Kyle Rhodes Takes TQ and Win on Blockades at the Tri State Championships

Sunday June 22, 2014 I attended the Tri State Championships held at Wolcott Hobby in Wolcott CT. The race format for the day was 2 five minute qualifiers followed by the mains. I competed in 1:8 Nitro Buggy. The turnout for the event was a little on the small side with only 80 entries but we had 4 heats of Nitro Buggy and 3 heats of Electric Buggy.

Qualifying:

For round 1 of qualifying I was in the final heat. I got out front early and put down a fairly clean run without any major mistakes. I ended up setting TQ for the round. For round 2 I left my car the same and on my first lap I made a huge mistake and was upside down. Unfortunately the marshal had to let a few cars to go by before he was able to get to my car. I began to charge and was back into 2^nd place and right behind the leader who made a similar mistake. As we came through the front rhythm section the leader hit a corner marshal in the ankle as he was getting a crashed car and that caused him to cross right in front of me. I was not able to steer around him and unfortunately broke a front arm ending my run early. At the end of qualifying my round 1 TQ time held up and gave me the overall TQ.

Main:

Off the start I quickly broke away from the field and began to stretch out to an early lead. I made huge mistake in the same section I crashed in during my second qualifier which allowed local driver Jamie Grayek to take the lead. I quickly passed Jamie to retake that lap and began to pull away from Jamie in second and Jimmy James in 3^rd. I continued to pull away and the race was behind me between Jamie and Jimmy. Jamie made a mistake coming into pit lane for his second stop and broke a front arm. This left Jimmy and myself out front. We were separated by a few laps and Jimmy a lap lead over third place driver John Koiva. The track was extremely tough on the cars causing all but three cars to dnf.

When the final tone went off I crossed the line taking the win with a 4 lap lead, Jimmy James was 2^nd with a lap lead over John Koiva taking third. The final order was: