| Race report by Leon McIntosh |
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After a long exhausting night of travel, we showed up to the track around 9:00AM on Wednesday morning for a day of open practice. As usual the The Farm 2 â“ home of this yearâ™s Worlds event â“ produced an amazing track that tested every aspect of racersâ™ abilities. For those who have never been to this venue, it is 200ft. wide by over 300ft. deep, and every section of the track offers a different technical aspect than the previous.
We practiced a lot on Wednesday with Wheeler and Branham running close to a gallon of fuel through their cars. We primarily used the day to learn the track and get an idea of which tires were going to work. |
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| Thursday proved to be much of the same. It was scheduled to be controlled practice but the track owner, Lance Norick, decided to keep it open until the a line developed on the driver stand. Once again we put down as many laps as we could to get the difficult track layout engrained in our brains and we really started to work on car setup. Fortunately, all of our cars were pretty close from the start and worked pretty well so we only needed to make fine adjustments. Most of the changes we made were on the rear shocks; we switched between 350, 400, and 450 cst oils as well as the silver and blue-grey springs. Everything else remained about the same as we usually run. Ryan Lopez showed more speed by the end of the practice day than all of us put together. |
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| On Friday there were three rounds of qualifying scheduled, but with all of us running the regular Pro 1/8th class and the Worlds Warm-up 1/8th class we each had to run a total of 6 qualifiers that day. We all had solid first runs but we were quickly humbled in rounds 2 and 3 with problems ranging from random flameouts to overheating electronics. Josh Wheeler was really the only one to post runs that were any good. Jason Branham, Ryan Lopez, and myself (Leon McIntosh) all had some sort of troubles in both classes throughout the day. At the end of the day though, Josh and Jason were in the top 10 in the Worlds W-up class but not very high in the Pro class. I was 24th in the Pro class and off the charts in the Worlds Warm-up class. |
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| Friday night we all wrenched through the night to change our luck for the last two rounds of qualifying on Saturday, as Saturday showed us quite the change in luck for all of us. In 3 out of the 4 total qualifiers we ALL put in top 20 runs in both classes. Lopez in particular put in a great run in the Worlds Warm-up class by turning 16 laps to get a solid top 10 placing for the round. Once qualifying was done they ran the lower mains through the Cs, and unfortunately both Jason Branham and I ended up in the C-main of the Pro class because we didnâ™t get in 3 good rounds in this class. On the first lap we both came out of the first corner in 11th and 12th place after falling victims to the first corner pileups. We both made our way through the pack, but around the halfway point Jason flamed out and I managed to finish 8 seconds out of a transfer spot chasing down the likes of Greg Degani and Jason Ashton. Now that we were done with the Pro class we were left to focus on the Worlds Warm-up class mains on Sunday. |
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| Sunday started off a little behind as we realized Josh was in the 2nd race so Jason and I helped prep the car and glue tires for his B-main. Josh showed great speed and bumped up into the highly-competitive Pro A-main. He also put in some amazing runs in the Worlds Warm-up class to make it into the main there as well. Ryan Lopez showed his speed in the Worlds Warm-up class by taking advantage of his brackets and bumping into the Worlds Warm-up main as well. Both Jason and I again experienced extreme problems with Jason flaming out while in a bump-up spot to the Worlds Warm-Up main, and my throttle servo going bad before the start of my quarter. It was very unfortunate as both of us showed that we could turn laps with the fastest drivers at the event. |
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| In the Pro A-main, Josh Wheeler and Joseph Quargrine showed everyone why XRAY cars are world-renowned for championship-winning performance. Wheeler came up from 11th on the grid to chase down one of the worldâ™s fastest drivers, Ryan Maifield, and passed him with less than 2 minutes to go. Unfortunately, a late roll cost Josh the win but still enabled him to bring home a highly respectable 2nd place finish. |
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| In the Worlds Warm-up class, I believe XRAY had the most representation of any manufacturer in the main with three drivers: Ryan Lopez, Joseph Quagraine, and Josh Wheeler. In the main, all three of our drivers got great starts. Joseph and Ryan ran around 7th and 8th while Wheeler worked his way through the pack all the way up to 3rd place. He would have finished there had he not missed his pit and ran out of gas late in the race. However, with the great pit work from Jason Branham he was able to salvage a respectable 5th place finish. |
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In closing, we learned a lot about our cars at this race in preperation for the Worlds. We learned not only about car setup up but the critical usage of the different tire compounds. In the meantime, here are the setups we finished the race with and the top ten in each class.
1/8th Pro Buggy A-Main Finishing Order:
1. Ryan Maifield
2. Josh Wheeler XRAY XB808
3. Adam Drake
4. Jared Tebo
5. Taylor James
6. Billy Fisher
7. Yannick Aigon
8. Ty Tessmann
9. Mark Pavidis
10. Joseph Quagraine XRAY XB808
11. Bobby Tillman
12. Renaud Savoya
13. Jeremy Kortz
14. Ryan Cavalieri
15. Mike Truhe |
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Worlds Warm-Up Finishing Order:
1. Taylor James
2. Jared Tebo
3. Ty Tessmann
4. Ryan Cavalieri
5. Josh Wheeler XRAY XB808
6. Renaud Savoya
7. Joseph Quagraine XRAY XB808
8. Adam Drake
9. Ryan Lopez XRAY XB808
10. Yannick Aigon |
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