2010 Spring Sting – A few friends and I decided to make the trip to Badlands R/C in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. If you have not had the chance to visit this track, you are missing out on one of the best ran R/C racing facilities on the East Coast. More information can be found here - www.badlandsrc.com. We also decided to take out families and make it a dual Racing/Family vacation at one of the biggest beach destination on the East coast. The best of both worlds..Racing and vacation …Waahooo!!!

I was really pumped heading into this weekend.  After  GCS Rnd 2. I knew I was getting more familiar with running the 801xT.  I decided to stick with my basic setup.  The track was med in size. It didn’t have large jumps but did have some medium sized technical jump sections that where tricky to navigate.  Traction! Traction! Traction!...I do not get a chance to say “ we have to much traction” that often.  The track grooved up and had more traction than we could deal with.  I knew this was going to be a fun weekend !

Practice – We headed into practice after 2 days of fun and sun at the beach.  Now it was time to get down to racing.  During the 1^st tank on the track….the 801xT had a very bad on power push.  I went up on the rear swat bar.  Going up on the sway bars was all I needed to do to get my truggy feeling dialed. Next was Tire selection... AKA Grid Iron/Hole Shot where the ticket event when they wore out..the traction was that high.  Along with the high traction was a very abrasive surface that loved to eat tires. After Practice I pulled my clutch to do the regular bearing/clutch inspection and found that my standard 3 shoe clutch was sticking open. I tinkered with it for several minutes until I decided to change the entire system over to the New Ascendancy 4 shoe clutch provided to me by Alex from Champion RC.  It’s exactly the same as the JVD Clutch system that Lutz has been running.  And wow!..what a difference in the power transition. The 4 shoe system has a lot more controllable and usable acceleration.  I wish I had made the switch sooner.

Qualifying – From practice…I felt comfortable that I could lay down some good times provided I got some clean runs.  1 Round I went out on some worn City Blocks that just didn’t seem to have the traction I was looking for…..the run was clean but just wasn’t as fast as I could have been. 2^nd round I switched to some Hole shots..these where just what I was looking for…however I made a couple of bobbles and only bettered my time only by 8 seconds over round 1.  On Fire!!! The 3^rd round of qualifying I was in the zone….a place I haven’t been in many months of racing.  I increase my time by 1 full lap over my 2^nd round finishing 4^th only seconds behind some of our fastest guys on the East coast.  This secured my place into the A-Main. After round 3 I knew that my 801xT and I had what it would take to have a strong finish on the podium.

Main – Show time! With only one fast run in the 3^rd round of qualifying..I was in the 6^th position.  All I wanted was a nice clean start…something I hadn’t been able to achieve in past several races.  I knew with the level of competition the start was critical. The horn sounded and we where off..I took a high line on a large sweeper at the end of the straight away.  It paid off…Byron Fuel teammate Barry Pettit and I got the hole shot after the second turn.   Barry is crazy fast!  It was a long race and I know that if I could run a clean race I would have a chance at a good finish.  I finally got my clean start!  After 4-5 laps I started to notice a issue with my steering.  At first I couldn’t tell it it was my mind playing tricks or if I had an actual issue. Suddenly my truggy went straight in the middle of a turn but straighten up instantly. This confirmed my feelings that my truggy wasn’t handling correct.  I thought that I was having radio glitches at 1^st.  I started to lose position 3^rd,4^th,5^th……and then after coming and going the steering finally went completely out crushing my hopes for a good finish.  Now its time to go totally KO PROPO.  The steering servo just striped out. 

Even with another DNF from servo failure…I felt the weekend was a success.  I finally received that performance from myself and my Byron Fuel powered Tamiya 801xT that could take the podium at the track.

Tamiya 2010 !