Where We've Been

FasTrak Model Car Raceway was founded by owner Mike Leach and opened in October 1995. At that time we were open evenings and weekends and were exclusively a commercial  slot car raceway. Since opening we have hosted many major slot racing events including OVCC, Tri-State USRA Div 1 and 2, Midwest Drag Series, Buckeye Championship Series, and MORA Series races. We hosted the 1997 USRA Spray Glue National Championships, the 1998 USRA Div. 2 National Championships with the largest turnout to date (264 total entries), The 1998 SDRA Drag Racing World Championships, the 2000 Budweiser Slot Spring Nationals, the 2001 Slot Spring Nationals and many more major events.

We entered the general hobby business full time in 1999 and have continued to enhance the selection of items as well as the services we offer continuously. We now stock over 18,000 different items total. The business is operated as a sole proprietorship with one full time and several part time employees. We do not stock a lot of these items in depth but we do stock everything that is on the websites. You are buying from a real walk-in store that actually has all of the stuff we display for immediate sale.

Our slot racing website www.cyberslot.com was the original slot racing e-commerce website and is in its eighth year. Our main website www.fastrakhobby.com was started in 2004 and new items and features will be added continuously.

Where We're Going

Our goal for the future is to expand our presence on the internet and grow in that market while maintaining our traditional brick and mortar store for local shoppers. We stock many items for select R/C Cars and Trucks as well as R/C Aviation including the rapidly expanding e-flite part of the hobby. We have thinned down the number of different R/C car and truck vehicles we stock to major brands for which spare and upgrade parts are readily available. Our engine offerings are from established quality manufacturers with a reputation for serviceability and parts availability. The same is true for the radio control systems that we sell. The bottom line is that we sell products for which the user will be able to obtain service and replacement parts if and when they are needed. It does no good to buy that flashy and trick new vehicle introduced by a trendy newer manufacturer only to find out that there are no parts available soon after its release. Trust us.......we've been there.

In  dealing with us you are doing business with a well organized but small company celebrating our tenth year in the hobby industry. Your order will probably be filled personally by the owner. Consequently it will be given the attention it deserves and will be quickly and accurately shipped (same or next day on small quantities).

Looking forward to serving your hobby interests.

Mike Leach-Owner



Hobby Resume for Mike Leach, Owner of FasTrak Hobby Center & CyberSlot

Model Aviation and Slot Car racing have been my major hobby industry focuses as well as some plastic car and airplane modeling. Following are brief descriptions of those major experiences:

Model Aviation

My association with model aviation started not with an airplane but with a ground vehicle called a "Prop Rod" by Cox. This thing was a cast aluminum and plastic car powered by a pusher mounted Babe Bee .049 engine. I soon grew tired of the car and built a Goldberg Lil Jumpin' Bean C/L model and robbed the engine from the car. This spawned a succession of scratch built C/L planes of increasing size and performance culminating in many speed and aerobatic planes built and flown in the early seventies during my stint in the USAF. In 1976 I was shown my first digital proportional R/C system, a World Engines "Expert" 4 channel. This really set me off and I invested two weeks pay in a new system. My first R/C plane was a Sig Kadet which died on its second weekend. It was followed by another Kadet and since then countless original designs, kit built planes, and ARFs. I am still an active designer, builder and flier and support two local model airplane clubs. All recent designs have been executed using CAD technology. My latest interest is in e-flite, especially considering recent gains in battery, airframe, and propulsion system technology and affordability.

R/C Cars and Trucks

We started selling R/C cars and trucks in 1999. This started out slowly and has been built into a major part of our business. We obtained an AMB scoring system in 2001 and started holding weekly races on a leased section of the parking lot. In 2004 a local club was formed with our support and they took on responsibility for administering the road racing program. We also cater to local racers who race off-road at other locations and also to back yard bashers and street terrors alike. This is just one more manifestation of the owner's gear head mentality and love for high performance gadgetry.

Slot Car Racing

The slot car madness fell upon me at the age of ten when for the Christmas of 1960 my parents got my brother and me a "Beat the Train" HO set from Spiegel-the big mail order house. I got the Aurora Model Motoring part and my brother got the Tyco train set. We played with the cars endlessly, racing each other for hours. I collected and modified the original vibrator cars and then the T-jets that followed. Then we moved from rural Morgan County, Ohio to Zanesville, Ohio where there was a whole bunch of kids with model motoring sets. We had neighborhood tournaments and really tried to turn it into a big deal. Then suddenly there were four commercial slot car raceways in Zanesville and I was done. I raced anywhere there was a race and worked part time at one facility. Then all of the raceways died. I had a brief association with slot racing during my USAF duty in Las Vegas. After my discharge I moved back to Zanesville and became a partner in "Big Thumb" Raceway for a couple of years (1976-1977) before selling my half and returning to College. After getting a 5 year Mechanical Engineering degree from Ohio State I worked for a couple of companies and the started my own consulting business in 1988. When my son was 8 in 1994 I got him an AFX Slot Car set for Christmas. We had so much fun it prompted me to dig out my old "Pro" cars take him to Mac's Tom Thumb in Columbus to play. Big Mistake. What it did was get my slot juices flowing again and after a trip to the TOA convention in 1995 I was hooked. In October 1995 FasTrak was opened and the rest is history. We have hosted numerous national and world championship races as well as major regional series and races. Our three current state of the art tracks are CAD designed and were built in house. Operating FasTrak Hobby Center is all I do at the current time.