Originally Posted by terry.sc

Japan has never stopped racing f1, so they have always used wide cars, and even though Tamiya stopped making them there were still a lot of Japanese companies making F103 size chassis.

Certainly here in the UK F1s used to be really popular all through the 90s with many race series being run and many of us have old F1s from back then but nowhere to race them as there was no supply of F1s for newcomers.
F1 came back in the UK thanks to the release of the 3Racing F109, suddenly we had a car that was readily available with a plentiful supply of spares at a reasonable price. The F104 Pro was very expensive and parts were difficult or impossible to get. The F109 was available for £95 while the F104Pro cost £240, so a no brainer which car to buy.

F1 in the UK is an indoor class, so it's somewhat easier to race on foams, especially as rubber seems to be all about having the right rubber tyres or you are uncompetitive while the kit F109 foams are cheap with lots of grip. This has obviously driven the rules towards foam and wide cars as that is what we were already running. Even those running outdoors used the F109 kit foams with a set of Superions for wet weather use.

In the US the rules seem to be driven by UF1, which runs outdoors and has decided to run narrow cars on rubber. US drivers seem to be buying cars to fit the rules, while over here the rules had to be formed based on what we were already using. We do run narrow cars on rubber in their own class, but in last years national championship it only got one entry for one round and I don't expect it to be that popular this time round either.

As for the use of the word "scale", the wide cars are just as scale as the narrow cars, just from a different era. This year we have named the two classes 'modern' for narrow/rubber cars and 'retro' for wide/foam cars to differentiate them, although we haven't gone as far as insisting narrow cars must run modern bodies and retro cars must run retro shells.

Originally Posted by robk

Actually, the rules in the US tend to be driven by the Tamiya series, since there was no other outlet for F1 besides the TCS until UF1 cropped up, and that's only in southern California. Tamiya was trying to promote the narrow cars.
UF1 did a great job by organizing their group of racers. It seems as though they decided they liked the narrow cars as well, despite having run the wide cars, too. Everyone who glommed onto their rules did so because they were very well done.

Originally Posted by robk

Actually, the rules in the US tend to be driven by the Tamiya series, since there was no other outlet for F1 besides the TCS until UF1 cropped up, and that's only in southern California. Tamiya was trying to promote the narrow cars.

Originally Posted by jake95

hi,
i just picked up a new f103 15th aniversary i wanted to know what wings and body should i get for it as ive seen quite a a few diffrent types of bodies and wings what would you recomend.
thanks,
jake

Originally Posted by terry.sc

The difference we have is that Tamiya hasn't run a TCS series in the UK for some years, so we don't have anyone limiting their classes to the only cars they make.

Originally Posted by terry.sc

If you have a free hand in your choice of wings the TRG standard and TRG Advance wings are highly rated, various combinations of them is all I use.