The Pace Car was an accidental discovery during the building and testing of the FASCAR 500 that turned into a very useful feature of the track.

Our Pace Car is an old Aurora Corvette with missing front chrome that is very slow. In fact, it is so slow that it can't go fast enough, even at full power, to come off the track at the curves. It apparently has a weak armature or magnets; the slowness doesn't seem to stem from friction or resistance, because it will run lap after lap at constant speed, without getting hot.

The track has a movable Pace Car controller - an old Aurora "steering wheel" controller that can be clipped onto any lane, set at any speed and left. If the Pace Car loosens up after a few dozen laps, and begins to go fast enough to spin out occasionally, the steering wheel can be set just a bit lower, and consistency is restored. If you want to use a faster car as pace car, just turn down the controller until it can safely circle without spinning out.

The Pace Car is a great training aid for learning drivers. Depending on the performance class of the driver's car, the goal can be to find out if you can keep up with the Pace Car, or how quickly you can lap the Pace Car. With its slow and steady performance, the Pace Car quickly teaches you the importance of staying in the slot - you work hard to gain half a lap on it and one spinout lets it catch up and pass you again. The humiliation of having a faster car, but being beaten by the slowest car in the pack is substantial and provides an incentive to improve performance, and a gauge by which to judge improvement, that solo practice racing cannot.

We ran two three-driver heats for each class qualification - the top two drivers in each 3-lap heat went on to the class race. The Pace Car always used the fourth lane of each heat, and was the overall winner an embarassing number of times.

It makes you remember what Aesop (and your Mom) told you about the tortoise and the hare.