Pro-Line Racing heads North to the Summer Indoor  Nations at Outback Raceway in Chico, CA.

This past weekend I loaded up my car with tons of parts, some Pro-Line Tires, a little bit of talent, and a lot of determination. I left Pro-Line Racings main office in Banning CA after work on Wednesday night and headed north to Palmdale, CA to meet up with Pro-Line Team Driver, Cody “Tight” Turner. I arrived at his place around 7 and was greeted with a home cooked meal, good conversation, and a room with some table space so we could do some wrenching and glue some tires. While I hadn’t been to this track, word on the street was that MC Compound worked well there so we went ahead and mounted up a few different tread patterns in that compound so we could get straight to running when we arrived.

 

We had a plan to travel  North about 550 miles to the Indoor Race Facility run by A Main hobbies known as Outback Raceway. The facility has been in place for a few years now and has become one of the cornerstones for Indoor Offroad in the Nor Cal area.  As the track has grown in popularity, it has attracted the interest of many race promoters.  This Series, now in its 3rd year visits some of the nations finest indoor tracks from coast to coast.

We left Cody’s place at 5 AM thinking that morning drive radio, coffee, and good conversation would keep us up… Lets just say that didn’t work.

 So I charged on alone

After a couple stops for food, to stretch, and just to look at interesting things along the way we pulled into A main Hobbies about 2PM. We were greeted by Ruben who runs the Race Program at Outback and he gave us a quick tour of his facility. Outback Raceway offers just over 50 Air Conditioned Pit Spaces as well as a overflow area in the A main Warehouse that provided ample pit space for large events such as this. From there we were shown the A main order counter where racers could order parts direct from A Main Hobbies and have them in the matter of minutes. (very cool to have access to the largest hobby shop in the world)

And then we made our way to the track!

Ruben and the Outback Crew had constructed a great layout that featured lots of elevation changes, off camber turns, rhythm sections, and high speed sweepers. The dirt was exactly what we were expecting with a moist clay that provided a ton of grip. The different thing about the dirt at Outback was that it didn’t require constant water like most of the other tracks I had been to. As the track dried out, the grip came up… way up. In order to keep the event from going to slicks Ruben and crew decided not to sweep the track, and threw down a few coats of water throughout the day.

As we cycled through our tires we found that pretty much everything worked. Both myself and Cody agreed that on Short Course we would be running ION SC tires both front and rear while in buggy he liked our original V1 Suburb with ION Fronts. However, I felt the ION Rear was a bit better on the surface due to the high grip as it let the back of the car rotate better.

Qualifying started out early on Saturday morning  and Cody was on point. After a couple bobbles in Pro-2 Short Course, Cody ended up with a 2nd place  for the round right behind Team Associated‘s Ryan Maifield. Looking at the times and the couple bobbles that Cody had it was obvious that his weekend was going to be good as they were on a very close pace.

As qualifying continued Pro-Line Racing / A-Main Hobbies Curtis Door locked down the TQ in 4WD SC running MC Compound Ions on his Tekno 4WD SC Truck. The Battle was close between him and MIP’s Matt Olson as there was a constant change in position.

As the rest of the qualifiers winded down and the heat sheets were set, some chose to do some wrenching while others decided to relax in other ways. One of the popular past times of the weekend was a little VRC Action so drivers could stay sharp in-between rounds. Others just talked it out a bit and were curious what others had been up to and how racing had been going.

Pro-Line Racing would like to congratulate Curtis Door for his win in the Pro4 4WD SC class. He and MIP’s Matt Olson had the race of the weekend trading the lead well over 15 times in the 8 minute A Main. In the End Curtis was able to take his Pro-Line Equipped Truck to the #1 Spot on the podium and make us proud.