Monday night was another great time down at Bremerton Radio Control Raceway.
On the heels of the 4 hour Enduro race just 2 days before, turnout was pretty light for a Monday night. In fact, there really wasn’t enough depth in each field to run the normal Novice, Stock and Open class for each vehicle type. So, instead of being able to race in Novice class, I was pitted with the Stock and Open truck racers that have been doing this for a long time. It was going to be a learning experience!
This week I was prepared with plenty of battery power, a dialed in rear differential, upgraded toolbox and new carrier box too. My pit space was a lot more organized than last time.
We ran 2 heats and a main event for “Truck” and “Buggy”. I held my own in the first two heats, finishing near mid-field, and certainly not last. I’d learned quite a bit in my first race the week prior, and it was paying off.
At the end of the first two heats, I have qualified 6th in a field of 10. Not amazing, but better than I had expected, considering I was not racing all Novice racers, and not all stock trucks (some of them were a lot faster on the long straight than my 13.5 powered sled).
We ran a 10 minute main event. It was chaos. Lots of vehicle contact, more a lot of rollovers. We kept the track marshals very busy. About 15 laps or so into the race I was starting to find my pace, and able to get all the way around the track without a running across the edges, without crashing out (without being crashed out by others) and hitting a pretty good rhythm on the double-double and double-triple jump sections.
To my pleasant surprise, I managed to cut a couple of very fast laps, that got the attention of the race caller and timer. What I noticed on the runs I did really well on, despite a sea of surging Lexan, if I put all the other vehicles out of my mind, not looking at relative speed to the other races, or where they were lining up their trucks, basically running like I was the only person on the track, I was much smoother and much faster. Sure, a couple of times I got pitted around by another truck, and I did t-bone another racer on who was much slower on the long straight, but, nobody got broken, and neither of us had to be recovered. It’s not going to be a strategy that will work 100% of the time, but I found that greater concentration on the line that is best for MY truck, my tires, my drivetrain and skill, I do much better.
In the end, the 6 1/2 hours I spent at the track testing, tuning and finally racing was so much fun, I was smiling for hours and hours afterward. And one of the test parts of all this, the 6 1/2 hours of entertainment, and friendship, cost me a grand total of $9.37. That’s a pretty good value, don’t you think?
