This weekend was the final round of the Ontario RC Pro Series held at Hardwood Ski & Bike located about 1.5 hours north of Toronto. The track was very challenging to say the least; with real logs used for the washboard sections, a sand box filled with beach sand, grass, a huge gap jump, a monstrous table-top, and rocks the size of small children just to keep you from getting too cocky! I arrived late to practice on Friday and was only able to get 1 battery pack through my E-Buggy before it got too dark.
Saturday morning I was able to run my E-Buggy which was a complete handfull, and my nitro buggy which wasn't too bad considering my main focus was to wrap-up the E-Buggy championship so nitro was the last thing on my mind. My goal for qualifying on saturday was to just be smart as the track was so blown out that driving at anything more than 6/10th's would mean you're upside down. I did just that in round 1 for E-Buggy, kept the buggy moving and on all 4's until the final lap where I ran into a car that was crashed and awaiting a marshall. I ended up 2nd on the round because of it but I wasn't the least bit worried. My nitro qualifier saw much of the same, just driving around, turning laps, keeping the shinny side up, and I ended up 2nd in round 1 for nitro aswell!

Round 2 I made some changes to my E-buggy to try and make it more driveable at speed over the insanely blown out track but it just ended up making the buggy worse. It was hooking over every rut, rock, hole, anything and would just not settle down. Luckily I had kept a cool head and just drove the car even more conservatively (which kills me by the way!) and ended up taking TQ for the round. In round 2 for Nitro, I ended up qualifying 3rd but again, the main focus was wrapping up E-buggy since races 1-3 in the series were complete disasters for me in Nitro Buggy. By round 3 the track was becoming very undriveable for the buggies. Lap times had dropped off almost 2 seconds and I was starting to become very frustrated. I beat myself in Round 3 as I let my temper get to me by driving a horrible car WAY harder than it should have been driven, so needless to say Round 3 was one of my throw aways in the qual-points format with round 4 to run early sunday morning.

Tom Wright and I decided to stay late on Saturday after qualifying to try and make our E-buggies more complient over the rough track and tried 2 completely opposite setups. I tried a super light shock oil setting with yellow springs, stood as far upright as possible, while Tom tried thicker shock oil settings with red springs, laid down about half way. After some testing, tire swaping, and car trading, Tom and I decided his setup would be the one to go with. It absorbed the ruts/holes/rocks/boulders/grass...EVERYTHING better than my car did so we went that route.

When we arrived Sunday it was absolutely POURING rain, and the weather did not subside. I wanted to race for the mere fact that I didn't get to showcase the prototype 801x-e buggy's full potential at all on the weekend but I knew that if we didn't run the mains I would still win the Ontario Championship in E-Buggy. It ended up raining non-stop all day long on Sunday so the drivers all voted to call the race and base the points off qualifying. Just like that I captured the Ontario RC Pro Series Championship in 1/8th Electric Buggy, ahead of Kyosho driver John Summach in his Mp9E.