A few weeks back I attended the 18th annual Hot Rod Hobbies Shootout in Saugus, CA. When we arrived we took a look at the track to see what the layout looked like and as expected it was pretty cool. Since I had attended the race the year before I kind of knew what to expect when coming to this year’s event as it would most likely be really hot out and a ton of grip on the track. Knowing that the race is usually very hot, I setup my cars for smooth, high grip conditions and mounted some Pro-Line X2 Tires to be ready for practice on Thursday.
For Thursday it was basically unlimited practice, as long as you had enough tires and parts to keep your cars going you could keep running till the end of practice in the evening. So starting out early in the morning, I got on the track with my 2WD to try and get the car setup first and then move on to my 4WD which at the time I didn’t know, but was pretty good when I first went on the track. As the day went on and the track started to groove up the Pro-Line X2 Tires really started to come in and make some pretty good grip on the cars and as the setup started to get closer and closer each run the cars were definitely getting better. Overall my practice day was a success I thought as my cars were definitely better then when I started the day out. As for tires I settled on X2 Suburbs in the rears and X2 Scrubs in the front for both 2 wheel and 4 wheel. Not only did I get to see the prototype HB 2 wheel but I also got to put a few laps in with Ty’s car and I can say that that thing was pretty good and I couldn’t wait for mine.
Friday started the first actual day of racing with 2 qualifiers supposed to be happening that day. As everyone was showing up in the morning it was kind of gloomy and looking a lot like rain but the farther into the day of racing we got the sky cleared up and was once again hot and sunny. The first race up was 4 wheel and it was a pretty good run. I had two mistakes between stuffing the pipe myself and getting caught in some problems with traffic, but nevertheless it was still a decent run. My car felt good and the
Pro-Line Tires definitely had some major grip.
In the first run for 2wd I stuck with the setup I had left practice with as I felt pretty comfortable with it and I had a decent run nothing crazy special just trying to put a good run in. As for round two of qualifying, 4WD started off really good and I was having a great run. My pace was ahead of TQ which I was really happy with and then about a minute to go I went down the straight away and made the sweeper into the corner and lost all power in my car, which ended my run. As for round 2 of 2wd I had made some changes to my car and I think it helped out in getting better results in this round.
Once again on Saturday, the weather didn’t look so good and the forecast didn’t look very good either and later on the in the day the forecast showed that it was right and the rain was going to strike. I was able to run a third round of 4wd and it was really good as it was a top ten run but unfortunately since they weren’t able to get through the entire third round of qualifying before the rain got there, it was not used in the points for the mains. Unfortunately I was pretty bummed that they weren’t able to take the 3rd round that I had run because not only was it my best run yet, it was also within the top ten. But after getting about half way through the third round of qualifying the rain decided it was time and it poured off and on for pretty much the rest of the day ending qualifying where it was. The track crew got right out on the track and were working on it as soon as the first part of the rain stopped, but the rain kept coming on and off. Once the rain had finally finished in the evening, the track crew was able to work on it some more and get it all pumped off and ready to go for practice on Sunday morning.
Sunday was main day but was delayed an hour from the original start time just to ensure the track was dry enough to race. With a little bit of practice in the morning I was able to put more of a wet track setup on my cars and mount of some M3 Hole Shots for both cars and get ready for some loamy track racing. My 2WD C-Main was up first and starting third I knew I had a pretty good chance to be able to get into a first or second position by the end of the race to be able to bump into the B-Main. In the race I basically just waited for second and first to make their mistakes, which they did, and allowed me to get by taking first place and a bump spot to the B-Main for 2WD. In 4WD, I was starting 6th which was about mid pack but with some really fast guys and only 5-minutes to get to the front of the pack, it was very hard to get to a bump spot. I was able to get myself up into 3rd at one point in the race but unfortunately first and second where pretty far out I was having pretty good battle which I ended up dropping a spot and finishing fourth. Overall, my cars were really good and the tires hooked up in the mostly wet track conditions and even though I didn’t win, I was happy with my results as I had improved from the year before.
My Hot Bodies 4 wheel performed great all weekend and my Pro-Line tires were awesome in both the dry and wet conditions that the track had during the race. I would like to thank HB/Hpi-racing and Pro-line for all the help and support on and off the track and also Andrew Hilman for taking some sweet pictures of my cars during the race.
