Hello all,

             The RCGT Showdown series is over and it turned out to be a battle right down to the very end.

Armed with my TB03 I set off this year with a full assault. Starting off a little slow getting use to the car was easy. Right out of the box it was head and shoulders above my previous brand RCGT car which allowed me to immediately catch the leaders in points. Having use of the Tamiya home track made a huge difference in set up and if you read my previous blogs you'd know that the first time out I qualified second in the A main and finished second.

From there it was a 3 way points battle between Jeffry Lin from Ofna, Joey Orlanes from Hot Bodies and myself. This held true until the 4th round as Joey could not make the race which allowed Jeffry and I to jump ahead. At the fourth round Jeffry and I battled once again. This time it was I who took the TQ then during the main I traction rolled at the 5 minute mark allowing Jeffry to get by with Paul Dabao now second. To at least make this round a throw away I had to beat Paul to retain the points lead which was only 1 point. I caught Paul and passed with one lap to go but could not catch Jeffry.

Round 5 saw Jeffry and I get back on the Carpet track at OCRC where the first round was a disaster for me. I knew I had to beat Jeffry this time to stretch the points apart. This time Jeffry TQ'd and in the first turn I again rolled and this put me waaaayyy back to 7th. I thought to myself that this was it "game over" I battled my way through the field for the next 7 minutes and started to real in 2nd & 3rd only to have them tangle with each other with only 2 turns to go. This gave me a much needed second place as Jeffry again checked out.

So now Jeffry has gained two points on me in round 5 moving him up to first by one point. I had to out qualify and beat Jeffry at round six in Camarillo. The week leading up to Rd 6 I worked on my TB day and night. I went through everything, I used all of my prep and set up knowledge to ensure that I beat Jeffry. I wasn't just going to settle for beating him I was determined to TQ and Win to dominate.

Rd 6 the finals at Camarillo.

I got to the track a bit late on Saturday and in the hast to get packed and get there I forgot my tire glue..... I had to reload and go to the local hobby shop and get glue. None the less this cost me another hour out of already being late. (Hey, Camarillo is 2:45 drive for me..)
Anyway now being armed with fresh tires i went out to do some body testing. I ran a Gairiya, a R35GT an RX7 and a 2007 NSX. right off the bat the NSX was my choice. I started to get use to the track and burn in some lap times that I was happy with so I packed up and headed for the hotel. In a tactic I was asked "How was my car?" I said "not good" looks like Jeffry's got this one" :) Which of course i thought my car was dialed LOL)

The next morning we set up and it was cold and overcast. The traction compound (sugar water/soda syrup) was coagulating on the surface turning our tires into sugar donuts. Everyone was having this problem so I didn't practice. I had a trick up my sleeve if this was going to be the case in the first round. The organizers held off for an extra 30 minutes as the sun was barely peeking through and started round one. I pulled out my secret tire sauce and waited for my run. To make a long story short I TQ'd the first round by over 11 seconds! Jeffrey was sitting 3rd. The second round things got back to normal and Jeffry won his race but failed to meet my TQ only running 5 seconds quicker than his previous time giving me the much needed TQ point to tie things up! Now it was going to be up to the main to decide who was going to be the series winner.

Rather than tell you about the main. Why not watch it?!?!  Here is the link:

http://www.rcgtshowdown.com/rcgt-finale-expert-a-main


In the end it came down to .06 seconds to decide the 2009 RCGT Showdown Champion.