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Chuck Moon Wins 2013 Winter Nats 1/8 Masters Championship at the world famous "Fort" in Fort Myers, Florida USA.
Little did anyone know how important the first (2) rounds of qualifying on Wednesday would be. But, when it rained out all (3) rounds on Thursday everyone had a story as to why they should have qualified better.
For Billy Bowerman, he set the TQ pace on the very first round of qualifying which was never relinquished. At the start of the race Billy Bowerman took the lead from his pole position and lead for the first 25 minutes of the 40 minute main. Chuck Moon started 4th on the grid but moved into 2nd place on the 1st lap of the main and kept Billy in site through out the race. Chuck made several runs at Billy during the first half of the race but in doing so ran out of tires at the 16 minute mark, not quite half way. After his pit crew put on fresh rubber Chuck was faster than Billy and started running him down quickly. This time when Chuck Moon got close to Billy Bowerman, Billy got slowed down by lap traffic and eventually caught a wall.
Chuck Moon then took the lead and stared to set sail for the win. Skip Starkey who had been running 3rd also pasted Billy moving him into 2nd place. Skip made a really hard charge near the end of the race but Chuck Moon was able to step on the gas enough to maintain the lead and go on to Win comfortably. |
| Top ten for Masters at the Winternats: |
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1. Chuck Moon - XRAY RX8
2. Skip Starkey - XRAY RX8
3. Rob Crawford
4. Joaquin Desoto
5. Greg Esser
6. Billy Bowerman - XRAY RX8
7. Brent Gottfried - XRAY RX8
8. Jim Rice - XRAY RX8
9. Dan Louis - XRAY RX8
10. Armin Weihert |
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| Race report by Dirk Wischnewski & Rick Vrielijnck |
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| 1/10 - race report by Dirk Wischnewski |
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The 2013 Florida Winternats held from 12 till 16.2 at the world famous Fort Myers RC track. This yearâ™s starter flied was quit big compared to the last years. 28 masters, 53 sedan and 40 in open class. Team xray was well present by Ralph, Mike, Rick and many others.
The Fort Myers track is a unique track and not comparable to anything in Europe. It has super high traction and you run close to the very hard boards all the time, so there is no room for mistakes. For me it was the first time at this track so I struggled a little bit in early practice. But after some runs it gets better and better. Due to the big flied practice was limited and qualifying started a little bit too early for me. So I was not 100% happy with my driving and setup as qualifying started. After the first day of qualifying and 2 safe runs I was in 4th position behind Ralph, DJ and Mike. Unfortunately in the morning of qualifying day 2 big rain started and the rest of qualifying was washed out. |
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| Before the Finals on Saturday evening we got the chance to practice for 2 extra hours in the morning. I used this time to improve my setup and so I was quite confident going into the 45min finale. The start went smooth and I was sitting in 4th position for some time, than many driver got problems and immediately I was in 2nd place behind DJ. Unfortunately I missed one fuel stop and run out of fuel, this costs almost 4 laps so there was no chance to fight for first place, so I end up in 2nd place behind DJ and in front of Mike. At the end I'm happy with my result at this very challenging track. Thanks to my pitman Edo and Cristian. |
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| Final result 1:10: |
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1. DJ APOLARO
2. DIRK WISCHNEWSKI - XRAY NT1
3. MIKE SWAUGER - XRAY NT1
4. PAOLO MORGANTI
5. LORAN WHITING - XRAY NT1
6. CHAY BLOUNT
7. RALPH BURCH - XRAY NT1
8. RINO LINO
9. MAXY VELAZCO
10. SCOTTY GRAY |
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| 1/8 - race report by Rick Vrielijnck |
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This year we decided to attend the Winternatâ™s in Florida USA, i have been there before and always enjoyed the break from the cold winter in Europe. Since a few years this race is shortened a little but luckily there was also a state race the weekend before so we ran at that race too just to get track time. On Saturday the car was allready quite good and we used the qualifiers to get a better setup, on Sunday they ran one more qualifier and the finals. I decided not to run the finals since it doesnâ™t really make sense to test stuff and interfere with drivers that are actually running for the state championship, which was also appreciated by them.
On Monday the Ft Myers track was closed so we went to Arcadia, host of the gas on-road nationals in 2012. We run-in some of the new Picco EM-X engines and after that returned to the hotel to prepare everything for the Winternatâ™s practice which was starting on Tuesday.
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Like i said Tuesday was the first practice day and we fine tuned the RX8 and Picco engines to get faster and even more consistent. At the end of the day i was quite happy but i still lost time in some parts of the track because the car was a little twitchy, so i tried the new shock supports ( # 342192 and # 343191) i had to get used to the new feeling of these parts because the steering is much more calm but in the middle of the corner you still have the same amount of steering but overall the car is much more stable. With this improvement i could finally go under the magic 10 seconds laptime barrier and do some 10.9 and 11.0 laps really consistent.
On Wednesday morning there was still practice untill 11 AM but since i was comfortable with my RX8 and Picco engines i just prepared the car for qualifying in the afternoon. During the first qualifyer everything was ok and i just wanted to set a time, unfortunately someone crashed and landed on my car so the car was damaged and the run was lost. The second run had to be good because the weather forecast for Thursday was quite bad so in that run i took it easy and make a safe run just to be in the A-main. In the end it was still good for 4th overall only 4 seconds of the TQ Mike Swauger also with Xray and Picco.
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Thursday was totally rained out so there was no racing at all, also they decided not to run any more qualifyers on Friday. Friday morning we arrived late but the track was still wet and sometimes it rained a little but the Ft Myers crew headed by Jim Rice worked really hard to make the track ready for racing again. Finally they still managed to finish the Friday program on time.
Saturday was the day for all A an B mains. In the morning i used the 2 hours open practice to see if the car was still ok on the different track conditions, fortunately it still was however it took some laps and a few mistakes to get used to the lower traction.
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| In the afternoon it was finally time for the A-main 1/8th open. During the warmup the track got cold and the wind became stronger making track conditions very unpredictable. At the start everyone got away ok, and after the 4th lap i was allready 3rd following closely, up untill the second pitstop everything was going ok and despite the difficult conditions i was still 3rd. Then after the second stop the tuning of the engine changed complety and it was really lean so i came in to re-adjust but we couldnâ™t get it tuned anymore even after a glowplug change it was still going from very rich to very lean so obviously i was out of the race for the podium. After many lost laps we got it going somehow and i still finished 5th. I think the problem was coming from a damaged carb since i had a crash in the morning session and broke the aifilter, and it also damaged the carb so bad luck this time. |
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| Final result 1:8 open: |
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1. PAOLO MORGANTI
2. MIKE SWAUGER - XRAY RX8
3. DJ APOLARO
4. FLAVIO ELIAS
5. RICK VRIELIJNCK - XRAY RX8
6. RALPH BURCH - XRAY RX8
7. RAFAEL ANGULO
8. MARCO VANNI
9. MICHAEL SALVEN
10. MARK GREEN |
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After a busy week of racing and testing i had a good feeling about my RX8 and Picco engines and i learned a few new things again to improve the car in high traction conditions.
I would like to thank the whole Ft Myers crew for their hard work during the whole week, we really enjoyed the race.
Also thanks to my sponsors: Xray, Hudy, Picco, Enneti, Runnertime, LRP, Sanwa, Protoform.
Also thanks to Herman my mechanic for the help all week and to Edoardo Picco for helping out, iâ™m sure all Picco drivers were very satisfied with all the support. Thanks also to R/C America for the pitspace and relaxed atmosphere. |
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