Well folks it is January here in the sunshine state and racing hasn’t slowed down…….. at all…Unlike all our northern homies, we don’t get snow Florida and fortunately this winter has been much warmer on record than years past. I think there has only been one or two days in the last two months where it was below 70 degrees. I think this is important because it plays heavily into how our tracks “groove up” and influences tire selection.
**watch the video above… it’s good… I promise***
This wasn’t the case though for our first official electric series race of the new year. It was held at Bashers RC Raceway in Palm Beach, Florida just north of Miami. This place is awesome and certainly one of the best facilities in the state. The owner, Brian Buckley, has really put it together right with upgrade pit mats, purpose built tables, and much more. The track is on the smaller side with 12 second laps but it has a very interesting and proved quite challenging for everyone.
In this series they run all the major classes and proline was represented well. This year we have a few new additions to the team so it’s no longer me being the lone ranger :-). Mike Applegate, Jason Venzia, Austin Venezia, and Tilar Pollack have joined the crew for this year. Between us we are spread out between the classes pretty good.
In Modified Truck it was Mike Applegate taking the top spot coming out of qualifying. It looked like he was going to take the main wire to wire but an electronics issue 3 laps into the raced put him down a lap from the leader. However, at the end of 5 minutes, Mike wheeled his RT5 back to the front and battled for the lead down to the closings seconds. He caught some good breaks and crossed the line in first. Mike was rocking Pro-Line Suburbs on his truck with the blue foam insert and it proved to be the winning combination. Jason Venzia used the same setup in the mod truck main but ran into some hardluck with traffic about halfway through. His truck does look awesome though, with a fresh PL Bulldog RT5 lid painted up by larry at Kustom RC graphics
Little Austin fared better than his pops taking the 2wd 17.5 “Blinky” class. I don’t remember if he TQ’d or not but he drove a pretty flawless race to take the win in the first race of the spring season. He used the Pro-Line Suburb 2.0 in M3 on his Kyosho buggy all weekend and it looked pretty dialed on the track. Tilar Pollack ran in the same class as well running high in the order until the closing minutes.
On a personal note, I kinda stunk the joint up that weekend. Something like 5th or 6th in 2wd and the same in 2wd Short Bus. My 4wd was awesome and I thought I could give Rhino a run for his money but I ran out of front wheels for my DEX410 and had to settle on some slicks for the main. Oh well, we live to play another day.
Mike Applegate
-M3 Truck Suburbs
Austin Venezia
–M3 Suburb 2.0’s
Huge thanks to the folks at Pro-Line for making some awesome stuff for us to race with week-in and week-out. Also shout out to all my sponsors from 2011: X-Factory, Novak, Trinity, Xray, Futaba, Odonnell Fuel, RCAmerica, Pro-Line, JAB Graphix, GS Hobby and Elite Performance.
’till next time!
– Leon McIntosh
