This past weekend Warehouse 3 in Phoenix, Arizona played host to Scotty Ernst’s Short Course Showdown series. With a small turnout the race was a nice relaxing event but still had some amazing races and great competition. I competed in the PRO-2 (2WD Short Course modified) division as well as the 2WD Modified Buggy division.
With the SCS format qualifying is heads up so every race was a battle for position as well as a battle with the clock to run a fast time.
In PRO-2 every heat was a close race with Brian Kinwald and I would hold TQ till round 3 when Brian would put in a perfect run to beat my time by 2-Seconds. In round 4 I was on pace to beat the time posted but with heads up qualifying, the battling for position would slow our pace down so I would end up qualifying second overall.
In the main I would get out to a good start and was following Kinwald waiting for an opportunity to pass, unfortunately I would bobble a bit and let Spencer Rivkin by into the 2nd spot. At this point while I was in 3rd, 4th and I would tangle and I would end up at the back of the pack. I managed to pick my way through the field and get back up to 3rd. Kinwald and Rivkin then had a very large lead but with them battling each other, I was able to catch back up to them and at least make it a race but then caught a corner dot when trying to look for an inside pass on Rivkin and rolled it over and would have to settle for 3rd.
I ran Suburbs on the front in M4 and IONs in back also in M4 with the stock included inserts.
In 2WD Modified Buggy I was right on pace all weekend and even took the win in round 2 of qualifying with a time that then put me 2nd overall. In round 4 a few people managed to go faster and I would get pushed back to the 4th starting spot on the grid for the main.
In the main I stayed patient and managed to move up into 3rd within the first few laps then 2nd soon after that. I was able to keep the leader which at this point was Spencer Rivkin for most of the race and we both had a pretty decent gap on 3rd place. I began to make some minor mistakes trying to push to catch Rivkin and this allowed 3rd place Tommy Hinz to catch up. We battled for about the last 2 minutes of the race and on the last lap we would be side by side entering the sweeper before the finish line and would cross the line at nearly the same time but I would hold on for 2nd place.
I ran ION fronts in M4 with closed cell foam and Electron VTR rears in M4 with the included closed cell foam.
Thanks for all the help and support!!
