2013 Spektrum Off-Road Championship
Location:Trackside Hobbies & Raceway

This years Spektrum Championship would mark the first time I have returned to the greater Milwaukee area and a track I use to call my Local raceway. The track has changed owners since I moved away about 5 years ago. I have to say though, the track, people, staff did not disappoint. In fact I missed the place and wish I had never moved away. The 1-10 racing there is going strong and there are so many fast locals to race with. This event had all sorts of good local guys as well as pro’s alike. Dustin Evans, Dakota Phend, Joe Pillars, Ryan Cavalieri were all there representing there teams. Scotty Ernst was on the mic all week keeping the crowd into the racing.

The Track surface is rich dark black Soil. It typically is more damp than dry, but that would prove to change as there were hundreds of laps being logged on the surface. The locals suggested the J concepts Blue compound as the hot tires, however even that turned out not to be the case. With 360 entries, the track was getting drier and drier each day. This lead to clay compound tires becoming more popular, but also the fastest in regards to lap times. This race quickly turned into the tire and sauce game faster than you could keep up with. The hot tires were AKA-sling shots, Proline-original suburbs, J-concepts-barcodes.

At the end, I would say most clay compound tires were working and the hot sauce of the winning driver was none other than simple WD-40.

As the practice started, the team had a large variety of setups and we all seemed to be going in a decent direction. However, we were mostly running super soft, M4’s, Blue. All these compounds seemed to be working, but nobody was every really fast. We were struggling to go faster and find the right balance with the cars setting. The entire first day was basically spent chasing our tails and that lead into half of the second day as well. In short we tried so many different things. Battery here, speedo there, setup like this and then like that. However, nothing was really solving the issues we were having and the lap times were really average. Then it happened. Mid day on Thursday, Clay tires hit the track and an entire new world was opened up to us. Although we had wasted a day and a half, we now saw the light and next thing you know we started getting somewhere. It’s really a shame in racing sometimes; you chase your tails, but there is always an explanation as to why. In this case, thank you to the little round rubber donuts, you were our curse and also our savior..:).

After we had the tires sorted, the scramble was on to try and back track to our original setups and start over. With the tires now working better, the setup seemed to be more in the ballpark. My setup from the last Super cup race actually worked pretty good, as it was a great starting point. The biggest challenge of this track was corner speed and stability. The track was small enough that you could not accelerate super hard turn to turn, but more importantly how you got through the turn once you arrived. Haha, yes, the ever elusive corner speed then became the quest. It’s not something you can feel and or even see, however, the stop watch tells the tale. In this case, I found that I liked more weight in the front and also a more aggressive front end. This helped me enter the turn, however, the difficult balance then became when you tried to keep the rear behind the front. Yes, making steering is great, but you also have to keep the rear of the car behind the front in the turns. I tried many different things and in fact, I felt like the job was incomplete when the race was over. I would say though, the car had decent balance and was pretty easy to drive. I was able to race with the best of them on the track, but still lacked something…

Qualifying went ok on the first day; however I really did not have any clean runs. I had some fast laps, but not a single clean run to go with any of my good laps. I had to settle for a couple 11 place finishes… I was a little bummed, but I knew my driving had been sub par. You can’t expect good points in qualifying if you as a driver never show up for your qualifier.

Day two was a different story; I had made some head way the day before, and was more aware of where I was coming up short on the track as a driver. I focused more on clean runs and less on the BD award. I turned the last remaining 2 qualifiers into good points and was able to put my car 5th on the grid for the A Final…

The mains were a bit of a disappointment for me…

The first final, I found a car stuck in a tube in the first turn. I was stuck in turn one for the loss of quite a few positions. I then was in the back of the hornets nest and never managed to get out. I got banged around, made lots of mistakes and had to settle for a poor finish.

The second final was off to a great start.. I ran around the track with the top 4 drivers as it was a freight train. After 5 laps or so, I made some mistakes and then back to the rear of the pack again. More hornets nest action once again.. Unable to clay my way free another less than desired finish..

The 3rd final was my best though.. The horn sounded off we went and I ran near the front for a long time. I made it into 3rd and stayed there for a while. Near the end of the race, I was actually in a battle for second place. I never overtook the position, but finished within a second at the line. It was my best finish of the day and I could totally live with that. There is no better feeling than being competitive…Well maybe there is, winning is probably better…J.

The race honestly was not about my finish in the end. One of our own Team Drivers: Josh Hohnstein was in great position to win the Stock buggy class. He had qualified 3rd on the grid and had a car good enough to win the race.

As the first stock buggy main went off there was a huge battle of back and forth action. Josh worked his way into the lead and ran an impressive 5 minute run posting. 18 laps 5:14.560.

The second main was another cliff hangar. There was battling, bumping and a whole lot of lead changes. CJ Greeves managed to take the win over Josh with a time of 18 laps 5:14.771

This would then set the stage for the final Race. With Josh qualified in 3rd and CJ in 2nd it would be a shootout between the two for the win of the class. The horn sounded the leaders took off and with a mistake by Scotty(TQ) and shortly after a mistake by CJ, this put Josh in the lead. From the time Josh took the lead he ran a solid clean 5 minutes trying to keep the car on its wheels and free from the pipes.. CJ however was not about to give up , driving on the edge and was inching his way closer and closer to Josh. As the time ran out, and with a small mistake by CJ near the end of the race, Josh was able to take the win and also the 2wd Stock Championship.

My hat goes off the Trackside crew, staff and all those that attended. It was a great race. We were very lucky to have a good size team and my appreciation for that can not be described in words. I want to give a huge thanks to:

Paul Ciccarello
Brian Jucha
Michelle Johnson
Josh Hohnstein
Joe Bornhorst
Steve Hagino
Mitchel Kauppila
Will Cush
Joe Sorwell
Cory Podolski

You guys were awesome and you all did a great job.

See all you guys next time.

Billy