This year’s regionals had a one day race schedule. Three qualifyers follwed by the mains were all run on one day, Sunday. This gave more people the chance to practice all day on Saturday. I had put in my 801XT my old OS V-Spec from last season. At least, I knew that I wouldn’t have problems through out the day. I have sealed up my newer OS V-spec since the last time I raced and since the old motor runs fine I know it’s not my fuel tank or lines.

At first in practice my truggy pushed with the Proline Holeshots. I went back out and tried my AKA Cityblocks, but it seemed worse. I came to find that my servo saver had loosened up which what was causing my steering problems. I still felt more confident running the ProLine Holeshots for qualifying. The first round of qualifying was good. I kept a pretty clean line around the track. This new layout was technical. Horsepower was definitely not going to win this one. I needed the truck to have good steering and traction on the hard packed clay. I was able to get in a solid 8 lap run which put me about mid pack in the A. The second qualifyer I tried to push the 801XT too hard. I had a lot of mistakes which cost me a lot of time. So for the third round of qualifying, I decided to slow it down and drive more consistant. I was bouncing around in the top three spots through out the qualifyer. For the last few minutes I was on a new TQ pace. I made a few slip-ups and gave my position up to Team Scream’s John Cravotta. He ended up TQ and I was starting in the 2nd position.

The start of the main was good through out the first lap. Before my first pit I had ghost flamed. I had a feeling that the motor had enough. We got it restarted and back out I was. I was trying to make up time, but half way into the 30 minute main the computer crashed. We pulled in during the break and restarted the main as a 15 minute main. This time around I wasn’t so lucky. I got a good start but into the second corner a truck from behind got stuck in my rear wing and we drove straight into the pipe. Traffic was definitely tough on this restart. I made another clean pass for position with another guy and the following corner he t-boned me. My motor was definitely on its way out and we had it idling high to get it to finish the main. I finished in the back of the pack. I felt good about my 2nd place qualifying spot and was completely satisfyed with the 801XT’s performance for the day. I can’t wait to throw in the other motor to see how it runs under good horspower again.