It turned out to be a beautiful day in Huntington Beach California at the second round of Speedtech.com's RCGT Series hosted by Charlie Barnes' OC Circuit.

Opening the day, I set the TB03 on the track as set up from the previous day running at Tamiya's on road facility. Temping the track it was appearant that the soft compound tire would be the choice for the first round. Our performance was further enhanced by a few Tamiya Hop Ups which include TRF shocks, Sway bar kit, carbon steering bar and CV drive axles.

 The first round we were on pace to set TQ. A couple of mistakes allowed the first heat winner to retain TQ but we were right there.

Second round would come down to track temp. Would it get hot enough to switch to "D" compund or stay with the softer "Pro" compound? Turned out to stay cool enough and with a gearing change we were set to set TQ this round.

Setting out to the sound of the tone our inverted start placing me 7th on the grid was easily over come before the second lap was over I had taken the lead and pulled away. Somewhere along the line someone hit a barrier and it moved into the racing line causing a few of us to end up on our lids, this happening moved me back to second and just off pace for TQ. As we finished I missed TQ by .3 second..... ARGH! As it turned out, the first round TQ uped his game in the second round also!

Main time: Sitting second on the grid and having some heavy hitters waiting for any mistake I knew I had to be on my game. I checked, double checked and rechecked everything. Thirty seconds before the main ahead of ours ended I pulled the tire warmers off and to my dismay they were cold!! The guys I was sharing power with unplugged my A/C cord and thus my tire warmers! OH NO! OK..... no biggy I will have to sacrific some battery to warm them up during check in. We lined up ready to go and then we get a one minute call for a racer who was having issues. Now I'll have taken some voltage out of the battery and go right back to having cold tires......... OK this can still work. Not as much punch will help my cold tire situation...(I also clicked open the EXPO screen on my KO radio and took some bottom out leaving the screen open so I could click more back in down the straight during the race :D )

 The tone sounded and we were off! Coming into the first corner I quickly realized the tires were colder than I had hoped, I quickly fell back to fifth and luckily didnt fall any farther. I hung there figuring I would be out of contention and then they took hold, the tires were up to a temp I could get after the trigger and immediately dialed all my EXPO back in and it was on, 4th-3rd and quickly hunting down 2nd! After about a 2 minute battle I took an agressive move to the inside in the first corner and pulled away looking for first. He was a full (170 feet) straight ahead! DOH! But with 2 minutes to go I had some time to do what I could.

 I inched ever closer every turn, taking a few seconds a lap every lap until we had one more lap to go, I squeezed everything I had out of my Fantom powered TB03 but to no avail.... I was still 5-6 feet from the leader when we crossed the line.

Second qualifier and second in the A-main earned me enough points to move me substantially up in the series points so I am very happy with the results!

Huge thank you to Tamiya for keeping their facility open to allow us to test and tune! Without the time I had on the track the day before, my results would have been much different!