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We just got back from a long week in Sin City. Scotty Ernst, his brother Boomer, Jamie, and the rest of the Trackside gang did it again, by putting on THE best R/C Race in the World! This would be the debut race for the new SpeedMerchant Rev.5. After winning every major title over the past few years with the Rev 4 & 4.5, the Rev 5 had some big shoes to fill. The schedule would be 2 rounds of practice both Wednesday & Thursday followed by 2 rounds of Qualifying on Friday & Saturday, with the Mains on Sunday. Practice went well for the team. In Modified, we really just spent most of practice trying to get the guys up to speed and comfortable with the new brushless systems. Unfortunately, in America, we don't have a lot of tracks that are even large enough to test and practice with the new super fast brushless set-ups for Modified. We literally spent all 4 rounds of practice just getting the cars drivable and geared in the ballpark with the brushless set-ups. In Stock class, things were going much better. All the guys were quick right out of the box, with their Rev 5's carving tight lines and carrying tons of corner speed. This was our 1st "big" race with the new Rev.5, so we were concerned how the car would react with the super high traction only found at events like Vegas. To our relief, the 5's were dialed. We actually didn't even change our "box stock" set-up that the guys were practicing with at home. The first 2 rounds of practice went well. In Modified, Mike Dumas was on a TQ pace all the way until the 7:40 mark when his batteries decided to take a nap. We were still struggling with the brushless set-up, and with the way (smooth and conservative) Mike drove, he should've ran about 10 minutes, so dumping at 7:40 while on a TQ pace was pretty unacceptable. In Stock, the whole crew looked super. Steve Boice and Mark Strasnick both had their Rev 5's on TQ paces and had trouble with traffic, Jeff Brown had an A-main car, the only problem we had was with Jarrod's car picking up a glitch. A nice first day of qualifying overall. On the final day of qualifying, we again missed the motor set-up on Dumas's mod car. Mike's motor guy tried some new stuff for our last shot, but it wasn't quite enough and Mike ended up qualifying at the top of the B main. Mike put a nice clean run in, and his car looked great with good corner speed, but he was just way off pace on horsepower. I would like to congratulate the Hot Bodies team of Andy Moore, Marc Rheinard, and Atsushi Hara....... they whooped us. LOL. Their new car looked very good around the track, and they had us so out-gunned in horsepower, it was really kind of embarrassing. The Europeans jumped on the brushless bandwagon a full year ahead of us, and it shows. There is still a ton of "tuning" that can be done to brushless motors, that we just aren't experienced with yet. We'll put our heads down, and do some diligent testing, and hopefully, we'll have something for them by the SnowBirds. I also wanted to congratulate Josh Cyrul. He actually built a new mod car around brushless motors, and it went very well. He (Josh) was able to get a good chunk of brushless testing in following the Nationals at his track in March, and it paid off. He and Mike (Blactstock) both made the main with the new car, which is good, because it was really starting to feel like we were watching the Euro Champs in 12th Mod. LOL. In Stock, the 3rd qual went really well. We fixed Jarrod's glitch from the day before, and it paid off with a TQ run in the 3rd round. That was the first 43 lap run in Stock up to that point. After it was all said and done, we had 4 Rev.5's in the Stock A-Main, and they all looked like potential winners! Sunday - The Mains Going into the A-Stock, we were feeling pretty good. Steve Boice had one of the quickest cars all week long, Jarrod was starting near the front, with a car that TQ'd round 3, while both Mark and Jeff had cars that were capable of taking the Main. At the sound of the horn, they were off. It was a fairly clean start, although Jarrod ended up getting run over from behind while "checking up" for traffic in the 1st turn. Steve made a few nice moves and shot up to 3rd, and Jeff also worked his way to the front. At the 4-minute mark, Steve was up to 2nd place and closing on current leader Jim Herrmann, and Jeff had worked his way up to 4th. With about 3 minutes left in the A-Main, Steve Boice was consistently ripping off 11.4's, and reeling Herrmann in. At about the 2-minute mark, Jim tapped a corner, and Steve shot by into the lead. That was all the drama for this race. Steve hit the cruise-control button and stretched his lead for the last 2 minutes, making it look easy. He was the only car to make it across the line for his 42nd lap. Jeff followed in 5th, Jarrod 8th, and Mark 9th. Jarrod and Mark had really tough mains due to traffic; it's pretty hard to pass when 10 cars are all within a few 10ths of each other. We should note that Mark's Rev.5 also had the best average "fast laps" at 11.2. Big congratulations to Steve Boice. When it came down to crunch time, he was cool, collected and mistake free. Steve's been racing for a pretty long time, and this was his 1st "big" win.... we couldn't be happier that it was done with a new Rev.5! Great job Steve, and thanks for the hard work. You can check out Steve's winning Rev.5 by clicking HERE. As always, thank you to all of our sponsors that help make our cars the quickest on the track. Jaco = http://www.jacoracing.net/ SMC = http://www.smc-racing.com/ Protoform = http://www.pro-lineracing.com/protoform.html Parma = http://www.parmapse.com/ Team Kwik = http://www.teamkwik.com/ Novak = http://www.teamnovak.com/ Trinity = http://www.teamtrinity.com/ Tekin = http://www.teamtekin.com/ JR Radios = http://www.jrradios.com/ I would also like to give a special thanks to Justin Johnson. I got pretty far behind on "team" stuff going into this race, and Justin literally stayed up 3 nights straight so we could get everyone on the track for practice. He also spent half the week helping customers so I could focus on the team. So.... Thanks Driva.... again. Have a great Autumn and Happy Racing! - Bruce |
