U.S. Open (Adobe Mountain)

For my final race of the 2025 season I escaped the frigid cold and snow of Ohio and traveled to the sun soaked mid 70's of Phoenix, Arizona to attend the annual U.S. Open event. This track has always been a ton of fun and a challenge due to a super cross style layout with lots of jumps into and out of corners requiring some good whip action and in air car control. The traction level seemed to me to be down this year and especially during some dry runs midday our laptimes could be up to 1.5-2 seconds a lap slower than during the grippier morning and evening runs. So a little bit different set-up was seemingly needed compared to past years at this event.

Qualifying was so-so for me as I struggled a bit to put in some cleaner runs. Ebuggy was my best effort overall and I was able to grab a TQ run in Q2 on RawSpeed Soft Triumph tires. Overall I would qualify 2nd.

My Kyosho MP10T Nitro Truggy was too locked in and I kept doing changes each run to free it up a bit. One run removing the outboard toe in. Next run minimizing the regular rear toe in, and for the main shortening the rear link. Each thing made it incrementally better. For qualifying I would only muster a 4th every run to seed 4th overall.

Finally my new MP11 Nitro buggy runs were mostly fraught with mistakes on my end. The car being a bit too easy to drive again thus me making some mistakes trying to force a quicker rotation or similar. I was on a TQ run in Q2 but got railed by a car I had recently passed and then made some mistakes on the last lap and mustered a 3rd. Overall I would qualify 5th.

Sunday brought the warmest day with nearly 80* temps. First up we had the 45min Nitro truggy main in which I ran a set of RawSpeed Soft Mach One's. I had a tough start and made a couple mistakes and fell from 4 to 6 and fell as deep as 7th on lap 11 before finding my groove. Unfortuantely I was already over half a lap back from Maifield in the lead. I concentrated on my flow and hitting my marks and started to make some inroads and also realized I was pitting one less time than most of the other top guys which was a surprise to me! I was able to secure 5th on lap 20 then 4th on lap 31 and into 3rd by lap 45. I was a good 10 seconds behind second but kept plugging away and he made some mistakes and I got into 2nd on lap 72. I was then even able to make up a little bit of time at the end and avoid being lapped and take a solid 2nd!

Next was the ebuggy A-main and I went with Soft Triumph again. It was midday and the track was slick and we were all struggling a bit with timing jumps and making some bobbles. I cased and messed up the front left step up on lap one and fell back to 6th but by the end of the lap was back to 3rd. Then I caught back up and got into 1st on lap 4. Then Fenster and I went back and forth numerous times while Maifield pushed hard at the end to close the gap. I got into the lead with 2 laps to go and was able to hang on for dear life and take the victory at the end! It was starting to be a much better day of racing for me!

Next race for me was the 30 minute nitro buggy semi final. I had a slow start again just struggling to find a groove but finally it came around and my car was feeling very solid and easy to drive. I got back into 2nd on lap 11 and was maintaining my distance behind Maifield. I was putting in relatively clean laps and it was just a matter of turning laps to get into that Afinal. But suddenly with about 10 minutes to go I heard a car crunching and it was a pretty sudden thing and I asked my pit guy, "Is that me?" Because there was a few cars around me. Sure enough a lap later I could tell it was me and I couldn't believe it. I tried to baby it around for a couple laps but it got louder and finally the bell let go. Upon fixing it I had a few teeth missing on the spur and the whole bell lost all the teeth. Nothing engine wise moved so I chalk it up to a rock or just something that happens from time to time.

Fortunately there was a last chance race which gave me a shot at still making the main. I started 8th and moved into 1st by the second lap. Unfortunately for me there were two other fast guys who had issues in their semi final and one was Jermaine Robinson who was going really good in this last chance race. I had me covered on pace and we swapped the lead multiple times as we each would make mistakes as the sun was setting and darkness descending. I had my fair share of the lead and ample opportunities to hold it but I kept making mistakes and he got by and took the win and I had to settle for 2nd and to go home early without participating in the hour long Amain. Super bumbed about that but, that's racing. He ended up taking 2nd overall so good for him!

Next up for me is actually Silver State in Vegas which has been moved to the first full week of January this year! Now time for some holiday fun with the family! Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year!