This past weekend was the TNR A-Main Challenge and wow, what a venue and track it was! Located in an equestrian arena in Norco, California with beautiful (although smoggy) views of mountains and the city below. The track was very large with the best lap time of the weekend getting to 40.7 seconds I believe. That took hitting all the tough sections right because it was very common to have laps 1-2 seconds apart just by not nailing some of the tricky areas. It was a challenge to be sure and would have been an even greater one if they didn’t patch much of the track Saturday early morning.
We were allotted 2 practice runs per car with the second being a seeding round. Having a new surface to learn RAWspeed tires on and a new engine to run in buggy, it’s a bit overwhelming trying to incorporate the new products and learn and setup for the track. I struggled a bit in practice and into the first qualifiers. Mainly just making mistakes of turning in to early on some corners with some of the angles out there or struggling through the sharp rough sections, and of course that dubious S section.
A big thing I had to do was work on setup a bit which involved going to 12/18 gears in the center with 15k (feels like around 6k with 10/20 gears) and a heavier front and rear diff, 10k and 8k respectively to handle the higher speed corners and keeping the car a bit straighter thru the bumps and not want get as upset.
Also the track made my cars twitchy on steering so to combat that I went back to the black front spring instead of the brown or red that I had been running to mellow the steering out a bit. Also lowered the front link to the middle, added some kickup in the front (b block down) and shortened the camber links to inside holes on the hubs. Finally also used the plastic wing on the nitro buggy (have been using lexan) as it calmed the rear down a bit. All these things got me more comfortable and able to put in some better laps easier.
Tire wise we were trying all kinds of options. When it had some good moisture we had success with green (SS) Aurora and Mach One. I was even able to TQ Q3 of Nitro buggy on the Aurora. As the track tried out at the end of qualifying and in the mains we opted for Yellow (soft) Mach One and they provided the pace in the mains. Also tried briefly the clay and pink compound but it just wasn’t the right conditions for them. Pink was ok but made the rear a little loose. In the end Green when a bit of moisture and yellow when it looked dryer was the ticket.
Qualifying overall was a struggle but I did manage some good runs near the end. In ebuggy I would just make the show in 12th. In Nitro truggy I was able to get a 2 in Q3 to get me up to 7th qualifier (I had a full throwout in Q1 crashing on the back right and no one saw me and my pit man had to run around the whole track to get me!). In Nitro buggy I had my best success with a 3 in Q2 and a TQ run and the only 8 lapper in buggies all weekend to qualify me 2nd for the Amain.
Sunday brought all those Amains and first up was ebuggy. Starting 12th I had a great start and was able to move past come carnage in those tough back sections and up to 6th on lap 1. I held that position for 3 laps until lap 4 when a mistake knocked me back to 10th. I was then in the clutches of the midpack and it was brutal from there on out. I oscilated between 9th to 13 to 7th to 11th on the final lap when I crashed on the right double double single. A dissapointing finish especially when my car was much improved. I ran Soft Auroras in this one. My Kyosho teammate Phi Long however did have a great race and started 4th and moved into the lead mid race and took the victory! Congrats Phi!
Next was the 30 minute Nitro buggy final in which I chose Soft Mach One tires. Starting p2 I just wanted to stay clean at the start and that benefited me as I got into the lead on the right side on lap 1 and held the lead for the second lap but on lap 3 in the treacherous S section I rolled over on my lid and had a 7 second crash knocking me back to 8th. I worked my way back up to 5th by lap 6 and 4th on lap 12. Unfortunately for me I noticed just before my second fuel stop that my rear was getting bouncy and sure enough the left rear shock blew out the bottom clip and I lost all the oil. So I had to run the final 16 minutes or so with a bouncy rear end requiring lots of jump corrections and a careful end of straight away 90* turn. Fortunately I was able to adjust my driving and still manage to hold onto 4th for the remainder of the race to salvage a decent finish. My new Alpha Falcon Spec B ran well for it's first event. There was limited practice so still no back to back results to share, but I was getting 8-8:30 runtime in my checks during qualifying which is pretty good for me on a large track like this. One other driver from Mexico on the Alpha team was getting 10:30 with his! So I think it's safe to say this engine is going to be a winner. I can't wait to get some more time with it. Need some better weather here! haha
Finally we had the 30 minute nitro truggy final to cap off the night. I started p7 in this one and my Yellow (soft) Mach Ones were on point on my MP10T. I was clean for the first portion of the race moving up spot by spot with others mistakes. On lap 10 I found myself in 3rd with Maifield and Rivkin about 4 seconds ahead. I pressed on and caught up to them as they battled and moved into 2nd on lap 21. Then my sights were on Maifield and I had him covered on all but the back S section where he would pull on me every lap. But I would catch up the rest of the track so I tailed him for about 7 laps until I got out of shape on the back right singles and flew off the back of the track again loosing 7 seconds. I came back out in 3rd and a few laps later got into 2nd again but on my pit in lap I ran out of gas on the back of the track ending my bid! A dissapointment to an overall tough weekend of racing that had some bright spots when it came to pace. Just have to put the full result together.
Overall a challenging but rewarding weekend of racing. Learning more about the RAWspeed tires. Getting to work with the RAWspeed team and see their successes on the weekend was encouraging as well. Also seeing Phi get his second pro class win in Ebuggy with many more to come! Good stuff! #EnjoyRC
Setup Notes: I am using the new KPI hubs. You cannot copy this set-up unless you have those hubs. Also I have been using the 20* caster with the KPI hubs but it looks like initially only 18* will be available. I will switch to the 18* moving forward to have set-ups that can be copied with what is currently available.* (The 2* caster won't make a huge difference once you get your 18* kpi set-up)
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