The Silver State Indoor World Championships is done and dusted and it was one for the record books. With a final tally of 1,167 entries comprised of 435 drivers it was the largest entry count R/C race in the world. It wasn’t meant to be so however with an advertised 900 entry cap, but it seems some things never change. Irregardless the announcers did a great job with moving through the program as expediciously as possible. As for the drivers, having history at the venue and running multiple classes was imperative to get off to a good start with just 1 (8min) practice per vehicle.
That one practice run was also used as seeding, taking your two fastest laps to seed into the qualifiers and hopefully give you early choice of drivers stand position. I was pretty much starting with my set-ups from last year with just some minor variations of things I have gravitated towards over the past year. I kept the tire game pretty simple using AKA SSLW the whole weekend with Gridirons in truggy and either Gridirons or Components in buggy. I struggled again this week in ebuggy, I just keep making too many mistakes. I need to get to the track and run it some more again to get my feel back as I would seed 22nd. My other three classes started out well though seeding 2nd in etruggy and nitro truggy and 3rd in nitro buggy at the end of the day when the track was at it's worst.
Each day they would patch up the track and make it pretty fresh again. So the ruts and rough stuff would change a little each day and every run for sure which always required watching some races before yours to try to see where some smoother lines may be. Thursday brought 3 rounds of qualifiers for Ebuggy and Nitro truggy. Ebuggy I still continued to struggle, and while my pace was ok, the mistakes were not and with only 4 minute qualifiers any errors were a pretty big deal. I would only muster a 17th and 12th which would qualify me 20th or 6th in the B-main. Nitro truck went better and with a nice p2 in Q1 it helped me seed higher as I was only able to back it up with an 11th, again just a mistake hindering me. Overall I would qualify 7th into the A-main in the class.
Saturday brought Etruggy and Nitro Buggy to the table and I would be able to get a TQ in Q2 of etruggy, coupled with my 7th in Q1 would qualify me 3rd overall and give me a fighting chance in that 10 minute sprint of an A-main. In Nitro buggy I showed good pace in Q1 and Q2 with a 4th in Q1 just 1.5 out of TQ. In Q2 I had super pace and was fastest of anyone by every metric, however I had a 6 second crash on lap 1 on the back but fought back to a 10th overall just 2.3 out of TQ. A 10 and a 4 would qualify me 8th into the A-main.
Saturday brought the first set of mains to the table and first up for me was the Ebuggy B-main. Now a B-main is always super tough as everyone is very hungry for those 2 bump up spots. I had a good start and with some others crashing moved up to 3rd on the first lap. Then two laps later made an outside pass on Berton through the whoops section after the concrete. Another 2 laps and Cavalieri made a mistake giving me the lead and I was holding on until with about a minute to go my throttle started to feel wierd and I was loosing some top speed and felt a bit of extra drag brake. The top 3 made it by for the extra lap and when I went over the triple my motor locked up and lawn darted me into the face of the lander causing more breakage. Heartbreak as I was finally in my groove in ebuggy again but would settle for 3rd just missing the bump up to the Amain as my motor had fallen apart.
To end my evening we had the 45min Nitro Truggy A-main in which I would be starting 7th. My truck was feeling good but unfortunately the start was so tight and I got the worst of it ending up on my lid and crossing the line on lap one in 15th. I would run a pretty clean remaining 44 minutes and steadily rise through the field. Eventually by about lap 49 I moved into 5th and outside of a few laps during pit stops I would maintain that position the remainder of the run. It's a bit unfortuate about the start as I feel I could have been in that 2-4th place battle for most of the race, but that's racing!
Sunday brought with it Etruggy and Nitro buggy to finish out the event. First was the 10 minute Etruggy main and I would start 3rd and have a good battle with Maifield and chasing Fuller for most of the race. I had a mistake in a rut requiring a marshal which knocked me back but I fought back and had the fastest truck for 15 laps on the field. In the end I was able to get by for the extra lap with Fuller, but made a mistake pushing on that last lap making it a bit anti-climatic but still a good solid 2nd place result.
Finally was the Nitro buggy 45min A-main and I went with the AKA SSLW Component A out in front and B out in the rear for this one. I was able to move up to 4th position pretty early from my 8th starting spot. Then around lap 23 I was able to even get into 3rd place depending on pit stop timing until about 22min in when I did my first roll over of the race and I flamed out upside down at the end of the front straight. I got fired back up by lost 30 seconds and fell back to 10th. I tried to battle back and with a fortuitous last lap moved up from 8th to finish 6th on the last corner to salvage a respectable finish.
Overall solid results yet can't help but know I left a good amount on the table. Time to have a 'slower' May and hopefully get out to the local track and do some testing and prepare for the summer of competition with the next big one looking to be the ROAR Nitro Nats as we all have our sights on September and the IFMAR Worlds take 2.
Set-up Notes:
Ran Ackerman plate raised 1mm on all 4 cars (no bump shim washers either). Doing this to get less bump throughout the travel.
Nitro Buggy: Used SSLW Components with A side out in front and B side out in rear. One 4.5mm hole in the center of the foams.
Etruggy: rear shocks 4x1.5, 1x1.7
Nitro Truggy: rear shocks 4x1.5, 1x1.7. Had to add 50g of weight to make min weight which I added behind motor and behind the radio box. Ran 12/18 gears in the center (like the buggies) which make it feel lighter than the number looks. If you don't have those gears I would have run around 10 in the center.
Ebuggy: Used SSLW Components with A side out in front and B side out in rear. One 4.5mm hole in the center of the foams. *Rear shocks 1.5x1, 1.6x3, 1.7x1 (650 oil)
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