Pro-Line driver Billy Easton TQ’s and win with Spyder RM 1/10
This years round #2 of the Super Cup was at one of Florida’s only indoor tracks. Bashers R/C Raceway.
I had never actually been to this track since I moved to Florida. I heard all sorts of things about the track from all different perspectives. When I arrived on location, I was actually pretty impressed. The track was in a good area of town and to be totally honest, it had a very inviting interior. They had an onsite hobby shop, snacks drinks, party room and the track looked like they took maintenance serious. It was one of the nicer facilities I had seen in a while. They had about 120 entries for the event and there were some of our finest racers in Florida in attendance. Some of the noteable racers were: Jason Ruona, Paul Wynn, Daimon Borkowicz, Brett Kingsberry and Ryan Eckert. The list could go on.
The track itself was tight as you would expect from a typical indoor track. The lap times were around 14 seconds and the layout had a variety of turns, jumps and obstacles. The grip of the track was quite tricky; it looked like the surface was smooth and kind of polished. The dust was minimal and the surface was dry.
When I started to practice, it became very obvious to me that rear traction would be the differential between winning and loosing. The first challenge was to first find the right tires and then set up the car to the tires. Naturally to me, this would be like a clay compound, almost slicks kind of track. However, the clay tires simply did not work well. The best tire combination that I found was Super Soft compound Suburbs for the rear and ION tires for the front with the stock white open cell foams. These provide the best traction overall. Basically you could have used any m4 super soft at the race. They all were pretty good. It was more important the compound than the pattern.
After I kind of had the tires situation sorted out, I then began messing with my car. You could run the car very soft at this track, mostly because the grip level was more on the low side. I found myself using lighter oil and springs than I typically would in my normal track conditions. I also tested a few variants of rear ends, and found that as far as geometry goes, stock setup there was pretty good. As for the front end, steering was hard to come by and you could actually run the front end far more aggressive here, mostly because you are hunting for rear traction and front steering. I tried a few other parts, like the brass front bulkhead and the aluminum one. I didn’t like the feel of the brass bulkhead, and thought that the aluminum one was working well for me. I also switched over to a 1.7X2 piston in the front. This seemed to help get the car into the turn better. I also moved the battery around, but felt that the shorty in the middle of the car was a good balance between traction and steering.
My first qualifier was not the best. I chose a package that I had not put enough practice time in and paid the price on the track. However in the 2nd qualifier, I through out my car with the things I learned in practice and lit the track up. I was able to TQ by around 4-5 seconds. It was nice to get in a good qualifier and start from Pole position on the track.
As the main approached after 18 races, argh. It was a long wait I might add, we were finally ready to run our main. As the main started I lead the pack off, steadily pulling away from the other cars. I had made a few mistakes in the early stages of the race which brought the other drivers much closer than I would have liked. However, I kept my cool and the Spyder kept crawling its way around the slippery surface. I started to open up more gap and was able to run comfortably out front. I have to hand it to my car, it really jumped well and made the difficult double in the back of the track look like it was nothing to clear. Overall I was very happy with my setup and the performance of my Serpent SRX-2…
I have attached a link where you can find the results if you want to take a look
I will post my setup online for anyone who would like to try my setup in a lower grip condition. I wouldn’t recommend it for high grip as it would be too difficult to drive.
http://serpent.com/product/500001/setups/
Good luck on your races and see you next time.
Source: Buggy-Sport.info
