This past weekend I took a drive east to LCRC to attend the East Coast Race Against Cancer. This was the events first time at this location and it turned out the most entries in it’s history. Over 310 entires filled out the 28 heats of racing and made for a competitive and fun weekend of racing. This was my first time attending the event and I was very impressed by the amount of generosity and camaraderie I noticed throughout the weekend. In the end over $14,000 was raised for the Cause and tons upon tons of prizes were donated and raffled off and I think everyone went home a winner!
As far as the racing went I got off to a hot start taking the TQ in all 3 classes in round number 1. This weekend Joe and I chose to run Ebuggy, Nitro Buggy, and we chose Etruggy to compliment the larger class that’s more popular on the East coast. Now usually Joe has my number in the E-classes but this weekend my electric finger was perhaps working better than ever. I was utilizing much more restraint than usual especially in the etruggy class and my ET48.3 was just on rails. They were utilizing rocked round in qualifying so it only took one good run. In Q2 of etruggy Joe and I were battling tooth and nail and I was able to eek him out by 0.2 tenths on the last lap to take the TQ. I was also able to hold on to and TQ all 3 classes at the end of qualifying to start on pole for the mains.
Single A-mains were on tap and we started with E-truggy. I got out to a good start and Joe and I separated from the pack. About 4 laps in Joe made an inside pass on me in the top left corner of the track but I took it right back in the next corner. He continued to follow close until about the 7 or 8 minute mark when he tried to turn up the heat and instead made a mistake allowing me to sail into the sunset for victory.
Nitro buggy was next and I think I chose to hard of a tire. I went with soft long wear impacts and I think should have stayed on the regular soft that I had been running. Either way Joe and I were once again battling for the first 15 minutes of this 25 minute final. While leading with 10 minutes to go I tagged the pipe putting me on my lid and by the time the marshal got to me I flamed out and it was near the end of a lap so I really lost about a lap and a half. With just the 10 minutes left in the race I settled into 5th position which is where I would finish with Joe taking the victory flag for Tekno.
Ebuggy capped off the evening and I was back on my soft impacts for this one. This time Joe made a catastrophic early mistake on the first lap and it was a cruiser for me. I was almost wanting to stop and watch the 3 way battle for 2nd as they were duking it out for a good 5 minutes. In the end Joe would get back into 2nd for another Tekno 1-2 finish.
This weekend was also a first for me in that I won my first big raffle prize ever. I won the Tekno NT48.3 that was donated by Tekno!! Of course I immediately said we would redraw for a winner and I went over and picked the next winning ticked to take home the awesome truggy!
This is absolutely a must attend event. Nearly everyone has been affected by cancer in one way or another. The cause is worthy and the race is just a great time. They do an awesome job getting tons of raffle prizes for this race and if you can make sure to put this one on your calendar for next year!
Next up I am going to try my hand at carpet offroad (does that even go together?) for the first time! I’m looking forward to it and hopefully I can adapt quickly.
