Joe Villani never came close to a championship when he raced stock cars at Raceway Park in Blue Island during the early 1970s. “I did terrible,” he said, grinning widely. But Villani can afford to be magnanimous because the former race car driver is in the process of re-creating racing history to his advantage.
The late-model championship at Villani’s own Troy Speedway is within his reach; with just a few weeks left in the 15-race season he already had seven feature-race wins to his credit. It’s a small victory, Villani conceded, 1/24th scale to be exact.
Villani, 40, of Chicago’s Mt. Greenwood neighborhood, may not have done as well as he hoped on the real thing, but he’s burning rubber on the slot car track. And the 9-by-23-foot track in the basement of his home re-creates the sights and sounds of an earlier era at Raceway Park.
Slot cars are scale model cars, usually race cars, powered by electricity via brass cuts in the track. A braided conductor protrudes from the underside of the model car and is inserted into one of the slots. The “drivers” use hand-held controllers to send the cars racing around the track. It is a sport that is quietly making a comeback after years of losing out to more expensive and versatile radio-controlled cars.
“This is good family fun,” said Don Hendrick, general manager of Pat’s Hobbies in Oak Lawn. The hobby shop sells a variety of slot cars, from the tiny HO (1/87th) scale to the 1/24th scale, with prices that range from $10 to $100. “You can get into it inexpensively and it doesn’t take a lot of skill to start,” he said.
Slot cars were so popular in the 1960s that more than 3,000 commercial tracks were in operation in the United States, according to Russ Anzalone, owner of Slots of Fun in Mt. Prospect. “Its low point was in the 1980s when there were only about 50 tracks left,” he said.
But people like Villani and Earl Richmond, who builds slot car tracks, are returning to a game they played as boys. “We lost a lot of the youngsters as they grew older and became interested in girls and real cars,” said Anzalone, owner of one of only a half-dozen slot car tracks in the Chicago area. “We get them back after they’re married.”
Richmond, 48, of Justice said the Chicago area was home to nearly 30 commercial slot car tracks during the sport’s heyday. “When it faded I kept my hand in it and built my own track in my basement,” he said. He has constructed eight tracks in his home in the last 25 years.
Villani got involved when he went with a mutual friend a year ago to look at Richmond’s most recent track, which was for sale. “I walked in, took one look and told him I wanted to buy it,” Villani said.
What’s unique about Villani’s miniature Troy Speedway, named for the street he lives on, is its focus on re-creating the Raceway Park of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The cars are 1/24th scale replicas of the cars that ran on the real track. Black-and-white photos of Raceway cars cover the walls of Villani’s work room and basement. He meticulously paints the number and driver’s name, even adding sponsors’ decals and logos.
Villani’s cars range from a replica of a 1967 Chevelle that was driven by former Raceway Park champ Bob Pronger to a 1972 Mustang that was piloted by Ray Young.
“I loaded up the program just like Raceway’s,” said Villani. Hot laps (or practice) start at 7 p.m., racing at 8, beginning with a trophy dash, heat races and, after the intermission, a feature race. The program begins with the playing of the national anthem; the race fans face a stiff plastic American flag stuck into the infield’s artificial turf.
“We’re thinking of getting a Jeep like the one at Raceway,” which carries the flag around the track during the playing of the anthem, joked racer Tony Diambros.
Diambros, 21, of Blue Island, just finished his first season in the late-model category at Raceway, finishing in the top 10. The slight young man began his racing career in go-carts at Raceway Park’s asphalt track when he was 12 years old, winning championships in both the junior and senior divisions, but he isn’t even old enough to remember the era that fascinates Villani.
“My dad, Joe Diambros, used to race then,” he said, pointing to a photograph of his father-helmeted and smiling from inside his race car, checkered flag gripped in one hand-that’s tacked up on Villani’s basement wall.
Raceway Park is where Villani recruits his slot car drivers. “This is more fun than just watching,” he said. In 1987, Villani, who had given up on his own racing career, joined track champion Ray Wroblewski’s crew; the team won the late model championship in 1987, 1991, ’92 and ’93.
“Most of the (Troy Speedway) racers are involved in racing,” said Richmond, who competed at tracks in Waukegan and Kenosha County in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Villani’s Troy Speedway is made of tempered hardwood over particleboard. Its 55 feet of rubber track has four lanes and is banked 10 degrees in the curves. The track runs on 12 volts of electricity supplied by a car battery attached to a charger.
The cars are modified hobby shop model cars; the plastic chassis are glued together and handpainted in Villani’s workroom to replicate Raceway cars and are attached to metal frames. A piece of metal reaches forward from the center of the frame. Two pieces of copper wire are attached to the end and wires run up the protuberance to an electric motor that is no larger than three quarters stacked together.
When the copper braid is placed in the slot on the track, it draws electricity to the motor, causing a pinion gear to turn, which turns a crown gear that sets the silicone rubber tires spinning.
The slot guides the car around the track while the drivers stand on the sidelines holding the finger controls, a simple rheostat molded into a plastic gun, pulling a trigger to send the car speeding faster and faster around the miniature track. It takes a good driver less than 2 1/2 seconds to run the 55-foot circumference, reaching speeds of 20 to 25 miles per hour, Richmond said.
According to Anzalone, cars at commercial tracks, which are made of laser-cut steel, can go up to 80 m.p.h.
“The cars today run much faster than in the early days. It’s like comparing race cars at Indy in the late ’60s to the cars that run there today,” he added.
At Troy Speedway, drivers forgo the extra speed for the nostalgia. Villani, who owns a dozen cars and has a workroom stacked with nearly a hundred models in still-unopened boxes, may spend up to five hours putting together a slot car; some aficionados even make their own fiberglass molds instead of using store-bought models. Villani also makes cars for other drivers, and Richmond hand-tools the thick silicone rubber tires, which sell for $8 for a set of two.
“I don’t do this for the money. It’s playing with toys,” said Richmond.
“But you really get into it,” added Diambros. “People start sweating and working on their cars.”
“You can get a bad axle or a bad gear, and you need to put on a new braid each race night,” said Villani. “You can change the gear ratio or the width of the tires. In between races we work on the motor, solder things back together. When the cars hit, they really break up. You have to glue the body back together.”
On race nights, six to eight drivers will show up so they may line up at the controls after placing their cars in the slot at the starting line. Opposite the drivers, a timer is set for a 30-second heat race. When time is up the electricity is cut off and the cars stop in their tracks. An electronic counter keeps track of how many laps each car has run.
“This is definitely fun,” said Villani. “People put in the same effort here that they do at the race track. You get crybabies. You get guys who get mad at you. You spin out and take them out, and they think you did it on purpose.”
Drivers tend to bring the same rivalries that color real racing to the slot car track. “Some people think winning is more important than having a good time,” Villani added.
The particleboard wall surrounding the speedway is painted with red and white stripes and business-card sized advertisements for Earl’s Tires and J.A.P. Chassis. An inflatable blimp hangs from the ceiling above the infield, and checkered flags are strung from wall to wall. A 25-foot-long beer sign screams “Welcome Race Fans,” and dozens of black and white photos from Raceway Park cover the smooth stone walls. The Troy Speedway even has its own schedule and point standings, and Villani gives out trophies to the winners, though he doesn’t charge anything to race on his track.
A feature race is actually a compilation of four two-minute races. Each car runs a race in one of the slots, and the laps are counted up. Whoever has run the most laps during the four races is the winner. “That’s to keep things even,” Villani said. The way the track is set up, the inside slot is about 7 1/2 feet shorter than the outside slot, Richmond said.
A heavy finger on the controls will send the car spinning right out of its slot. At commercial centers, spotters quickly re-insert the cars, but that didn’t work too well at Villani’s. “Some people had fingers the size of ketchup bottles,” said Richmond, laughing. They would knock others cars out of the slots as they tried to right the first car. Or, if there weren’t enough people to act as spotters, the driver was forced to run around the track to the spot where his car lost contact.
So Villani invented the six-foot rule; when a car spins out within six feet of the short chute at turns one and two or turns three and four, the race is stopped while a car is put right.
The experienced slot car drivers said they can feel if their car is about to come off the track, just like they can feel a skid or slide coming out of the third turn at Raceway Park.
“I know I’ve gone too fast when the car turns upside down,” Richmond said.
The winner of the feature race gets to take a victory lap around the track; Villani made a small checkered flag that can be attached with Velcro to the body of the car.
Villani’s dream-after winning the championship-is to get a figure eight track. “Not an over-and-under, but where the cars cross in front of each other,” he said, gleeful at the prospect of dented and banged-up cars. “But no one’s real keen on that.”
