After having a more local regional event cancel due to rain I set my sights a bit further west to avoid the rain and do some racing. I came across the Furby 2.0 event at VCRC Raceway in Terre Haute, Indiana and so took the 5+ hr drive over to check it out. With a record turnout for the facility of nearly 240 entries it made for a long but great day of racing. I opted to run 3 classes consisting of my Nitro buggy along with the E powered buggy and truggy in preparation for E-Nats in a couple weeks time.
The track was fairly large and the surface got pretty tricky as the day went on. It's one of those surfaces that makes the steering feel a bit twitchy and the rear subsequently loose. Some things I did to try to help my set-up was on the buggies I arrived with 30k in my center diff with the 12/18 gears and felt the need to go down to 20k to allow it to diff out a bit more to the front and hopefully get the rear to follow a little more vs. being as loose on exit. I also went up on rear toe from 2.5 to 3.5 and laid down my front and rear shocks on the towers. Also due to the choppy surface especially in the top left and middle switchbacks section I added four 0.8mm holes in the rear shock pistons to help with bump absorption but hopefully not really effect landing pack. I probably would have gone down to Brown springs on my buggies (from black) but I forgot my spring bag at home. I also lengthened the rear link to fully long to slow down the action of the rear end a bit.
We had two 5 minute qualifiers and I was able to take the TQ in all of them setting myself up on the pole for the mains. Tire wise I started with SLW impacts in the first round and as the track started to get a little more cleared off on the line I went with SLW Diamantés. In truggy I was running some SLW impact front and Gridiron rears.
The mains were all going to be near the end of the program starting around 11pm and finishing up the last one a bit after midnight. I went with SSLW Impact/Grids in Etruggy, Soft Diamanté in Ebuggy, and stuck with the SLW Diamantés for the 30 min nitro buggy. I probably would have actually ran SLW Impacts or maybe Zip front, Impact rear on Nitro buggy if I had them as there was more loose dirt and broken ness over the track but it was also very catchy.
First main up was Ebuggy and for this I opted for Soft Diamanté due to it being night time although the track was still dry in the groove. I would have been fine with running SLW still. All told though my ebuggy was solid and though the conditions were challenging with a stagnant air of dust hanging over the track I was able to move forward from the pole position and hole the lead for the entire race to take the victory.
Next was the nitro buggy 30 minute main and I opted to run the SLW Diamanté in this one though they were getting a bit worn but it's what I had so I made due. I got onto the track a bit late as I noticed a clutch bearing going bad as I warmed my car up so I tried to quickly change that which allotted me just 1 lap of warmup by the time I got onto the track. This caused a slightly rich setting at the start and Tyler got by me straight away. I pursued for the first half of the race and we generally stayed within about 3 seconds of one another. The conditions were challenging with the dust, smoke, and just the tricky surface we were running on. After the midway point I had a couple longer mistakes as I crashed in inopportune places and quickly found myself in a deep hole. However I would benefit from a DNF from Tyler with 2 minutes to go and inherit the lead and be able to take the victory.
Finally we had the E-truggy final and I'll just way I was super impressed with my ET this day. It soaked up the rough like it wasn't even there for the most part and I just put in consistent laps throughout this 10 minute main nearly breaking into the 38's again as I had in qualifying. I was able to take an over 1 lap victory in this one as my Kyosho MP10Te was on point running SSLW Impact front and Gridiron rears.
Overall a great day of racing for a great cause with awesome people and a fun challenging track to test my skills on! I look forward to returning in the future!
