Factory Team / Race Events

Danny Bartholomew Takes Win at the 2014 Fall Brawl on Pro-Line LockDown Tires

We had a successful weekend at the “Fall Brawl” hosted by Thunder Road Hobbies in East Moline, IL over Sept 26-28.

Fall Brawl 2014 Fall Brawl1 2014

This race also was used as fundraiser for curemeso.org in honor of a local racers late wife.

Friday was practice with a “club” race in the evening. We got to the track around Noon and got setup. I didn’t have my crew chief with me this weekend as my parents were off celebrating their anniversary. I spent most of the time just getting track time and trying different Tires.

My pace was good right off, but I was lacking consistency and both cars needed to be a little more easy to drive. The track was pretty rough with a lot of dust out of the groove, there were a couple high risk/high reward sections. I used the club Friday night to try a few different things on my setups and basically practice the “high risk” sections so I could use them if needed when the show got going on Saturday.

After taking a couple big setup swings I pretty much reverted to my base setup on Pro-Line M3 LockDown tires with a couple tweaks to get more traction and stability. The weather was great all weekend and 4 rounds of qualifying kicked off Saturday morning.

I ran M3 Lockdowns on both cars. There were many “eyes” on my tires all weekend.

Also used the Trifecta wing and Pro-Cap wheel nuts!

The first couple rounds were good as I was in the top 3 in both Pro Nitro Buggy and Electric Buggy. I really liked my setup on the my nitro car and copied it to my electric car.

The same driver TQ’ed the first 2 rounds of Nitro so I had to win both rounds 3 and 4 to have a shot at the TQ. In round 3, I laid down the fastest nitro buggy run of the weekend and backed it up with another solid run in round 4 to snatch away TQ honors. I ended up 3rd overall in E-Buggy, but I did set the fastest single lap of any vehicle for the whole weekend. Spent a late night after qualifying prepping both cars for the Mains on Sunday.

I didn’t get a great start in E-Buggy, I was able to get back to 2nd fairly fast but trailed the leader by quite a bit. This is where the High risk lines came into play. I cut his lead by 6-seconds over 4 laps running my more aggressive line. Then things kinda stalled out until the leader had a crash and I was able to take the lead exactly at the half way point in the 10-min Main. I was able to hold off a hard charging Randy Cathcart and take home the win and a nice crisp $100 bill.

Starting from the #1 spot in Nitro, I lead from the start and had stretched my lead over 2nd to about a 1/2 a track just 5-minutes into the 30-minute race. That’s when my steering servo started going out. It would randomly loose steering and then come back but it was killing me and I started to slide back. It never fully went out and I finished the race but coupled with the servo issue and a flame-out in the middle of the race I had to settle for 4th place. I was a bit disappointed to not convert the TQ into the win. But I was super happy with my speed and pace throughout the weekend. I got the car really dialed in for how I want it to handle and it works well everywhere with minimal tweaking. It was also my best ever showing at this track.

Outdoor season is winding down with only 1 more outdoor race on my schedule, then we’ll be off to the Byron’s Heartland Challenge in Omaha, NE and then turn our attention to the 1:10 stuff for the Spektrum Race in Milwaukee in November.

Thanks again for you continued support.

Thanks,
Danny Bartholomew