This past week I made my annual pilgrimage down to Alabama for the AMS event. Much like last year the competition was deep with a number of European drivers making the treck as well. I have had an up and down relationship with this event over the years results wise and this year was a bit more of a down year for me so lets dive into why I think that may have been.
This year we had decent temps in the 60-70 range all weekend with a bit of rain/drizzle on Friday and Saturday asssiting in keeping the track a bit more wet than some previous years. It did seem like Clay tires were the way to go to get the most out of your laptimes but all I had in clay was the Lux tire. It was decent with lots of forward drive however the track had a bit more dust/loam overlapping the line this year that some years past and I just had a bit of an erratic feel with the Lux this weekend. What seemed to be a better option was the SuperNova which is what I used the most often with SSLW early on and transitioning to SLW for the later qualifiers and mains. With all the little pins they were a more consistent feel and cut through some of the dust better. My wish though is that we had them in clay as well as it probably would have been my tire of choice for the whole weekend.
My other challenge of the weekend was diffs. I have been playing with and becoming more familiar with the 2 gear diffs and their positives and limitations. This week I also implemented a 3 gear setup where you simply remove just 1 spider gear. After this weeks running I think for the future I will primarily stick with 3 gear and standard 4 gear. I will only be using 2 gear if the traction levels are on the lower side and I know the grip isn't going to come up very high throughout the event. I found the 3 gear set-up to give some of the benefits of the 2 gear like having more oil and thus feeling like the diff would be more consistent feeling longer. It's also a bit more free which I feel can help with corner speed and pulling harder on corner exit on steering. A negative with the 2 gear I have noticed and have mentioned previously is that it is harder on the components and I have noticed wear on the diff cup and thus I probably won't use it much going forward unless i'm on a low grip track and I really think it could help.
As far as my on the track performance went qualifying was a bit of a struggle and I was teetering on being in a couple of B mains. Ebuggy was decent and I had a 5 in Q1 and was able to come through in Q3 with a 7 to qualify 8th overall. Nitro truggy was ok though I was running 2 gear throughout all weeekend in this one and come the main's especially I just found them to unload too much on corner exit with the increased grip levels. I was able to take an 8th and 10th in Q1 and Q2 to squeek into the A in 11th. Nitro buggy I only had a 12 to go on going into the final round and really needed a good run. I had swapped over my front diff to 3 gear and gone up in the rear diff and was able to get a decent feel and put in a clean run in 5th to qualify 10th overall.
On Saturday we had the 10 minute super pole in every class which would be our final run to set the order for each main. I was able to make improvements in every class. Truggy I moved up from 11th to 6th. Nitro buggy I moved up from 10th to 8th and Ebuggy I went from 8th to 7th though I had a much better run going before the whoops got the best of me in the final two laps. Overall I was pretty pleased with the improving pace and the prospects for main day.
Sunday brought the mains and up first was the Ebuggy A1. In this one I opted for SLW SuperNova tires. This was a tight race as a big portion of the field was freight training around and it was such tight racing and this track was so hard to make any kind of pass on. I would follow closely the car in front of me for much of the race getting as high as 5th before rolling over on the top right and falling back 3 positions. I gained 2 back and then another mistake and back to 10th. In the end I would take a dissapointing 8th in this one.
Next was Truggy where I opted to run SSLW Scribbles. I knew they would be too grippy but I didn't have any SLW and I just thought that maybe I could be super smooth and get away with them. It wasn't meant to be though as I had top 5-6 pace however I had lots of mistakes as it wasn't too easy to drive. Those many mistakes and having to move over for leaders on this very crowded track led to me just lanquishing in the back where I would finish a disappointing 12th for the run.
A2 of ebuggy was an ugly one for me. I don't remember exactly what happened but I quickly found myself in 15th and lots of work to do. I had top 5-7 pace but with the horrible start and the crowded track I would only come back to 11th. When I say crowded track a general rule of thumb is to have 1 car per 2 seconds of lap time. We had 16 cars on a 25 second track which added to the challenge of the event.
Nitro buggy had a 45 minute final next and I bumped up my rear diff back to 4 gear but had left my front as 3 gear. I has hoping the 4 gear rear would help it exit on power without shifting/transferring weight back and forth as I continued corner exit. Overall my buggy felt decent on SLW SuperNovas but I just was a touch off on pace. I think as mentioned above that clay would have been a welcome compound to have in this treadpattern for this track. I had about 5 bad crashes in this one that cost a lot of time. I was going decent running 7th until lap 19 when I belive I had around 8 -10 seconds of a crash or two right around my first pit stop knocking me all the was back to 14th. After that it was just a slow steady climb back to 10th which is where I would remain for the final half of the race.
The final race was Ebuggy A3 and it was ugly. Having most of us just complete a 45 minute final less than an hour before, nerves were shot and people I think were just impatient after the tight battles of A1 and A2. An early crash by a leader created a pile up in which I went from 6 to dead last. But just 3 corners later another huge pileup and this one I squeezed through and back to 6th. I had some good opportunities in this one but made a few mistakes on my own so my high water mark was 4th but in the end primarily just ran in 6th the whole time and that is where I would finish and thus overall would be 8th in the class.
So it was a weekend of racing I wouldn't really care to remember result wise however the knowledge about diffs and narrowing down what i'm looking for in that regard can be a positive takeaway.
Set-up Notes: I wasn't happy with my truck with the 2 gear set-up I was running so I would look back at my 2023 set-up. For the buggies I was running the new (soon to be released KPI hubs with 20* caster. So the set-ups can't be exactly copied yet until those items are available.
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