News in Brief: May 6, 2021

Diecast 64 Shifts Focus; Ends Season Early

Just days after the submission deadline for the May installment of Diecast 64’s 2021 season, league owner Robby Comeford released a video that changed the diecast racing landscape for the remainder of the year. After concluding the May Mayhem races, Diecast 64’s scheduled season of events in oddnumbered months will come to a premature close.

Citing a combination of life changes in work, family, and personal situations, Comeford noted that the previously set schedule had become difficult to maintain.

This does not spell the end of racing at Diecast 64, just the truncation of the rigid season format, which was already pared down from the monthly events of the previous season. Comeford mentioned that he will still hold occasional races, which will be announced as time allows.

Future races are likely to be single events, leaving behind the multiple classes. In the 2021 season events to date there were four divisions of racing each month.

The entire announcement can be seen at the Diecast 64 YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/80TlOKrt5E8).

War on I4 Debuts New Track, Big Plans

Action from Florida has been missing for a little bit while Luthrell Church has been constructing a new track that will take the diecast racing channel in a new direction: larger scale diecast racing.

While most channels deal with 1:64 scale races, Church has opted to build a completely custom track that can handle 1:43 and 1:32 scale races. The track is still capable of hosting 1:64 scale races, as well.

The track was recently seen for the first time in the first edition of the Supercars Tournament. This is a 1:64 scale race featuring the Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars with which diecast racing fans are most familiar.

In the next few months, viewers will see two series that introduce Jada brand diecast cars to the channel. One series will remain in the familiar smaller scale, using builds that incorporate Jada car bodies and Hot Wheels Zoom-Jn chassis. Jada makes a line of 1:64 scale cars, and those are the ones that will be used on the project. The cars are more detailed in their castings and usually sport wheels what are affixed to the axles, rather than spinning freely like those of Hot Wheels and Matchbox. The wheels also feature rubber tires, which are notoriously slow on gravity powered road courses. However, by replacing the wheels with those from the stable and fast HW Zoom-In, they should be able to compete well on the new track.

The other series that will be coming up this summer involves the 1:32 scale Jada models which, again have fixed axles and rubber tires. Some of War on I4’s best builders will be adapting the cars to be better suited to racing.

Builders are expected to alter the axle structure to allow for independently spinning wheels. They will also be coating the wheels with polyurethane to harden and smooth the tire surfaces.