This past weekend I headed to Legacy Hobby in Strathroy, Ontario which is a little over 2 hours west of Toronto for the 5th round of the GLORCS series. In great Canadian fashion, the weather was very unpredictable all weekend as we saw extremely hot temperatures for practice on Friday, rain off and on all day saturday, and sunny cool temperatures on Sunday for the main.

 Friday practice with my buggy went well, but found my buggy to be a little to tippy for the extremely rough/rutted track conditions we were faced with all weekend. I knew at this point my setup needed to be adjusted drastically, so I went from a y1 piston up front to a y2 still using 40wt shock oil with half rebound, and went from the red spring to the black. This didn't seem to help as everytime I went out the track seemed to be getting progressively worse. I ended up going to yellow springs all around and adjusted my driving for the changing conditions. Sliding the car the least bit through the corners was not an option; the only way I could go fast without crashing was to drive with a very "point and shoot" style. Qualifying on Saturday didn't go according to plan as I had some bad luck with both traffic and ruts on the track. I ended up qualifying in the middle of the B main in the over 50 car field. I wasn't too disappointed because I knew I could easily bump and still have a good finish in the main. When Sunday rolled around, the weather was very cold. My pit man, who also doubles up as my Dad got my Reedy 121VR motor tuned perfectly for the conditions and it was off to the B main without any morning practice. I knew that running the most conservative race possible would be a huge factor in making my car last 2 mains (20min B, 30min A) since the track was very rutted and hard on the buggys especially. I drove an easy race, taking little risks and ended up bumping up to the A Main. Once the A main started I knew it was time to put all I had learned in practice to work. I started 14th on the grid, and began picking my way through the field. When the first pit stops rolled through, I found myself sitting in 7th, and constantly making ground on the cars infront of me. I ran consistant, clean laps and found myself in a battle for 3rd nearing the 15min mark, but that was when I had a tire tear away from the wheel and was stuck limping my buggy home to a 5th place finish. Still not a bad finish after having to bump up from the B.

 My luck in the truggy class was much different throughout the weekend. With a very fast and competitive truggy field, qualifying was very exciting to watch, and I quickly established myself as a front runner for both the TQ and win. My truggy was the best its ever been, as I switched the front knuckles and c-hubs to the ones off the buggy. I had plenty of low-speed steering, and was very happy with the way my truck was running. Going into the final round of qualifying I was sitting 4th, but during the "rocket round" I made a few driver errors which caused me to fall to 6th on the grid. Again I wasn't disappointed because I knew I had one of the fastest trucks in the field - I turned the fastest lap in all but the final round of qualifying. During warm up for the A-Main I felt my truck was the best it had been all weekend, and after 2 false starts, it was off to the races. The first corner was disaster for me as I got tagged and found myself at the back of the pack (14th) after the first 2 corners. I wasn't going to let that spoil my day so I answered by clawing my way all the way back to 4th by the midpoint of the race, but at that point my tires had enough. My decision to run M3 Holeshots on the extremely rough and hard clay track was not the best as I had wore the right side tires to complete slicks by the 20min mark. Accompanied by the fact that my engine flamed out leaving the pits on the final stop of the race, I felt my chances at a podium were fading quickly. I got going again quickly and brought home 5th, just a lap off the leader.

 This past weekend was a great learning experience and made me deal with conditions I had never seen before. Definately turned some heads with the Tamiya cars this season as I see more and more of them popping up at the track!! Off to sunny California this week to help the Canadian TCS winners at the North American Finals. I will be running in the F1 class just for run with my Kimi Raikkonen inspired Ferrari, looking forward to seeing some of you there!

Steve