This past weekend I attended the 2015 Silver State Nitro Challenge held at RC Tracks of Las Vegas which has an extremely awesome world class venue. Everything from the driver stand to the landscaping is top notch and completely awesome. For the first time in quite a few years I was actually really looking forward and excited to race this race as it had a new home and a completely different Silver State then what it was usually known for.
To start the racing off, Thursday was practice. Going into practice I kind of knew what to expect as I had gone to the track a time before for the opening weekend race. When I first got on the track it was a little different than I had expected due to how much water was being put on the track. As the day went on and I got more runs in on the track I was pretty happy with my cars just making little changes to try to better improve them. As for a tire I started out with the M3 compound kind of switching between the Hole Shot and the new Suppressor Tire and finding out which one I liked more in the different conditions. Overall practice day went pretty well
I was happy with how my cars and Tires had been performing.
Friday was the first day of qualifying with two heats of qualifying per car and around 500 entries it was going to be one of the longer days. The first class to be run was E-Buggy and I was seeded in the B-qualifier group which I was pretty happy about. In both of the runs I ended up going with the M3 Hole Shots and basically running the same setup with a few minor changes that I started with. The first run was a pretty good safe run and the second run was pretty good as well just had a few little bobbles here and there. In the second run it was a bit cooler and the track seemed to hold moisture a lot better making my car hook up really well with the Hole Shots. Truggy was the next class to be run, I ended up on M3 Hole Shots for both runs of the truck as well. Overall from the start my D8T TE was pretty good so I really didn’t make any changes other than going back to a standard arm with no carbon plate on the bottom as the track got rougher. My first truck run was a good safe run and felt really good had plenty of traction with my M3 Hole Shots and didn’t really have any problems just wanted to put a good consistent run in. The second run on the other hand was really good because the simple fact of the tract stayed wet the whole time allowing for the tires to create tons of grip making my D8T TE feel awesome. In Nitro Buggy I started off with a really good with my D815 but the track really went away towards the end of the run and I make a couple mistakes. None the less my car and Tires were good that run just had a couple driver errors. In the second run I put M3 Hole Shots on my D815 once again and had a really good run once again mainly due to the fact the run was at night and the track seemed almost perfect.
Saturday was the second day of qualifying with some lower Mains later on in the day. Saturday was a bit different from the previous days as far as the track went because it stared to really develop some large routes and pot holes. In the E-Buggy run I stuck with M3 Hole Shots and was still making some changes but went out and had a pretty good run as my car felt really good and had really good traction. In Truggy I had another decent run with my D8T TE and seemed to be handling the bumps pretty well without any problems and my tires were great as always. In my Nitro Buggy run I ended up going back to a more rough track setup changing shock pistons and oil to make it absorb the bumps a bit better. Overall the run was good nothing crazy but a nice safe run again on some M3 Hole Shots. After qualifying they took a little break to add all the points up and fix the track and then ran lower Mains thankfully I had good enough runs in all my cars to not have to run later on Saturday night.
Sunday was the final day of racing and I was able to qualify first in the C-Main for E-Buggy, 4th in the B-Main for Truggy, and 6th in the B-Main for Buggy. E-Buggy was the first race and I was CQ so I had a pretty good feeling as long as I didn’t make any mistakes I would be able to bump. The race was a 10-minute Main and I was able to get a huge lead right away and just cruise to victory bumping into the B-Main for E-Buggy.
My car was really good and the M3 Hole Shots were awesome.
The next Main was a 30-minute race for the Truggy B-Main and I was going into it with an open mind even though it was the B-Main there were tons of fast people in it. The start was great I was trailing third place right on his tail and was about ¾ of a lap finished when we were going into a slower speed corner and I was involved in a racing incident putting me to almost dead last. Even though both my D8T TE and Tires were awesome the deficit earned at the beginning race was too great to be able to catch back up. In Buggy also went into the race with an open mind, and with warmup my car was feeling really good on M3 Hole Shots. On the first lap I was able to make up a couple spots and was around 4th place when we came down the front stretch and I hit massive route on the double flipping my car off the track putting me pretty far down in the pack of cars.
Overall I was pretty happy with the way I qualified and the way I finished because there were quite a few fast people at the race and I was able to make the B-Mains in every class.
Throughout the whole week my cars and Tires felt great the whole time and they never skipped a beat.
I would just like to take a second to say thanks to HB/HPI Racing and Pro-Line for all the help and support.
