Roar 1:8 Fuel Off-Road Nationals Race Report
June 17-21 Chico, CA
Silver Dollar RC Raceway
After a few day to recover from close to a week straight of pure racing it’s time to reflect on how everything went.
I arrived in Chico Tuesday night to settle in and prepare for practice Wednesday. After two full days of practice under my belt, I felt confident in both my driving and the setups on my NB48 Buggy and NT48 Truggy and was ready for rounds 1 and 2 of qualifying on Friday.
I would seed in the C qualifier for truck and D for Buggy, in round one of qualifying, I would have a rough run in Truggy but fortunately have a pretty good run in Buggy (33rd overall). In round 2 it would end up being very similar, rough run in truck and 37th overall in Buggy. It wasn’t a bad day of qualifying but it wasn’t great either. Saturday morning would come quickly, I knew I had two good runs under my belt in buggy but needed two good ones for truck. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to top my first two runs in buggy but luckily I was able to get 1 decent and 1 good run in truck seeding me directly into the D-Main. In Buggy I would be seeded into the 1/4 final, which I was ecstatic about with this being my first national!
Main day was now upon me and I was very excited to race my mains. My truck D-Main was first up for me, I had a decent start, but unfortunately got taken out on the second lap plus making my own mistake right after that putting me into last. It was only a 15-minute main so I didn’t have a lot of time to make up. I did my best to work my way back up to the 11th position out of 15. While trying to catch up, I was able to put down the fast lap of the race and also of the weekend for myself! In a few hours my buggy quarter final would be up. This was the race I had been waiting for all weekend. I was pretty nervous but I quickly calmed down when I got on the drivers stand. I would have a great start, after starting 11th on the first corner there was a pile up and I got up to 5th. After 2 laps or so my buggy started to glitch, it went away for a few minutes but suddenly came back at the 5-minute mark ending my race. I soon found out it was the positive wire directly out of my battery had ripped off somehow. I was really disappointed knowing I had a real shot but I understand there was nothing I could have done to prevent this from happening. I was still really proud of myself being able to make the 1/4 final and knowing I did the best that I could do. I still had a ton of fun being with a lot of great friends and making a lot of new ones in the process.
A huge thanks once again Terry Cook for everything and to Matt Wolter and Daniel Lewis for all their help with setup and everything else they do for me!
All of my Tekno rides were dialed with the help from my X1 Pro-Line Blockades all week! I would love to thank all of my awesome sponsors for all their continued help and support. Tekno RC, Pro-Line Racing, Airtronics, DE Racing, Byron Fuels, Schelle, Reds Airbrush Design, and All Around RC.
