Well, this past Saturday I made a little personal history when I finished on the podium for the first time at my local track, Coastal RC Indoor Speedway. It certainly wasn't the prettiest of finishes but at the end of the day, I still got my picture taken by the winner's wall...now to get them to post it so I can add it to this post among other things...here's my report
Round 1
I was running in the novice class because I didn't want to be a rolling chicane for the guys in the stadium trucks thing you'll want to know about novice class...it is a run what you brung class which means you get all sorts of different vehicles on the track. I was running my Associated T5M and this time around I was joined by a 2wd buggy and two Traxxas Slash short course trucks. I was up first and had a pretty rough go. crashing quite a few times and couldn't quite get the speed for the jumps, but finished with a solid 8 lap run, finishing in P2 behind the 2wd buggy.
Round 2
Round 2 was a more difficult run, as my front body clips kept slipping through my post holes, which caused my front to come up and parachute horribly off a jump, so I was forced to drive real slow, and eventually, I parked it just so I could see what was going on up close. I ended up in P4 after two rounds.
Round 3
This was the worst of my three qualifying runs as I was only able to finish a single lap before I pulled my truck off because I was having acceleration issues. I took the body off and my negative wire wasn't all the way inserted into my battery pack. I would end up starting fourth in the feature.
Main
I was P4 in the novice main as I mentioned. but with two short course trucks ahead of me, all I really had to do was get ahead of them to ensure a good run and finish. I got a great launch off the line and thanks to the crashing that tends to happen in a novice class, I was in the lead at the end of lap 1! Unfortunately, I got into a couple crashes myself and the 2wd buggy passed for the lead on lap 2 and never lost it again the rest of the five minutes. So it was pretty much about staying ahead of the short course trucks because they were much bigger than I was. One of them broke just about a minute into the race so it was me and the other truck battling for who would finish second. We went back and forth for a couple minutes before we tangled in one of the turns and I flipped the other truck over. Wanting to be a good sport I gave him the position and he went on his way. I overshot a jump turn and nosed into the wall about three minutes into the race and when the turn marshal got to my car, he did the kill sign and I knew something had happened, so my race was over. Thanks to the other short course breaking a couple minutes before I did, that meant I was guaranteed no worse than third in the class!
While I was bummed to not finish the race and have to figure out how to replace my broken part, I was pumped to have my first top 3 finish since I started racing. I will have some things to figure out once my tax refund comes in, but Im going to enjoy my result from this past weekend and hopefully finish the race next time.
