Monday, September 29, 2008

Indoor Season is Upon Us!



Well it is getting cold out and it's time to shift things to some indoor action. Fastcats (www.fastcats.ca) is kicking off the indoor season with their one day trophy race. Time to mount up some Schumacher mini pins and stiffen up the suspension for the high traction off road carpet surface! The new layout looks technical and fun. The jump designs and construction are like art! I am going to try a new set up once again to try and eek out those extra tenths. We'll see how she goes.

Monday, September 22, 2008

2008 3rd Annual Fall Classic - Sid's Raceway



It was a little cool out, but finally NO RAIN! The field was a little light as there was the GLORCS Nitro Series Final, but it was a great day of racing to cap off the summer!

In 2wd, my Kyosho RB5 was awesome as usual. The track was pretty bumpy after a season of use and my car was dialed in the bumps. I swept the qualifying rounds to TQ and never looked back in the main. Sean Hurley's Losi XXX-CR was handling awesome out there and he managed to put it second on the grid. I think Sean had some bad luck in the main as he dropped down after the first couple of laps. Steve put up a tough fight in my quest to lap the field and on the last lap we swapped positions numerous times but I put an inside move in the last corner and my Orion Vortex brushless motor powered me past him right at the line. The car was flawless today!

In 4wd, my Lazer SP was having a little trouble in the ruts. I managed to lay down a pretty good run in one of the qualifying rounds to sneak out the TQ from Martin Palenik (who drove great for his first race back after being on vaction for a while in Europe). For the main I made a couple of suspension tweaks and at the tone we got off clean and started to train it around, but with the track this rough all of us had some bad luck with some crazy rut rolls and weird bounces 3/4 of the way down the straight. I had a little less bad luck I suppose than the rest as I think Martins BJ4WE was handling the bumps better. Steve's BJ4WE was also flying out there and we all swapped the lead a few times during the race. After a couple of bobbles by Steve and Martin, I got into the lead and played it safe in the ruts to take the win.

In the Truck class (I didn't get to see much of it) Jay Lovegrove took his sweep of Qualifying into the main and lead wire to wire. Jay has become the man to beat in the Truck class as of late!

Random Thoughts:

- It felt great to defend my TQ & Wins for both classes in the Fall Classic. Great way to cap off the season!
- New comers Ryan & Dimitri have gone from newbies to (almost) A Main contenders in a very short time. Both drove great races and have progressed a ton. Great to see the new guys getting up to speed! You will see them in the A Mains next season for sure.
- The track held up quite well for the whole season with minimal maintenence. It was just starting to get blown out about a week before this race. Renting the vibrating steam roller thing at the beginning of the year was money weel spent!
- We all missed having Chet out there duking it out. His surgery went well though and we should see him back (haha pun intended) out there in the next couple of weeks.
- Hopefully someone finds a way to get an indoor dirt track open for the winter.
- Thanks to all the people who helped us out during the season. There are a great group of guys who come out and race and really make the atmosphere a great one. After seeing first hand some of the antics that go down at some of the nitro races, it is really good to have a great bunch of laid back racers in the electric scene!
- Full results and videos of the races are here: www.sidsraceway.com

Thanks to Ryan @ Kyosho America, Joe @ Team Orion & David @ Adrenaline R/C for the continued support!


Mike'isms

- Last outdoor race of the year and Mike finally cleans up his trademark "Landfill" pit space!
- Mike had regular water (no club soda's) at the post race dinner at Swiss Chalet.
- Mike's car was lacking "punch" out there. He wondered if it was his 2 year old (very well used) LiPo's. I told him it was and that the swelling of the one pack was not a good thing either...lol. Time to ante up and get some new packs buddy!
- I thought that I wouldn't have anything too funny to put in this column until on the way out of Swiss Chalet, Mike swiped all the little packets of butter off the table as he said he was out of butter at home....classic!

Mike's surprisingly clean pit area!


Some Pics (videos are coming)


Johnny Chow laying down the power


John Stewart's B44 hovercraft









Steve getting ready for the Mains

Mike and Martin getting the awards ready.

Cars are good to go. Yummy Italian bakery goods & drink in the background. Moley moley moley (inside joke for John, Steve & Jay...haha)

New guy: Ryan King's cars. Great driving out there!

Kyosho "Sweep"! TQ & Win 2wd Open, 4wd Open.

2wd Open - A Main


4wd - A Main

Truck Open A Main

*Bonus*

Congrats to Ryan King for winning the B Main. Ryan lead wire to wire and drove a great race for being new to the hobby. You will see him in the A Main next year!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Sid's Fall Classic...finally?


Well rain delay after rain delay, I hope mother nature lets us finally run this bad boy!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Sid's Race Fall Classic - Postponed Again!

Wow...rains every weekend! Good for me as I was away for business that weekend. It's looking good for this weekend though. Forecast is good, weekend is clear for me...hopefully Chet is off the crutches so he can race as well!

See you all this weekend!

Hardcore RC Raceway Club Race


Well a few of us electric folk headed out to Hardcore Raceway to check out their 1/8th scale track with our 1/10th scale buggies. They wanted to see if any electrics wanted to run there so we rounded up a bunch of us for a "fun" race. Hardcore is the nicest track in Ontario and have a pretty dialed set up going on there. It is a family run track on their numerous acres by their house. Don't let that fool you though as the track is professionally built with drainage, 20 head sprinkler system, killer surface, nice drivers stand etc. etc. It is pretty big for a 10th scale buggy, but we went to try it out regardless. The traction was pretty good and I ended up running Bowties (with very minimal wear on them after a full day running). The 2wd cars had some trouble clearing the BIG 8th scale gaps, but the 4wd cars were surprisingly good out there. I would have qualified 6th or 7th in the 8th scale A Main with my Lazer using a 5.5 Orion Vortex motor (could have used a 4.5 for sure there!) My fastest lap was only 3 seconds behind Nitro Ace Dave Henry's Losi 8ight!. Steve also brought out his eRC8 and qualified in the A Main. He could get about 18 minutes on a pack so we had to do one pit stop for the 30 minute A Main final. Anyways, keeping it short, but here are some pics and vids.


Electric guys invading Hardcore!

Awesome facility!

Getting ready to throw it down

You couldn't pussy over the cross over jump

You REALLY couldn't pussy it over the big gap on the back straight! LOL

Some sweeper action

The ripples were really fun and fine for the smaller cars

Steve's still unpainted eRC8. This thing was uber cool!

Cathing some air after the ripples

PINNING IT down the middle straight

Some Nitro action over the big jumps

A Lap with Steve's eRC8


Some misc. racing action

Again, thanks to everyone at Hardcore for giving us electric guys a chance to race on your awesome track! We all had a great time. Hope we weren't too loud for you. HAHA.