The Silver State Nitro Challenge was held in Boulder City, Nevada. This race is similar to the Dirt Nitro Challenge and was also hosted by the Dirt’s Joey Christensen. Many of the top drivers were attending this years event and I was lucky enough to also race this year and it was my very first Silver State race.

The Boulder City track is widely known for its rough and brutal conditions by the end of the week and it tests everybody’s skill levels on a true off-road track! I would be running three classes this year including 1/8^th Truck and Buggy and the 1/8^th Electric Buggy class. All 3 classes were fairly good during qualifying for me I was able to work on my setups along with my Novarossi engines and sorting out my runtime, along with my tire selection for the A-main! I had issues in the truck and didn’t 1 of my qualifiers and had issues in my other two which would put me back in the B final for truck. I qualified 5^th overall in Buggy and 3^rd in Electric. All of my cars were feeling very good during qualifying and I was feeling still quite confident going into the final A-main.

A part broke in my Truck during the B-final which caused me to miss out on the bump up spot which I was disappointed about as my truck felt good and the new Vir-tus 7 Port engine was feeling great. In electric I drove a bit too crazy in the rough conditions and ended myself with a 6^th. With the track getting continuously worse I made a few changes to my Nitro Buggy to hopefully get the car to become more stable through the rough and much easier to drive over the 45 minute long final.

I didn’t have the best of starts during the Buggy final and actually ended up being dead last on the first lap and had to work my way up the hard way! My car felt really good in the beginning and I knew I’d made the right setup changes. I began to catch the pack and tried to stay as patient as I could and slowly work my way through the pack without getting into any drama with any of the drivers. I and my dad were able to comfortably come into the pits every 9 minutes with our Keep Off 4 Novarossi engine which allowed me to have 1 less stop than others. I ended up getting through the pack of drivers and got my way into 3^rd and started to catch up to Tebo and Tessman who were battling for the lead.

I managed to get up to the lead after both 2^nd and 3^rd came into the pits and then I also had to come into the pits and went back to 3^rd but soon later I was able to make a pass on both of them and hop into the lead. From then on I think I lost the lead once but for the rest of the race I was able to slowly start pulling away from Tessman and took 1^st place in the Nitro Buggy Class!

I couldn’t be more happier with the result and it was an amazing experience. I want to thank all of you (my sponsors) for the continuous support you are giving me and I look forward to my next race.

Thanks to: My dad (my pitman), Kyosho, Pro-Line, Novarossi, A-main Hobbies, Protek RC, Ko Propo, Tekin, Bitty Design, Dialed Inc and Trackside RC.