A-Main Manufacturers Cup

Another cross country trip sent me this time to Northern California to one of the nicest facilities in the World. This was the inaugural AMain Manufactuers Cup that should grow to be one of the premier events on the calendar every year. The format for the Pro’s was Reedy format with 4 heads up rounds in each class with 3 out of 4 counting for the final result. In the coming years hopefully the demand to attend the race will grow and the pro class can be an Invite class with all the top drivers in the World attending this exciting race. Look for big things to come next year when this event rolls around. As for this year it was a great time and some awesome close heads up racing battles. 

The Tekno team was once again well represented at the event, and 7 of the top 25 drivers were in attendance making this also a Top 25 RC qualifying event. I ran my standard 3 classes at this event. There ended up being one full heat of Truggy and two full heats of Pro E Buggy and Nitro buggy. The order and heats were shuffled for each of the 4 rounds making things as even as possible in that regard. The grid was staggered into 4 rows of 3 cars in each row and it was made to give everyone at least one front and one rear grid start during their 4 runs. On some races there was some extreme carnage on the straight but most often it happened on the hairpin 180 after a double at the end of the straight and dogleg. After that things generally started to separate and you worked from there. Starts were pretty important and it was possible they could make or break your race. The electric heats were 9 minutes and the nitro’s were 14 to force a pitstop. 

Some of my best battles came in Round 2 of truggy where I got out to the early lead with Maifield and Tessmann in tow. They stayed between 1 – 3 seconds behind me for much of the entirety of the 15 minutes and I was able to stay clean and fend them off. It was a great accomplishment for me as Maifield was ballistic this past weekend as was Tessman. I had some mental successes in that one! I believe it was also Round 2 of Nitro buggy where I had another good start and stayed out ahead of Maifield for a little over half the race. He was chomping on my tail and i’ll be the first to admit he was faster than me this past weekend. But we battled hard for a number of laps before he got by. However with two laps to go he ran out of gas. Probable cause was us coming into pits one after the other and his pit guys rushing to try to beat me out of the pits. But Danny and Matt were ballistic for us in the pits all weekend and at the time kept me out front and filled my tank to allow me to finish in 1st in that one.

Overall I did way better than I thought possible coming into Saturday. I was able to take 1-2-3 finishes in truggy to take the overall Victory! In E-buggy I had a 3-2-2 to take 5th overall. In Nitro buggy I had a 1-2-2 to take 3rd overall on the Podium. In the end it was some more great results for me in this heavy competition with 4 of the top 5 ranked drivers in attendance and 7 of the top 25. I moved a little closer in points up the list and am just tenths out of 4th at this time as I reside in 5th. I still have much to improve upon and just hope to continue learning, improving, and consistently finishing as the year progresses on!

Next I head to AMS tomorrow to attend AMS 8.0. Short turn around, but looking forward to the event as always and some awesome competition.