I recently attended the 19th annual Hot Rod Hobbies Shootout in Santa Clarita, California. The past few years that I have attended the race it has become probably my favorite 1:10 race to do because you don’t have to worry about tire sauce and all the stuff that normally goes on with indoor racing. You just mount a new set of tires and run.
To start the race off there was two days of free practice to get your cars all dialed in. Within the first few hours of the track being open on Wednesday the grip was up pretty high and getting better as the day went on. I ran my 2wd Buggy in the standard form for the first day and watched Ty’s car who had the upside down shocks look a lot less sketchy compared to my car on the high grip.
Running Pro-Line Electron Tires
So that night in the hotel I changed my 2wd to have the shocks the other way and then be ready to run in the morning. The Next day I ran the car it was actually unreal how much the shocks helped my car out I was running nice consistent fast laps without really trying too hard. I was actually really happy with 2wd and 4wd by the end of the second day of practice. Car’s tires everything seemed good and ready for racing so I was happy.
Friday and Saturday consisted of two qualifiers for each car both days and unfortunately I couldn’t get a really good run in at all. The track seemed to have lost a lot of grip from what it was on Thursday and there really wasn’t any grip the rest of the weekend. It seemed to be windier so that could have had something to do with the grip level going down but unfortunately I could just never really put a good run in, in either of my cars. I had one okay run in 2wd and 4wd but nothing spectacular. The thing about the track and layout it was really fun but somewhat difficult when the grip was high so it was even harder when there was no grip at all. As qualifying went on I kind of chased set up for my 2wd trying to get grip, changing shock setup link positions just really trying anything to get grip. At the end of qualifying I qualified 3rd in the B-Main for 2wd which was an improvement from last year and 7th in 4wd which I was a little disappointed about as my car was still really good.
Main day came around and my first race was the 4wd race, starting towards the back I was actually a little happier than being in the front of pack as there was a big pile up. This allowed me to get past a majority of people and start battling for the bump position. Unfortunately in the end things didn’t work out I had a crash and some problems and didn’t get the bump. The bright side of the race was that car and whole setup felt really good and for the first time since practice again I felt comfortable with my car. In 2wd I still struggled with traction and it basically came down to who could have the least amount of crashes and smoothest finger on the throttle. I was running in the 3rd or 4th spot waiting for a mistake from some people in front of me when another car ran me over and put me into a pipe kind of ending my chances of getting even close to the bump position.
In the end the weekend was a little disappointing for me but I learned a lot about the 2wd and we move on to the next one. It is also really exciting to see the 2wd get a win so congrats to Ty for that and thanks to all my sponsors for the help and support.
