After the warm up race last weekend,  I was confident that I had the setup and practice needed to perform well at the race.  A new addition to the track was a whoop section that took some skill to navigate.  The surface stayed the same even with 80 plus racers.  Great weekend of racing ahead!.

Practice- It only took a couple of laps to feel like I have a handle on the track layout.  The new Whoop section was tricky at first but my 801xT found the rhythm fast.  I felt good about this race.

Qualifying -  1^st round was mine!...or so I thought.  I missed TQing the 1^st round only by 4 seconds. This was due to a slight bump from a fellow racer on the last lap that caused a spin out into to the fluff…Grrr!  That’s racing..2^nd round of qualifying I was able to pull off a TQ and was on my way to a TQ of this event.  Unfortunately a few mistakes in the 3^rd round had me hoping that a 2^nd and Tq would be enough to take home TQ  honors.  There was a 3way tie for TQ…so we went to the Fasted single race time…This placed me qualifying 3^rd.  Either way I was excited about my performance heading into  the A-Main.

Main – We had a clean start and I was in the 4^th spot for the 1^st few laps.  I made my way up to 2^ndand looking for the leader. After the 1^st pit stop the race director starting calling me in 2^nd almost laping the 3^rd place racer and called 1^st almost 2 laps ahead of me.  Thinking that catching 1^st was a tough order….I decided to put it in cruise and conserve my truggy making sure I finished in a respectful 2^nd place.  Unfortunately  there was a issue with the results…the direct had been calling me in 2^nd when I was actually in 3^rd only 8 seconds behind 2^nd and only 15 seconds behind the winner.  Tough Luck again! I felt I could have pushed harder and made a challenge for the win and 2^nd.  But I will have to settle for a respectful 3^rd place finish.  Hats off to the winners...It was close!  My Tamiya 801xT and Byron Fuel performed great.

JP