Paved slalom road
The Paved slalom road, often referred to as slalom road, slalom blocks or simply slalom, is a track element which consists of a piece of regular paved road with two large concrete blocks which the driver has to avoid crashing into. The blocks are positioned in opposite lanes and at unequal positions along the track (the left lane block is a few meters further down the road) so that the driver may swerve between them. Slalom blocks are deployed to make it harder for the driver to pull along a section of straight road at high speed or to complicate the driving lines entering or exiting a combo of other track elements.
Braking and swerving when faced with a slalom can be annoying and wasteful. If the slalom comes after a sizeable section of straight road, a very practical alternative is to position the car exactly in the middle of the track during the approach to the blocks, using the yellow line as reference. If done correctly, that will allow one to drive straight through at speed, as the separation between the blocks is just enough for allowing a correctly aligned car to pass between them. Naturally, the trick is slightly easier with narrower cars such as Lancia and Audi. This kind of slalom trick is one of the classical maneuvers in the Stunts racers' arsenal, and one of the very few allowed in IRC rules racing.
The slalom bug
Another common trick involving slalom blocks is a typical exploit of the deficiencies of the collision model of Stunts. Hitting a slalom block head-on may result in the car tunelling directly through it and emerging safely on the other side. To succeed in deploying the slalom bug, the car must:
- Have sufficient speed (around 145 mph at a minimum, getting progressively easier at higher speeds);
- Be moving at a direction very nearly parallel to the yellow line;
- Hit the front face of the block with its full width.
Such demands are very similar to the ones needed to use the loop bug. Needless to say, RH often helps to use the slalom bug in complicated track sections, although it is possible to (with a fair dose of luck) deploy it in NoRH.
