I recently raced the 2016 Silver state race held at RC Tracks of Las Vegas. After racing it this year I have to say that normal thoughts and ideas that come to mind when you think silver state are completely gone now. The track and condition are completely different from what it used to be say last year or really any year before. This year the track was ran completely dry and super hard packed and at the start of the weekend the track had tons of grip then the more it was ran on the it progressively got less. For the most part the track was super flat and smooth as they used some kind of glue or bonding agent that gave the track the grip and held it together really well. Personally the beginning of the week was too much grip but by the end of the weekend I really liked the consistency and grip level.
Tanner ran Pro-Line X1 Fugitives in Buggy and X2 Blockades in Truggy
Starting things off at the beginning of the week for practice the track was super crazy. I personally don’t think I have ever been to a track for 1:8 with so much grip. With all this grip that track had it also came with some crazy tire wear as well pretty much one run tires in the some of the hardest compounds. A lot of my practice day was spent changing the diff and going up in oils just to help calm the cars and suit it better for the high grip track and making them easier to drive. The thicker the diffs the better the car felt throughout the day and the rest of the weekend pretty much. When qualifying started it was still a little iffy if the track was going to stay high grip or be less like it was at the Sin city race. Over the three rounds of qualifying between Friday and Saturday I would say the track lost grip but a lot of it was also from the temperature as well.
During all of qualifying for tires I really liked Hole Shots on all three of my cars for me they seemed to be easy to drive and forgiving feeling.
In both Buggy cars I stuck with X2 pretty much the whole time and then switched between X1 and X2 in Truggy.
As for all my runs in my cars I would say that I had one run that was really good in all of my cars and then one run the was semi good just some mistakes in it. As for setup by the end of qualifying my cars were starting to feel really good and super easy and comfortable to drive. At this point I knew that my engines, tires, and cars were all good all I needed was a good run in all three of the b-mains to get to the top three and bump.
As for the final day of racing at Silver State I was starting in all the B-Mains; 6th in Truggy Main, 12th in the nitro buggy main and 9th in the E-Buggy Main. In the E-Buggy race I got off to a bit of a bad start getting kind of sideways on the jump and landing upside down putting me to almost last place. Even though tires and car were really good there just wasn’t enough time to make up the deficit I got at the beginning of the race. As for the Truggy Main the start was much different for me. I was able to keep it clean through the first few corners and get past the big pile up and was able to make it to second or third where I would eventually finish in third after the 30-minutes. My Truggy was really good for the B-Main which I was really happy about the X1 Blockades lasted the whole main and had plenty of tread to left on them so I knew I would be able to run that tire in the A-Main with no problems. As for the Nitro Buggy B-Main the start was even better then what the Truggy one was I went from 12th to 5th in about two or three turns which was awesome and got a lot of passing done quickly. Soon after that I was into a bump spot with a decent lead on the person behind me. Unfortunately I hit a pipe as was going around a corner and flipped upside down for a while which put me pretty far back from a bump spot then. As for tires in the Main I ran X1 Fugitives which were a really calm tire but before the race I went up in diff oil even more I think it might have been too much for my liking. It was a bit hard for me to drive and seemed to really pull out of corners and accelerate quite hard it was just a bit too much for me and my liking. As for the Truggy A-Main I ran X1 Blockades again as I did in the B and they were great lasted the whole 45-minutes and was really good on my truck. The start and whole race was all good for me I just waited for a pile up in the first corner or two and then drove around it. I gained a few spots in the corners and first laps and then continued on for the whole race till the end. By the time the race was finished there was quite a few Truggies off the track. In the end my Truggy was really good setup wise it had a slight clutch slip during the race but my engine ran great and I was able to finish 8th overall.
To me the entire weekend was a success I wish I would have been able to make both Nitro Mains but overall my HB/HPI Racing cars, Pro-Line Tires, O.S. Engines and everything in general was super good all weekend long. I would also like to take a second to say thanks to all my sponsors that help me out both on and off the track it really helps out a lot.
Also thanks to LiveRC for the cool action shots of my cars.
