This past weekend I made a 7hr journey south to RC Arena for their Tri-State Championships event. A smaller race is just what I needed to get some much needed track time which is hard to get in my area in the winter time. I was able to arrive Friday and do lots of quick tests on different tire compound and working on my set-up to get more dialed in. The track had some good loamy areas and moisture in it upon arrival and would dry thruout the day and be what I would consider drier in some sections around 4-6pm. When the track had moisure I found the Rawspeed Mach ones in Clay to be the ticket. When the track hit that more dry window I felt the Soft compound was the best suited. I didn't have any, but some teammates had some of the new Triad and they had success with that tire as well.
Set-up wise I made a number of changes to dial in the KPI hubs on what I felt was a bit tighter of a track that got very rough. I may be in the process of changing my mind also on what is a good piston set-up for rougher track. I went with the suggestion of Phi's dad and switched to a standard 6 hole set-up from the more opened up 5 hole set-up that I was running and perhaps it wasn't better straight line thru the bumps, but it kept the car flatter and more consistent with less sudden transfer movements allowing me to be more consistent and put the car more where I needed it to be. Also because the track was a bit tighter I did a number of things to get more steering and rotation to quicken my pace around the corners. I went full short on the front link and lowered my front anti-roll bar quite a bit. Also while I don't think i'm settled on my spring choice, I ended with red 70mm front and purple 81mm rear. Phi has been liking the purple springs recently so I had them all the way around but just felt there was too much preload required on them especially on the front so I went a touch stiffer. I would like to do some more practice days soon and hopefully with the weather starting to turn i'll be able to do that.
As far as the racing I had some great battles throughout the day Saturday and was able to bring home the win in the 20min Nitro buggy final and take TQ and 2nd in ebuggy.
Here though are my set-ups that I ran that I felt pretty good with in the end. I feel in ebuggy I went on the wrong compound as I ran the clay in that dryer track timeframe and didn't have the grip I wanted. I think soft would have been a better choice at the time of that main.
Set-up Notes: Lexan wing on both cars. Lowest wicker cut line. If there was still something else I would have tried it probably would have been 10k in the center diff with the 12/18 gears in both cars.
