This past weekend was the Region 4 Championships at Newred Hobbies in Ocala, Fl. I raced two classes this weekend (17.5 Buggy and Modified Buggy). There were roughly 150 event entrees. Everyone arrived early Friday anxious to hit the new layout to get some practice in. The Newred track crew did a phenomenal job with the layout and surface prep, which provided some awesome racing all weekend long.

Friday: I arrived at the track about 9am and helped setup the team tents and tables. Once everyone got setup we still had about 45-minutes to kill before the track opened, so I used that time to cross my T’s and dot my I’s with my preparations. Since my main focus was the 17.5 class I decided to put my modified car away until I was confident my stock car was good to go. After a few battery packs to get the layout down and a couple battery packs for some fine tuning adjustments, my car was amazing to drive much sooner than I anticipated. Watching my competitors and they’re lap times, I knew my car had the pace and consistency I needed. I broke out the modified car about mid day Friday. After watching the faster modified guys run, I knew the lap times I needed to run and was in the ballpark with the first battery. So, Friday went pretty well.

Saturday: Qualifying day was here and everyone was curious to see how well they utilized their practice time on Friday. For me, Saturday went pretty well with all 3 rounds of qualifying. This race used the Qual Points system, taking the best 2 of 3 rounds. For 17.5 2WD, I ended up TQ’ing all three rounds of qualifying with a fast and easy to drive car. In modified 2WD, I never really got a clean qualifier and ended up qualifying 3rd in every round, placing 3rd on the grid for the triple A’s.

Sunday: With Mains day typically being a long day, everyone was relieved to hear that the program would finish up right around 3pm. After some late night prep and early practice I was confident in both cars and was ready to race!

In Stock Buggy, I ended up winning A1 and A2 by about 10-seconds each, sealing the deal and allowing me to focus on the modified car. A1 of modified was the same old song and dance as qualifying, a quick consistent car with too many driver errors. That would give me a third place finish in A1. A2 of modified was up and I was finally in a great spot with a mistake free run. I would take the lead with about 2.5-minutes left in the race. Everything was going well until about 45-seconds left in the race. With a 2-second lead over Billy Easton and Daimon Borkowicz, I had a left rear wheel nut fall off and that would earn me a 10th place in A2. (Who has a wheel nut fall off?!) A3 was pretty much picture perfect. I had a clean start, with some minor shuffling around. After about a-minute everything settled back down and we were down to business. With about a-minute and a half to go, Daimon made a slight mistake and I was able to take the lead and seal the deal. With a 3 and a 1, that would earn me 2nd overall behind Daimon.

When it was all said and done, the weekend went extremely well. An absolutely dominating performance in 17.5 2WD and a strong showing in Modified with some poor luck. With this track surface being the closest thing we have to the Nationals track surface this year, this performance put some wind in my sails and some confidence heading into the preparation stages for the Nationals at SRS.

Thanks for the continued support!
Jeremy Harris