This past weekened I took a drive South East for about 6 hours to attend the ROAR E-Scale Nats at Adrenaline R/C Raceway in Virginia. Upon arrival and seeing the venue it reminded me of Padova in Italy but a smaller version of it. The track looked very tight especially for the 1/8th classes we would be running so I knew it was going to provide some very close racing action!
We had some open practice all day on Wednesday which was primarily spent getting the cars dialed in and looking for things to do for quicker rotation through the corners on this tight track. Some things I did were shorter rear camber link which frees up the rear a bit but also will square up on exit a little quicker. I also ran a bit lighter rear diff and front diff oil than I usually do. Lighter rear to get through the tight corners quicker and lighter front diff to get some more off power steering. Also due to the smaller and tight track I opted to run the Tekin Redline Gen 3 1700 motor in truggy and while I didn't have one on me I think the 1950 would have been a great choice for buggy on this track.
As we went into controlled practice on Thursday I started to work on my tire game a bit more. The track had a looser surface to it and we were using AKA Ultra Soft tires primarily. This was a tricky surface in that doing a variety of things like saucing or trying different compounds or similar tread patterns didn't seem to make a huge difference. Everything felt a little slick and it was just important to find what you were most comfortable on. I was primarily opting for Ultra soft Typo in buggy, Ultra soft chainlink for Short Course, and Super Soft or Clay inside outs for truggy. These inside outs we were making are demonstrated in my video below. We did this because this track did prefer bar tires and AKA currently doesn't offer one so it's a work around for now for us.
Once qualifying got underway we were set for 4 total rounds with 2 counting towards qualifying efforts. My Friday went pretty solid with all top 5 runs. My best being a 2 and a 3 in E-buggy with my Agama A215ESV. All of my equipment was working pretty well and we were beginning to see how the track was going to behave throughout the day. The morning runs being a bit more wet from the evening watering allowing for Ultra soft or clay compounds to be run in the morning runs. Then it started to dry out just a little for the second runs of the day on Friday and Saturday which allowed for SS compound to be used. Saturday my qualifying efforts weren't as good overall outside of a 3rd in Q3 of Truggy with my Agama A215TE. In the end when all qualifying was settled I would qualify 3rd in Short Course with my rent-a-ride Tekno and qualify 5th in both 1/8th Buggy and Truggy classes.
It was Sunday and triple A-main time and we knew it was going to be hard to make a pass. All the mains started pretty clean and the ROAR officials did a great job of calling jump starts and rough driving. The mains basically would start as a single file procession around the track and leaders would usually start to gap out a little and the field would jockey for position. It was really about waiting and trying to force an error on the driver in front of you to be able to make a pass. Because even if they went wide or blew a corner or something a little bit it was still hard to make any kind of clean pass. Many times someone would crash in front of you and just because of the tight nature of the track you would get collected into the carnage. It absolutely kept me on my toes though and while I didn't often make to much progress I did have a couple results where I moved up 1 or 2 positions and also some where I fell back 1 or 2. But overall my results were all in that middle range and that's kind of just how it went. In the end I would finish 5th in Ebuggy, 6th in Etruggy, and 4th in SC. Not exactly what I would hope for but I gave it my all and battled best I could.
Overall I had a great time and I think the track and all involved did a great job with the event. My only complaint would be I would really like to see these classes be battled out on a larger track. These cars have so much power capabilities and it would be nice to showcase what they are capable of. As someone mentioned at this race as well it would be nice to have the Nationals for the 1/8th classes decided on outdoor 1/8th sized tracks though it is of course nice to not have to worry about rain outs with the indoor facilities.
I want to give a huge thanks do Donnie Ward for the hospitality and allowing me to pit with them and also to Red for the grub. Good people who still treat me like family even when i'm now on another team. I'm so appreciative!
Next up i'm off to the Stateline King of Kings race for their final one. Hopefully the weather is just perfect and we can have a great weekend of racing!
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