Saturday August 14th, 2015 was the fifth and final round in the ROAR Region 2 Mid-Atlantic Off-Road Series 1:8 Championships.  The final showdown for the 2015 Regional titles would take place at Hobby Hut Raceway in Audubon, Pennsylvania.

The series held one a race a month, with a total of five races which allowed for one drop.  This points would then be decided by each racers best four out of five races for each class.  Ethan Mackanick from Shippensburg, PA would come into the final leg entered in the Nitro Buggy class with a three point lead over 2nd place Zach Sinclair from New Jersey.  His father, Jason Mackanick, also would come into the final race with a 3 point lead in the Electric Truggy class over 2nd place Derrick James.

The weather for the day would bring high humidity and temperatures reaching into the 90’s.  We arrived on Friday to get some practice laps in and the surface appeared to be the same as what we experienced a month before with even dryer and dustier conditions.  After one battery pack on some used tires with the Truggy, I came back into my pits and realized the tire wear was much higher than our previous trip to this track.   Ethan would go out and put in about 6 tanks of fuel on his nitro buggy and it seemed all good also.  We cleaned up our equipment and prepped for the race the next day.

For the first qualifier, I would put a solid run and be on TQ pace for three quarters of the heat until I was caught up in lapped traffic which would drop my pace back to the number two spot behind James for the 1st qualifier.  Ethan would go out for his warm up laps in the Nitro Buggy and have a complete receiver failure before the qualifier even started.  The good news was the car just sat and idled on the back stretch and never went into a full blown run away with the failed receiver.  We had a spare on hand and were able to get him back out for the second qualifier.  Ethan’s second qualifier would put him on the number seven starting spot for the A-Main.  My second qualifier was a drop due to losing a wheel about 4-minutes into the heat while on TQ pace again.  This would set me on the number three starting spot for the double A-Main features in the Electric Truggy Class.  James would start on the number two spot and Bibie Cruz ended up taking over the TQ spot in the second qualifier.

Ethan was first up in the mains for thirty minutes in the nitro buggy class.  We had run M3 Suppressors all day long and made the switch to a brand new set of X4 Suppressors for the Main.   Our M3 compound Tires were worn down from the dry dusty conditions and X4 was the closest set of Tires that we had left for him to run.  Unfortunately due to the high temps these would be too soft and cause Ethan to struggle in the beginning of the race until the Tires broke in some and it would not allow him to push the car in the corners like he is normally able to do.  He climbed his way up into the number two position at about the 16-minute mark of the race where his engine would stall.  We were able to refuel and get the engine started again but this would put him down a lap to the number two and three racers.  He ran consistently with Tyler Cook in the number two position and Zach Sinclair in the number three spot although being a lap down from them.  Jason Schreffler would check out from the field to finish first.  Ethan would finish solid in the number four position which would still give him the overall series title of Sinclair.

I would finish third and second in the double A-Main features for Electric Truggy on M3 Suppressors which would give me second place overall for the day and able to hold on to first place in the series overall.  Derrick James would finish first for the day, but was still not able to make enough points up to take the title in the final race.

Everything provided from Pro-Line from our Tires, Wings, Bodies, Glue, Tire Bands, etc. have allowed us to take the our racing up to the next competitive level which attributed to our consistency over the races to win the ROAR Region 2 titles. 

Thanks again to Pro-Line and LCRC Raceway for their continued support to Ethan and I.

– Jason Mackanick