xrayxrayHome XRAY homeXRAY X-shopXRAY X-forumRCAmerica
supportsearchcontactguestbooksite map
newsproductsaboutusworldwide headlines

 
Race Report by Paul Lemieux
The Capitol Classic was held in Brandywine MD at Chris Whitney's 301 Raceway. 301 raceway is a short drive from the Nations Capitol and is also the venue for the 2011 Ifmar 1/8th scale on road fuel world championships.

Ralph Burch, and I attended the race for team XRAY/RC America along with a hand full of support drivers running the NT1 as well.

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

Wednesday was the first official day of practice, right away our Max powered NT1s were setting the pace. My car was very similar to the way I ran it at the worlds last year, I decided to add some of the new options like the aluminum pillow balls and aluminum dog bones to my car and I feel like my car picked up a touch of needed steering. Ralph merged a little closer to my set up by changing to a front diff from a spool and making some ackerman adjustments and by the end of practice on Thursday Ralph was setting the pace with his set up. On Thursday we only got half of the days practice in due to rain coming down, other fast drivers at the time were Mike Swauger, Vincent Jackson, Gianni Georgio and Chris Tosolini.

On Friday the rain continued all day therefor keeping all of the racers in their hotel rooms and working on their cars, Friday was a total wash.

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

Saturday:

All of qualifying was to be run on Saturday, 180 entry's or so ran three qualifying rounds. The track was not dry and ready to race on untill late morning.

Qualifying for TC was very exciting between Ralph, Vincent Jackson and myself. In the first and second round it was Vincent Jackson taking the TQ's by a very narrow margin over Ralph and I, in the third round I came out leading at the beginning but by the end it was Ralph who put his max powered NT1 on pole with the fastest time of the week over Vincent Jackson in second, myself in third and Mike Swager getting in a good run in the last round for 4th and Chris Tossilini in 5th.

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

8Th scale qualifying was good also, Mike Swager was ballistic fast but pitted in the first round giving Scott Kimbrow the early TQ, Scott went on to fend everyone off in round two and round three to put it on the pole with Vincent Jackson a close second in that class as well. In the 8th scale masters class it was Joaquin Desoto who ran great and was on point for the finals.

Sunday:

It was time for the finals, in the morning everyone was rebuilding their cars for the 45min main to come. I cleaned and inspected my entire car, replaced the rear belt and rebuilt the clutch with new bearings, I also put bare rims on the car and made sure that the car made weight with No rubber on the wheels just to be safe for tech after the long race.

The first final to run was the 8th scale masters A, unfortunately I did not get to see much of this race at all. Maxy Valazco took the win over Old school Rick Davis and your TQ Joaquin Desoto in third.

The second final was the TC A. Ralph Burch took the hole shot with the rest of the top 5 in qualifying position for the first lap, I negotiated my way by Vincent on the second lap to claim the second position, Vincent then ran in to engine problems, Swauger then took over the third spot for just a couple of laps untill he then went out with problems as well. It was Ralph who had about a 2 second lead over me going into the first pit, we had pulled away from the rest of the field. After two pits we were still the same distance apart.

Coming out of the second pit stop Ralph had a 2speed, he was having trouble with the car shifting, this allowed me to catch up, pass and pull about a three second lead myself. Then all of the sudden Ralph was back up to speed and was realing me in a bit, I believe that some fuel somehow worked its way on to Ralph's 2 speed shoes. After that the gap was anywhere between 3 and 6 seconds from me to Ralph for the next 25 min or so, it was about the 35 min mark when Ralph ran out of gas and that put him a couple of laps down. From there I cruised to the win with Ralph still maintaining second and Gianni Giorgio in third. This meant that it was an XRAY/Max power podium sweep. The entire team did a great job working together this week.

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

10th scale TC final results:

1. Paul Lemieux XRAY NT1
2. Ralph Burch Jr XRAY NT1
3. Gianni Giorgio XRAY NT1

4. Melvin Aulston
5. Rafael Angulo XRAY NT1
6. Diatta Collymore XRAY NT1

7. Steven Sohl
8. Jamie Corrado
9. Chris Whitney
10. Vincent Jackson

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

The 8th scale final was very exciting, at the begining Mike swager scliced threw the field and took the lead from Scott Kimbrow, Mike was pulling away fast, very soon after Mike would run out of gas giving the lead back to scott. From their Scott and Vincent Jackson would battle for most of the remaining 35 min, they were never more than 3 or 4 seconds apart depending on who pitted already. Meanwhile Mike Swauger after many issues had dropped I think 2 maybe 3 laps down, and was making up ground fast.

The race between Vincent and Scott was heating up, Scott looked to be making better mileage and pushing his pit stop's farther apart than Vincent and it was starting to show on the track, with 10 or so minutes to go Vincent ran out of gas and looked to have some other problems, this made Scott's lead by well over a lap with Swauger now in second. In the end it was Scott Kimbrow smooth and steady taking the Championship once again this year with Mike Swauger and his impressive come back to the lead lap in second and Paul Ciccerello fending off many charges threw out the race in third.

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

Congratulations to all the finalists and winners! I hope everyone in attendance had as much fun as I did. I would like to also thank my sponsors: XRAY/RCAmerica, Trinity, EPIC, Futaba, Protoform, Jaco, Max Power, and to Josh and Jerry Cyrul for their pit help.


Paul Lemieux's Set-up sheet.
Gianni Giorgio's Set-up sheet.

More photos

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)

click to enlarge
(click to enlarge)