Cactus Classic report from Mac Mitchell

The 24^th Annual Cactus Classic was held the weekend of March 19-21 in beautiful Scottsdale, AZ. This event is held at the world famous Scottsdale R/C Speedway. SRS has been my home track ever since I began racing back in the early 90’s. This year was my 16^th year in attendance and ended up being one of my most successful as well, but we’ll get to that later!

This year’s track was extremely fast and flowing (see pictures), you couldn’t make up time that easy, but you certainly could lose it. The weather during the Cactus Classic is one of the big attractions to this event. High 70’s and sunny during this event always leads to a great time on and off the track! There was a slight scare of rain on Saturday, but the early clouds quickly burned off.

The tires of choice were the Pro-Line Suburbs in MX compound for 2wd Rear’s and for Truck Front & Rears. In Short-Course, Bow-Ties with Split-Six wheels were the hot ticket!

I raced in the 10.5 Truck & 2wd classes, along with Pro-2 Short Course. Qualifying went really well for me this year and I ended up 3^rd overall in 10.5 Truck, 9^th overall in 10.5 2wd and also 16^th in Pro-2. Pro-2 was easily the biggest class at this year’s Cactus will well over 60 entrants! Some of the best drivers in the world were in the class, Mark Pavidis, Greg Hodapp, Joe Pillars, Lee Martin, just to name a few.

Since the 10.5 & Pro-2 classes were all 15-minute main events, they took 8 automatically into the main event and the rest of the field had the opportunity to bump up (similar to Nitro). I easily bumped up in 10.5 2wd and in Pro-2 it was a battle to the last lap with Greg Hodapp. I busted a move on him after the start finish line going up the hill and took a tight inside line in the left-hander before the double-double section and never looked back!

All three of the A-Main’s I raced in were a blast! I ended up 2^nd in 10.5 Truck, 7^th in 10.5 2wd and 8^th in Pro-2! Successful race in my books! Can’t wait for the 25^th anniversary of the Cactus Classic in 2011! Thank you again to Pro-Line Racing, Team-Associated, Team Orion and BC1-Graphics/Stick-It Racing for all your support during this years’ event.