportunity for the pass and cruised on to the podium, hoisting the gold trophy.

Kayem only had one lap in which he finished higher than last and so 4th place was decidedly his. A middlepacker throughout the semis, Hanson worked his way to a bronze cup finish even after posting a DNF on the final lap.

Of course, running a mail-in race of this size is not without its challenges and it proved to be a learning experience for Jim.

One of the largest hills to climb was initially getting the event out there and visible to a prospective audience. This is a well-known struggle among YouTubers.

Hopefully, the viewership at Indiana Diecast Racing can pick up as Jim continues to put out quality content (go subscribe now).

Other hurdles included track seams separating from moisture in the basement, multiple start gate swaps, limited lighting and even learning how to edit videos.

Over the course of the race, the videos got better and better as Jim took all the setbacks in stride and put together a fantastic production of his first complete tournament. We look forward to more of, as Jim puts it, “slightly above mediocre diecast racing”.

Next up at Le Cellier is the continuation of the IDR Open, a race Jim started in May. It’s a stock tournament from Jim’s own collection. In total, he’s sent 80 cars down the track in 17 videos. The intention was to get his feet wet and debut the track, but he unintentionally put out some great racing content with which to launch his channel. Since the last posted video in the IDR Open, Jim has made some improvements to his track and to the lineup. He took a cue from Facebook racers and had people sign up to drive the remaining 32 cars. I’d recommend checking out the previous races to get ready for the continuation of this tournament.