This past weekend I attended the LoneStar Classic at Indy RC World in Garland, Texas. It had been a couple years since I had last been here and it's been great to see the grass roots approach and how many new people they have brung into the hobby over the last few years! This years even brought in over 200 entries to compete for the top step of the podium. I decided to bring both nitro vehicles this time and my ebuggy to fill out my full race day.
We had practice all day Friday and with a fresh layout I was primarily running Clay, SS, or SSLW AKA Chainlinks. The track is a well packed clay but a couple sections were a bit uneven surfaced and a little bumpy. So I knew this would present a challenge when the grip came up more. As qualifying got underway on Saturday the track was beginning to dry and grip was coming up more and more. I started to run SSLW Scribbles and Typos with Typos being my fastest tire on Saturday qualifying. My goal during qualifying was to dip into the 23 second lap times. I missed with a 24.000 in ebuggy, but a few runs later in Truggy my MP10T laid down a 23.7. And finally to close out qualifying my TKI2 Nitro buggy put down a 23.9 as well. In doing so I was able to TQ all 9 runs on Saturday as traction continued to climb. I even ran SLW Scribbles in Truggy in the final qualifier. One of the most helpful things I did in qualifying was in Ebuggy. I have noticed as I've began to run on a few higher traction tracks lately that where usually my ebuggy has more steering than my nitro buggy, that on higher grip it seems to have less. Spencer explained to me that on higher bit more rear weight bias actually gives more steering. So I ended up adding 40g of weight to the rear of the ebuggy to get a more similar weight bias to the nitro buggy and it worked great getting me the extra steering that I needed.
Sunday was main day with 30 minute nitro mains and triple 10's for ebuggy. The grip was really coming up now and I opted to run SLW Scribbles in Truggy and nitro buggy. First up was ebuggy where I used the set of SLW scribbles that I planned to run in nitro buggy. The grip was up and by lap 3 I cracked into the 23's with a 23.9. By lap 13 I got a 23.5 and on lap 17 had a hot lap of 23.222. This made the announcer set my new goal at cracking into the 22's and that is the challenge I put to myself the rest of the day. Nitro buggy was next and I already knew the SLW scribbles were working well. On lap 5 I already laid down a 23.5 and that would be my hot lap until with about 2 minutes to go the announcer brought up the hot lap and said I wonder if he can beat it. I answered the challenge pushing the envelope just a bit harder and got a 23.098 and took a 2.5 lap victory.
Next was another ebuggy main where I tried some SLW catapults. Figuring they would probably be a touch slower but should take some edge off and be a bit easier to drive. This was pretty accurate but it did allow me to run a cleaner race overall. As the tires broke in during the middle of the race I was able to dip to a 23.377d but that was as low as I could go. I was able to come home with the win and thus would be assured of the overall victory.
As we neared the end of a long day it was time to run nitro Truggy. My truck felt fast and I can't say if it was because the track was a touch slower or if my nitro buggy was just that fast earlier but even with me giving it all I had to break into the 22's it just wasn't going to happen. I pushed hard but best I mustered was a 23.368 on lap 27. My top 15 was faster than my nitro buggy but that singular hot lap this week would go to the Kyosho TKI2 with Alpha Dragon V power!
Finally to finish out the day we had one more ebuggy run. Usually I would run after already having won the first 2 but I wanted to get a GoPro run in so I mounted up the Hero 11 and went to work adjusting my driving style to compensate. A high grip surface is where you really notice the added weight up high and it made my buggy do some funky things in some corners. But I was still able to adjust my driving and reach a 24.0 lap time and take the win!
Overall a super fun weekend of racing. I learned some more things regarding high grip and the Kyosho rides and felt my set-ups were pretty decent in the end. I pulled off the hat track with 3 TQ's and Victories and closed out the '22 season nicely.
Set-up Sheets:
Note: Temperatures were in the 50-70* range
Both buggies have the medium length rear shock standoffs.
Both buggies using the IF403B small center diff
