This past week was the 11th annual Nitro Challenge at The Nitro Pit in Suprise Arizona. Starting a few weeks ago I started preparing my 801X and Xt to make them as fresh and battle ready as they could be. With the help of Fred (Medel) and David (Jun) I was given a pair of the new arms for the Xt along with the new matching drive shafts. I was now feeling much more confident about my truggy race program for this event. :)

Last minute preparations on Tuesday actually turned into a full day of wrenching and with time winding down I finished late and hit the sheets around 11:00pm to get up at 1:30 am to get on the road. On the road with my Track Star team mate Pres Ilog we met up with Gil Losi Jr and Carson Wernimont out on the highway and set off on our 4 hour drive to Arizona.

Wednesday practice went really well although the track was very fresh and there was yet a tire that would hook up. AKA will soon be releasing their new "Enduro" tire for buggy and armed with these new beauties I built my set up around them. Happily I only made one change to the buggy and it felt great! The Xt with my usual set up and new arms was fantastic! It turned harder and quicker than before and now without the fear of an arm breaking I could push as hard as I needed to.

Thursday; Truggy qualifying went as smoothly as I could have hoped for and set the round one TQ by 5 seconds. Second round was smoother as I was getting use to the track and its quirks especially in the rough sections. Another TQ and thus securing TQ for the event!! Round three I tried some new ideas and some different lines here and there. Mission accomplished.

Friday; Buggy qualifying started out rough. On the first lap I got tangled with a flipping car and it broke the left front camber link. :(   Second round I was out for blood and like Dracula I sucked the life right outta the competition and set TQ for the second round! The third round I was going for the Bi-fecta and once again my Alpha powered, AKA Enduro shod 801X set the TQ in round 3 to claim the overall TQ for the event!! 

Saturday we saw rain hit the track hard but The Dirt crew did their magic and got us back up and running in no time. The truggy A main went off and I slowed down to allow everyone to run themselves ragged then I would keep pace until I needed to make a move for victory. Unfortunately my race was interrupted by a faulty receiver and it put me 9 laps down by the time I got back out and with 3 others falling out I was 12th. Needless to say with roughly 30 minutes left I drove as hard as I could and made up 6 laps and was now sitting in 8th when the buzzer went off.

Sunday we saw yet more rain and with the track being saturated from Saturdays rain it was a huge mess. Joey and The Dirt crew worked 4+ hours straight to clean up the track and while having to make modifications to the lay out we were back to racing. By the time my buggy main came up I was ready to claim victory especially after what had happened on Saturday. With Track Star driver Dylan Elliot pitting me we set off to drive as slow and easy as I possibly could to make sure I wouldn't break or do anything stupid. In fact I drove so conservatively that the engine would load up and I would have to make a hard lap within 3-4 laps to make sure it didn't flame out. 

Having 1-1/2 laps up on second place I had two laps to go when I started one of the hard laps and then it happened...... I hit the first triple into the "dirty dozen" rhythm section and the car flipped violently and broke the front bulk head and tearing off the front shock tower!! Bound and determined to win I drove the track with the front broken off and got stuck many times also losing the front drive. I limped around and watched as the second place driver caught me and took back one of his laps. However I kept going and finally after 2 full minutes trying to make one lap I crossed the finish line and finally won the Nitro Challenge!!