This weekend we held the Pro-Line Thunder Down Under race at one of my local tracks ‘Meakin Park Raceway’. This event was created by my father and another local racers father to bring more international people to Australia to come and race and start getting RC more widely known. This year we were able to bring over Pro-Line Driver’s Adam Drake and Mike Truhe to come and race with us for this event. The event was a controlled Pro-Line Tire being the M3 Blockade for all classes.
Adam, Mike and I ran 1:8th buggy and 1:8th truck classes and we started off by picking up the Americans from the airport and showing them around where we live and checking out some Kangaroo’s!!! We got to have some practice laps on Thursday and get our cars all sorted on the track for the following days of qualifying. Friday we started qualifying with three rounds planned to run that day. I started off really well in both my classes with TQ’ing the first two rounds of qualifying in both my classes. In the third round I came 2nd to Adam Drake who like always was able to make the 10 minute pitstops!! I suffered an issue right before round 3 in my buggy and only managed to get back out there half way into the race but got some decent laps in with my car.
Going into Saturday I was very comfortable with my cars and was having a lot of fun driving with Mike and Adam along with all the other racers who attended the event. I secured the 4th round of qualifying with a TQ in each class which gave me the overall TQ for both classes for this event, I was very happy with my driving at this stage. We took the rest of the Saturday to prep our cars and make sure everything was working good, my Blockade tires were working amazing all weekend as per usual and many racers were surprised at how good these tires were on the track, with minimal tire wear throughout the entire race. My O.S Engines were running smoothly and KO gear was perfect as expected!
Sunday brought the finals which I felt very prepared for and focused to get the job done. I started off the truck main on pole position and went off to a good lead and began to gap the field within the first 10 minutes. Knowing Adam was doing longer pitstops I knew I had to make a gap between him and Mike in order to win the race. I had my very comfortable gap which was almost at half a lap when my tire started to come off.. I will take the blame for this as I must have made a mistake whilst glueing one of my truck tires, I was very annoyed at myself that this happened and dad brought me in to quickly change the tire and they did a really good job down in the pits and got me out going, I was 17 seconds back from Adam and Mike by then and I eventually made the time up and passed Adam Drake and was chasing Mike Truhe! By the end it was too late and I was 9 seconds off from Mike Truhe who took the Truck win and I came 2nd with Drake in 3rd.
Adam had this to say about the event:
“The Pro-Line Thunder Down Under was a great event. We had a blast and the McBride family went above and beyond to make everything smooth and enjoyable for Mike and I. Thank you for making it possible for Mike and I to attend. ”
Mike had this to say about the event:
“I would like to thank Scott McBride and Mark Stringer for all the hard work and effort put into the event. It was a great time and to all the members of the club and all the other racers, they truly made it a very enjoyable trip and look forward to it again in the future!”
Going into the Buggy final I wanted to redeem myself and make sure that I did things right in this main as I felt this was my fastest class. I started off not so well in this buggy main as I got caught under a pipe on the very first lap. After that incident I continued on without any mistakes and was sitting in 4th and raced my way cleanly to take the lead over the rest of the field, I then started to create a big gap and went on to win the buggy final by 1 lap over the entire field! Adam Drake came 2nd and Mike Truhe 4th suffering a flame out. I was extremely happy with my result and again it was a great pleasure racing with those two American Drivers who are extremely nice guys and fast racers. Thank you to all of my sponsors who make this happen for me: Kyosho, Proline, OS Engines, Ko Propo, Amain Hobbies, Protek RC, Neo + Fuels, Bitty Design, Stickit1 racing, Dialed Inc.
I managed to make it onto the news here in Australia on TV for this race which was awesome! I will try to send all of you this video along with pictures of the race and podium.
