Pro-Line Team Driver Tanner Stees Battle at the Beach race report
On Oct 27-28 I traveled to Lake Havasu City, AZ for the Battle at the Beach race for the second year in a row. I really like this track. The people that promote it and attend the race are great. The weather was sunny and about 85 all weekend. The track was new and a bit loose but it packed in and had good traction as the weekend went on.
I was racing 4 classes: 1/8 scale nitro buggy, truggy, 1/10 2wd mod buggy and Pro2 Short Course. Open practice was Friday and we arrived in time to get about 4 hours of practice to sort things out.
Qualifying:
Saturday was 3 rounds of qualifying and I knew I’d be busy. My first class up was short course where I ran the Pro-Line Flo-Tek body, M4 Blockades in the rear and M4 Hole Shots in the front. The Blockades gave me plenty of traction on the wet track and the Hole Shots up front gave steering. In the second round they didn’t water so I ran some M4 Hole Shots in the rear. They worked very good on a little more drier track. In the third round I had to go back to Blockades because they watered again.
In the mod 2wd buggy I ran the BullDog body and Pro-Line wing. Running M4 Hole Shots with the blue Pro-Line insert in the front gave the car plenty of steering and M3 Hole Shots with the blue inserts gave it plenty of traction. This set-up I ran the entire weekend which performed very good.
My truggy was up next and I had the TLR 8t 2.0 BullDog body which gave good down force in the rear and good steering up front. The tires I ran for both the first two rounds were Hole Shot VTR in M3. I didn’t need to run the third round in truggy because I had already won the first two so I then had a little more time to work on it.
In 8th scale buggy my JQ-Products THE Car ran very good using the Pro-Line BullDog body for the car and Tazers for the first two rounds. The tires had plenty of steering and massive amounts of traction. 1/8th Buggy qualifying came down to the last round for TQ and starting on the pole. I had to go 18 laps in 7 minutes to beat out a 17/7:00 flat by Jason Miller. I had Pro-Line Snipers (soft) on and the track was very good. I was able to put in an 18/7:20 run to secure TQ. I got the overall TQ in short course after the three rounds, and already had the TQ in truggy after the first two. In 2wd electric buggy I had some bad luck and started 4th.
Mains:
Starting on the pole in short course I ran M4 Hole Shots all the way around for A1 getting out front right away and staying there the whole race. A2 I did the same thing but made a mistake in the front were I got shuffled back to about to 4th, I then got all the way to 2nd where I was battling with teammate Jason Miller. I eventually took the lead away from him and getting the win in A2.
In electric buggy A1 I started 4th where I then battled up to second where I battled with Shane. I did pass him with like 2 minutes to go but when I went through the six pack I tried to go triple, triple and landed a little sideways on the second triple where I snapped a front left axle on my B4.1 In A2 I started off really good battling again all the way up to first but bobbled in the six pack and could never get the lead back from Jason Miller. I ended up getting 2nd and I would need to get the win in A3. And in A3 that is exactly what I did, just pushed to the front as fast as I could and then stayed out there, I got the win but the only problem was that Jason got second and had a win too so we were tied. The tie breaker came down to the fastest time, which I had just got in A3.
In the 30 minute truggy main I had TQ so I started out front and never looked back. In the last two minutes I had a front axle come out of the cup and just had to limp it around for the next three laps. I had two laps on second place so as long as I kept putting laps down I would have it. So that’s what I did. The truck was definitely struggling over the big roller in the back but I did get the win with still an extra lap on second place.
I started out front in 8th scale buggy where the track was similar to the 2nd round of qualifying so I went with Pro-Line Tazers in soft. During the first 15 minutes I had a small bobble and dropped to second behind Jason Miller. I battled back to first. As the race went on I kept the lap times consistent and hit my marks and took the win buy a lap over Mason Elliott. The car worked great all weekend. This win was the fourth for the day as I was able to take 1st in all the classes I ran.
The Pro-Line tires, wheels and other products worked awesome in all the classes. I had the traction needed and a great selection of tires to choose from for every track condition.
Thanks Pro-Line for the product support and for continuing to support the races at the Beach.
Tanner
