I just attended the 2015 ROAR 1:8 Off-Road Nationals held at the world famous Silver Dollar Raceway in Chico, CA.
The RaceTrack and facility itself was one of the best places if not the best that I have ever been to. In my opinion the place was awesome it had a huge pitting area with a gigantic driver stand and viewing area on the ramp. The Track layout was awesome as well with a pretty crazy surface that I had never really ever driven on before. As for the schedule of the race it was pretty normal two days of practice then 4 rounds of qualifying over a two day period and then the Mains.
“My Pro-Line Tires were performing great!”
Practice started on Wednesday with open/controlled practice put on by the Track. Thursday was the first day of official ROAR practice to seed you into the correct group with other people that were roughly the same speed as you. Practice stared out well for me with my Hot Bodies vehicles. Basically just went out and tried to learn the track on the first run or two and get my O.S. engines tuned as best as possible. I ran my Buggy first. As I got more track time I was feeling pretty good with my HB D815. My Pro-Line Tires were performing great and my OS Tessmann B2101 engine was running good. So as the day went on I just started making small changes to try and make my car better. I also got a few runs on the Truggy. Thursday was the seeding practice for qualifying and went pretty good. I had some small issues with my D8TTE Truggy but figured it all out by the end of the day. Overall practice was successful for me I found the tires that I like which were X1 Hole Shots in Truggy and X2 Suppressors in Buggy. As for my engines they worked awesome and was actually my first time ever using the new 2101 engine and it was extremely smooth. I was able to seed myself into both the B qualifier group for Buggy and D qualifier for Truck due to some DNF’s.
Friday marked the first day of qualifying with two rounds happening that day. I believe there were about 9 races of Truggy which would equal to about 135 people and 11 races of Buggy which equals about 160 people. Truggy started out the day first as usual and I went out and had a good solid first run that was nothing too special just a good safe run. As for my truck I went out on X1 Hole Shots and they were awesome. As long as I stayed in the groove they had quite a bit of grip. In Buggy I went out and put in a decent run that wasn’t anything fancy but just a clean run to put in the books. Overall in my Buggy run my Tires, engine and car seemed to be working great. I didn’t have any problems with them just a bobble or two from hitting pipes and things like that. The second round was definitely better for Buggy as I made another change to the car and went out on X2 Suppressors and put in a run that was 4-seconds faster than my first run. My car seemed to be pretty good.
That run my Tires were hooked up and my engine felt great.
As for Truggy I had another decent run but knew something was up as it didn’t quite steer as well as it did before and come to find out that I had broken 3 of the 4 tabs of the steering servo but was still able to finish the run with a decent time. Since the first two rounds were over with qualifying they did another resort to put people into better placement after 2 rounds. I ended up moving up a couple spots in buggy and bumping way up into the B qualifying group for Truggy. I felt pretty good at the end of the day.
Saturday started off with Truggy once again. It seemed that since it was earlier in the day the track had more grip or that it was just getting more grip from being run on more and more. Either way, the run went really well in the B qualifier group and I was really happy with the way my car, Tires and engine all performed for the run. Everything went really well and I was able to get a really good run in. In the third round of the Buggy both my Tires and engine were great but I was having problems with my car plowing and having a really big push making it extremely hard to make the corners fast. For the fourth and final round of qualifying in Buggy I made some changes to try and get more steering to help the pushing effect I was having in the round before. I went out with X2 Suppressors as I did in the round before and the car was better but still not up to par as it was the day before. The final round of Truggy went good for me as
I ran x1 Hole Shots again and they were amazing.
The truck was really good and hooked up and the O.S. engine was definitely on point.
Sunday marked the final day of racing at the ROAR Nationals and that could only mean one thing main day. I was able to qualify 2nd in the odd ¼ Main in Buggy and 3rd in the C-Main in Truggy. It wasn’t exactly where I had hoped and planned to qualify but I knew things would work out and I would end up finishing higher then where I qualified. The Truggy C-Main started the day once again and I decided to keep my truck the same as it was really good the day before and just go to a larger pin tire so it was last the length of the main. The Main started out well I was able to make my way to 2nd place within a lap or two and then a few laps later make it into first and eventually taking the victory. Once again my Truggy was really good and my X2 Suppressors lasted the whole race with no problems and my engine was really good as well. All these factors helped me to be able to bump into the B-Main. In the B-Main I started 14th and had a pretty good run there was just so many fast people and starting all the way in the back made it really hard to get the bump positions again but I was able to finish with a nice 5th place.
In the ¼ odd Main for Buggy I started 2nd and was just following first for a few laps until I got around him and never looked back which then gave me a position in the odd semifinals. My Buggy was really good that round I choose X2 Fugitives because I knew they were a good safe and consistent tire as well as I knew they would last the whole time which they did. Overall my entire car package was good between engines, Tires, and the car. In the semifinals I left my car alone as far as setup and just mounted a new set of X2 fugitives as I had ran those in the round before and was just hoping to have a good run. The race didn’t really start out well as I got hit in the first corner spinning me out and then about half a lap later was hit again and pushed all the way back to last. Unfortunately during the little bit of rough driving I think my front end got hit and broke my servo and made it really hard to turn the car so it ended my run early.
Overall the weekend for me I feel was a success, I wanted to finish in the top 30 for Buggy since this was a Worlds qualifier year. I also finished 18th in truck which is an improvement from 2014. I’m definitely happy about that and overall my cars, tires and engines, performed flawlessly the whole weekend. There were a lot of really fast talented drivers at this race and I feel I put out a great effort and had a lot of fun racing. I would like to take a second to thank all of my sponsors: HB/HPI Racing, Pro-Line, O.S. Engines, LRP, Red Rock Hobbies, Stickit1 and VP Fuels.
