Recently was held the second ever XRAY On-road challenge race in the US. The series is unique in many ways, it is designed to support local racing and help tracks continue to do what we all love. The events are run as a big club race and are not designed to cost a lot of money and burn racers out. We want to help racers and keep them interested in our sport. So far my role has been to inform the drivers of tuning options and get hands on with their cars. This has worked very well and I think that one by one people have directly benefited from it and become even more excited about RC. RC America has taken a non-selfish approach to this series, this in mind we have allowed racers with all types of chassis to compete and benefit from what we are doing. RC America president Ralph Burch: "We want to promote racing, keep racers interested and therefore keep tracks around. The whole hobby will prosper from strong tracks"
RC America sends at least one professional team driver to every race to offer support and knowledge to all racers in attendance.
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At the first ever XRAY challenge in Portland, Travis Schreven and I were in attendance. For race two at RC Hobbies in Jonesboro, AR, it was Andrew Ellis and I who were there to support the drivers. RC Hobbies is a permanent asphalt track with a great hobby shop. The track is the perfect size for 10th scale and 12th scale electric racing. Andrew and I arrived on the night of September 19th, after some sleep we hit the track on Saturday morning for an all day practice session. Right away Drew and I were getting our hands dirty with several different racers cars, from XRAYs to minis. Everyone was invited to come up with questions about their cars and racing in general. It was a great experience and generated plenty of excitement with the local racers.
On Sunday we saw some great racing in all classes, it was very cool because everyone could see that most racers were benefiting from the hands on approach by Drew and I. It seemed that a lot of drivers were improving from the assistance we were able to provide. I had several new drivers tell me that they do not think they drive well enough for the setup to matter. I didn't believe that to be true and a lot of them were able drive twice as good once I helped them with their cars. Between rounds of qualifying Drew and I ran demonstrations with our cars. The racers had fun watching us beat up on each other. It was totally fun for us also because being team mates we never get to throw doors to each other.
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Here is a list of the final top three in all classes.
Congratulations to all finalists:
Beginner Spec Class
1st Rob Sadler
2nd Colton Jaynes
3rd Chase Parker
TQ = Tony Johnson
Stock Sedan
1st Garrett Winingham 2nd Lee Thompson XRAY
3rd David Bates XRAY
TQ = Lee Thompson XRAY
Super Stock Sedan 1st Quinton Robbins XRAY
2nd Jason Lutz XRAY
3rd Ross Tate XRAY
Mini
1st Lee Thompson
2nd John Jolly
3rd Jason Lutz
I would like to thank all of the drivers in attendance for making the race great. Also I would like to thank the owner of RC Hobbies (Quinton) for all of his hard work. For those of you who know Quinton, it is obvious how much work he does at his facility for everyone to enjoy. RC America could not have done this event without him.
