This was the first weekend for me with the new car. Other than friend and Serpent customer Steve no one else had the new ride. After discussing the car with the Team Manager we decided I would start from Truhe's setup from the Reedy Race. However The Loft and OCRC is very different in surface and overall traction levels, from what I'm told, therefore I knew it was going to be interesting.

Friday night Steve and I arrived and put our cars on the track. We both had the same opinion real quick; it was wrench time. The car was far off, I about put it back in the boot of the car after the 2nd battery, and get out the trusty rear motor. However on the 3rd battery I made one change that completely changed the balance of the car for me and I knew at that point I could find a balanced setup. Throughout the evening Steve and I traded back and forth ideas. He would try something and I would try something different and we ended the Friday night club race feeling like we had a good start but was still leaving much on the table.

Saturday morning my mates from Lexington tried to be funny by poking fun at how many times I would change shock fluid before even hitting the track for a battery. There was specific feel I was looking for and I found it with the 2nd or 3rd attempt changing oils and pistons out on the bench. The first time I hit the track Saturday morning the car was feeling 90% there.

For the 2nd round of qualifying I moved to 27.5 deg of front caster to change the steering balance of the car and made a few other changes to roll centers. This felt better but I felt maybe had too much steering and the steering came in a bit late in the corner.

For the 3rd round I again changed roll centers and revisited the dampening package for the changing track conditions. I also and went to the more aggressive AKA Typo front tire. This was perfect; the best the car had been all weekend. Unfortunately I didn't drive traffic very well and didn't go faster which left me 6th in the B. If I had of a perfect run I would probably would had put it straight in the A but racing isn't about if's...it's about do's.

In the B I worked up to to the front and had a great fight for the win with Nathan. He's also a very respectful young racer and has always drove me clean. It was a fun battle where we traded places multiple times. On the last lap, just before the last corner I somehow tapped the wall and he took the lead back and won by .01 sec. I was pretty bummed of the mistake but at the same time glad it was to Nathan. I knew he would do well in the main final. We traded congratulations on the drivers stand, the crowd cheered, and it was a fun moment.

2wd A-Final
When getting back from marshaling I talked to Serpent and AKA teammate Joe Bornhorst, whom qualified 4th, and offered him my car. Since we run the same tires, radio, etc I thought he would go faster with it. He immediately called Chicky (Team Manager) and discussed it. I think Chicky asked him, "What do you have to loose?" He accepted the offer and I went to work to prepare the car just as I normally would. He prepared his for just in case it felt wrong during warm-up.

During warm-up I could tell that Joe was immediately comfortable with the car. On the 2nd lap of warm-up he was already starting to push it. In the race he ended up going .5 sec faster on fast lap than he did all weekend with his RM car. His top 5 and top 10 average laps was also faster than his fast lap. The competition during the main at the front was fast. Joe just missed the podium by making a small mistake in the closing minutes of the race. Recent Reedy Race winner and another AKA Teammate JP Richards (TLR) won the A-Final, followed by Brandon Marsh (AE), and Luke Richards (Kyosho).

After the race Joe said the car was the easiest to drive 2wd he's ever driven. Below is a video of his main and the setup that was on my car. Please not the comments section and realize this is the first weekend on the car.