Trip number 3 to the 'yard' has now been finished and this time it was for the FX of Nitro event. This was my first FX event and it boasts an all heads up racing format where the tone goes off and you are racing your competitors as well as the clock to get that top rocket round seed time. Now the Tiltyard runs the same layout for the year so I am very familiar with the layout and surface at this point. It's actually pretty fun to have a great layout that you can return to and see how you can improve performance and times on it. This weekend I really dialed in my shock package for the choppy corners and also found a new awesome tire for the surface.
Qualifying on Saturday consisted of 3 rounds all heads up. For Ebuggy we started on the back straight in varying positions and in Nitro we started from Pit lane first come first serve for position. Ebuggy I was able to TQ all 3 qualifiers primarily running AKA SSLW Chainlinks. I think regular soft would have been a bit better in the midday run but still they were a good tire. In Nitro buggy I was able to TQ Q1 but Austin would get me in Q2 as I made a couple mistakes after catching up to his rear. Times in Q3 weren't any better so I would settle for 2nd qualifier. I was running Soft Zip front and Catapult rears which is the same configuration I had ran previous meetings. But in Q3 I decided to try soft Components with the more dense side out. They were a big surprise to me and very easy to drive and skipped over all the little ripples in the corners.
Main day was Sunday and they shortened up the mains a little as rain was in the forecast. Ebuggy was up first and I opted to continue to run the SSLW Chainlinks on my WRC SBXE buggy. I had a good start and got out to the lead and held on from there. One at the end came up on the battle for 3rd I believe so I just took it easy behind them and let them battle it out and cruised across for the victory.
Last race of the day was Nitro buggy and they were going to give us the full 30 minutes but it was going to be up to the rain. Right before the start it started to sprinkle but as the tone sounded we began. I trailed Austin for half a lap before making an inside move into the lead and just pressed on ahead. My WRC SBX Nitro buggy was so good. Everything was running optimum and it's rare for me to have that and to say it was one of the best full packages I've ever ran on the track. Unfortunately the rains began getting harder and 5 minutes in the track started to get slick. Homer said we were going to run to 7 minutes and stop the race then. I had a good lead and was able to take the rain shortened victory.
The keys to my great buggy were I was running those Soft AKA Components. Also on the shock pistons I was running VRP XV3 pistons with 4 holes 1.5mm front and 5 holes 1.5mm rear. They absorbed the bumps really well and made the car super easy to drive on the conditions.
Another double victory for the WRC vehicles and a great time racing all heads up at the FX of Nitro Championship Events. I look forward to my next one but for now my next scheduled race is the Southern Nationals in a little over a week.
Set-up extra notes.
-Using CF rear shock tower with one hole I drilled lower than the #1 hole position (same distance lower that the other holes are from each other. If you do this you must also trim some material from the rear bulkhead to not have it bind.
-Anti-squat C block is actually in the middle (This was also a new change for this event as I had been running low, I feel this helped square up more on corner exit and get a little more pop off of jumps.
-The longer rear link compared to last setup just slows down the rear end reaction a little and makes it a bit easier to drive.
-I got blank VRP XV3 pistons to create the 4 hole 1.5mm fronts. This allowed me to run a lighter front oil as I was getting in the 800+ range with 5 hole. It also mellows out the reactions of the front end a bit especially on tracks like this with choppy corners and not really smooth.
-Springs are the WRC Red springs which are one stiffer than kit springs.
-Both the Soft Components with the more dense side out and also the Zip front and Catapult rear in Soft were good on this track. Same lap times, similar feel.