This past weekend I was able to attend the Top Notch Series at IERC.

The Coyote Hobbies Crew and I arrived at the track on Friday when the track opened. During practice we focused on the tire combinations for the weekend.

When we arrived at the track Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to get set up and to get a little more practice with our cars. I decided that I would practice with both of my cars once to make sure they were still set up for the track. I ran Pro Stock Buggy and the Stock Short Course for the weekend. The cars felt better in the practice runs on Saturday compared to the practice I had on Friday. I sat patiently waiting for my qualifiers to begin and got the cars ready by cleaning them and making sure everything was in good condition.

When my first round of qualifiers came around, it started with Stock Short course. The start of the qualifier was good and I was able to maintain a fast pace to take the round TQ with the fastest Stock SC lap of 21.5. The Stock SC pace was quick and I was hoping to carry it on to my Stock Buggy race. At the start of the qualifier I had two small bobbles that cause me to place 5th in my heat and 6th overall.

The second round came for Stock SC and I was unable to make it clean through lap traffic which caused me to finish 4th in the heat but maintain my TQ. Having a rough round in SC I wanted to better my position in Buggy. When the race started I had mistakes and had to get turn marshaled two times which did not allow me to get a better lap time. After the race I finished 6th in the qualifier and moved to 8th on the grid for the A-Main.

After having to wait a while for the mains to come around it was finally time and Stock SC was up first. At the start of the race I tried to stay out in front of the pack and to not make a mistake. Thanks to my TQ I was able to start out front and get a sizable lead for the late part of the race. I wanted to get a good lead to make sure that at the end of the race when my battery started to fade, I could just roll the major jumps instead of casing them and crashing. I went on to win the race with a 5 second lead over second place.

Then came the Buggy A-Main where I started 8th on the grid. The start of the race was good and everyone got away clean. The first three minutes were good and I had made it as high as 4th until a bad roll caused me to break the rear ball stud mount.

The weekend was good overall and I was able to hang out with the Coyote Crew which was awesome as always. I have to give a shout out to my good friend Chris Vierra from DE Racing who helped me get my vehicles all dialed in for the mains.

As always my vehicles were hooked up with Front and Rear VTR Electrons on Buggy and IONs on the SC. Thanks to my awesome sponsors Coyote Hobbies Raceway in Victorville, CA, Pro-Line Racing, and DA Designs.

Thank You,
Austin Pannone