Carrera Slot Car Track

A selection of essential track accessories for safety, and some specialty track to add interest to your layout is important. Remember, even though Carrera slot cars and track sets are designated as Exclusiv (1/24) or Evolution (1/32), the track pieces itself are all the same.

One quick explanation when ordering curves: their curve pieces come with a radius designation with a prefix. The prefixes will be 1, 2, or 3 with a radius 30, 60 etc...

• 1 means Standard curve
  
• 2 means Outer curve
  
• 3 means Outer Outer curve
  

Carrera makes nice and wide track borders for the inside and outside of almost all their track. Now you may think you don't really need borders, that maybe they're just for looks, not so! Track border is essential, especially on the curves where the back end of the car often slides out. If you don't have a border, your car will fall off the track, and the cardinal rule when constructing your track is, don't let the track itself be the cause of a car de-sloting or causing an accident. In other words, use lots of borders and make sure your track fits together nice and tight. It is better to add too much border to your layout than not enough.

Guardrails are important too and they are the one piece of Track Accessory that Carrera does differentiate. They have black guardrail and all black guardrail supports that are called "Exclusiv." Then they have red guardrail and black guardrail with red ends that are called "Evolution." They fit exactly the same folks. So, choose your favorite color or mix and match'em to suit your taste. You want to make sure that your cars don't run off the track and onto the floor, or accidentally get in the way of another car. It's relatively inexpensive so use lots of guardrail. Their track comes with locking devices, little 'u' shaped pieces that you use to secure the track sections together, insuring a gapless fit. They also make clips to secure multi-lane layouts together so all lanes fit nice and even, side-by-side. It's like this; real race tracks are relatively smooth, with lots of run-off area and safety barriers, that's what you want with your slot car track.

They also make a wide array of banked turns if you really like serious speed. Banked turns are also great if youngsters will be using the track a lot; they're usually a little more forgiving than a flat turn. (These banked turns can also launch your car high into the air with the possibility of catastrophic damage done to the bodywork...so watch out!) Of course you can add a little variety to your layout by adding crossovers, chicane and hump tracks. It's best not to add too many specialty track pieces however. You want your track to be challenging, but not to be an obstacle course.