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2012 Reedy International Race of Champions

Friday, January 27, 2012

I’m down in balmy Southern California this week where the temperatures are topping out in the low 80's! This is January right?? I’m attending the Reedy International Race of Champions for the first time and i’m quite impressed with the event. This is probably the biggest electric event I have ever attended and although I am not in the invite class there is still very thick competition in the open class consisting many fast locals and some of the fastest out of town racers in the country. My goal is to get some more electric time under my belt this year so that way next year I can be in the Invite class and really enjoy the Reedy Race format. As for how i’m doing here goes:

2wd Mod – In 2wd my Durango DEX210 feels awesome. I worked throughout practice to nail down a set-up and i’m very pleased with what i’m running. My car is doing everything well and outside of mistakes on my part trying to keep myself from driving my 2wd like a 4wd it’s been running great. In the 3 qualifiers thus far I have finished 7th, 2nd, and 7th. I have dipped into the 19.9 second lap time which less than 10 people in Open or Invite have done so i’m very pleased with how it’s going. I know i’m in the A-main and I look forward to the 10 minute A-main and really think I have a legit shot at winning.

4wd Mod – Now here’s the class that I am supposed to be good at. However I’m just searching for a set-up this weekend. Unfortunately up unto this point I just can nail down something that I feel ‘safe’ with. My car is super fast and I even layed down a 19.0 with only Maifield thus far dipping into the 18 second range. However my car just feels to agressive and I just can’t hang on to it consistently. I’ve done some wholesale changes to set-up each round and when I fix one thing it changes another. I will be getting there early in the morning to try to work it out. In my 3 round i’ve only completed 1 in which I got 16th with a few crashes. In my last run I was on a TQ run for a bit but just lost my groove and fell off before retiring a lap before the end. I know the car has it in it and I hope to find the set-up tomorrow and maybe make the C or B main and bump up from there! I’ve got the lap times just need the consistency.

It’s been fun thus far and watching the Invite races albeit a bit saddening to me (wishing I was a part of it) has been very enjoyable. I look forward to attending this event again next year and partaking in the Invite class and also having some more time on the electric cars to where I can feel comfortable in these classes that I just haven’t had the time to run enough yet. There growing on me though they will never replace my Nitro cars! ;)



Saturday, January 28, 2012

Today was the final day of qualifications for the open class with 1 round in the morning. Early on in the morning they had an hour of open practice where I worked on getting my 4wd dialed in. I felt like I got it pretty good and told people that if I didn’t TQ the final round of quaifiers that I would fire myself. Well luckily I did what I said I had to do and got the TQ for the round and also posted the fastest round of the weekend in the Open class. However this was still only good enough to put me 13th overall or 5th in the B-main with my 3 other poor rounds. However with gaining the momentum at the right time I hope to bump up and make a charge during the Double A-mains.

In 2wd I wanted to try to run my fresher set of front tires that had a fresher foam on them sense my first set seemed to have the foam deteriorating. However this turned out to be a poor decision as they just didn’t have the traction and I was pushing everywhere. I eneded up haveing a poor run not helping my cause. Luckily my first two runs of 7th and 2nd were enough to put me 6th on the Grid in the A-main come Sunday’s Double A’s.

I really feel I have a shot in both classes to take the win. It’s going to take some more focus on my part but I feel I have my Durango’s dialed now and I’m going to give it my all!



Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Reedy Internationals Race of Champions has come to a close and I’m happy to announce that Team Durango at the hands of Jorn Neumann is the Invite Champion! Congratulations Jorn! So very well deserved and you drove AWESOME! It’s absolutely amazing that Jorn with 100% less track time at West Coast R/C than his main competitors was not only able to compete but literally drive some of the best races i’ve ever witnessed.
As for me in the open class I had an up and down day. Here is how it went:

My Durango Rides

In 4wd Mod I spent the morning getting my Durango DEX410 dialed in and making sure I could run over 10 minutes with no problem. In practice I did 13 minutes and everything felt great so I was confident in my upcoming B-main. At the start I was as patient as I could be and I felt like the field was moving in slow motion. Eventually I would catch some bad breaks in traffic and fell to the back. I worked my way up to 5th and threw down the fastest lap time in Open class of the weekend of a 18.9. Unfortunately a decision that was made before the B-main ended up costing me as I retired from the race early. All in all though I was extremely happy with how I got my car to handle throughout the weekend and with the ROAR Nationals being on the same track this year I feel much more confident with my set-up for that event now!

In 2wd Mod my DEX210 was running great. I was starting 6th on the grid in the A-main and was looking to just get some solid finishes. In A-1 my car felt pretty good. It did feel a little uneasy and loose at times but I attribute most of that to having just raced 4wd and me not yet having a real comfortable feel on the 2wd class yet. I always want to get on the gas instead of letting the car work. Anyways I ran a pretty clean race and at one point worked my way up to 4th. However Numan and Pillars caught up to me and we had a small battle. Numan ended up breaking and Pillars got by and thus I took 5th. In
In A-2 I had an even better start and moved up to 3rd. I would eventually go back and forth with Frank Rood for 3rd and 4th for a couple times until he made a mistake over the triple and I worked on trying to catch the leaders. I put in the 2nd fastest lap time of the entire weekend in 2wd and ended up taking 3rd for A-2. Overall this put me 4th place just off the podium.

4th Place In Open in 2WD Mod

Overall i’m pleased with the result. I at least know that for the ROAR Nationals I will be competitive now. Also I truly believe this is going to be the most hotly contested ROAR Nationals in US History as there are so many fast drivers who basically live at this track. It’s going to be a huge accomplishment just to make the A this year. I’m looking forward to it.

A cool thing about this race and the location was there was about 150 – 200 spectators surrounding the track for all the mains. It was a very cool sight. Also there are so many young hot shots from either that area or other indoor clay tracks that all came to this race and put on a great show and were lightning fast. The future of R/C is looking good!

Lutzinator