The Micro On-Road Nationals were held at RC Madness in Enfield Connecticut. Race promoters Dean and Chris did an excellent job of preparing a high bite, high speed track with plenty of room to race. The hobby shop was very well stocked with plenty of parts and accessories to keep all 180 cars running in all 12 classes (including oval) all weekend long.
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Practice:
The track was open Friday evening for roadcourse practice. Throughout practice, Scooby Horton and Robbie Dodge set fast laps for Stock. Mike Gee and Robbie set the pace for Mod after finding that they could run higher kv motors than we normally race with.
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Qualifying:
In Stock qualifying, Robbie was able to reset TQ in all three rounds, and managed to qualify a full lap above the rest of the field at 28 laps in 5:00.037. Scooby Horton held on to 2nd in the first two rounds until young XRAY driver Zack Barry improved on his pace to claim 2nd in round 3. John Cravotta, owner of Team Scream, snuck into the 3rd spot on the grid for the A-Main with his third round qualifying efforts, bumping Scooby to 4th.
Mod qualifying was tighter than stock when Tyler Gerber put in a solid 2nd place run that was only 2 seconds slower than TQ. TQ was set in round 2 by Robbie at 29 laps, which was the only 29 lap run of the weekend. 2007 Stock On-Road Micro National Champion Mike Gee qualified 3rd by about a second over XRAYâ™s Zack Barry. Tyler, Mike and Zack all put in 28 lap runs.
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Finals:
In the Stock A final, the field launched into turn one and came through with a fairly clean start. It was an XRAY 1 and 2 at first, but Mike Gee quickly found his way to 2nd and held that position for the first half of the race. Due to some bad luck in the sweeper, Mike fell out on his 16th lap to hand over the runner up spot to Scooby Horton, who would hold on to it for the remainder of the race. Zack Barry also had bad luck and experienced gear mesh issues that brought him to an early retirement on lap 6. Darren Howard fought hard from the 6th starting spot to claim the final podium position. Robbie was able to hold the top spot from tone to tone, winning the Stock class by over a lap, completing 27 laps.
Stock Final Results:
1 Robby Dodge XRAY M18
2 Scooby Horton XRAY M18
3 Darren Howard XRAY M18
4 John Cravotta
5 Denmark
6 Wesley Dennis
7 Michael Gee 8 Zack Barry XRAY M18
9 Chris Proctor XRAY M18
10 Dave Berry XRAY M18
Next up was Open Truck A main race. Zack started in the 2nd spot and at the horn was off to a good start. He held the lead for about 15 laps until he tagged a rail flipping onto his roof , a slow recover by marshalls allowed the second and third place drivers to get ahead of him . Zack ended up finishing third when all was said and done.
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Open Truck Final Results:
1 Nick Zaccaro
2 Alex Galenski 3 Zack Barry XRAY M18T PRO
4 Mark Smyka
5 Arron Wilson 6 Tom Loranger XRAY M18T PRO
The Mod A final brought another clean start for everyone and another tone to tone victory for Robbie Dodge. Tyler Gerber ran well his first time with an M18 to come home in 4th. Zack Barry and Mike Gee battled hard for the 2nd position, but it was Mike Gee's Psycho Cells LiPo powered ride that edged out Zack in the end to claim the 2nd spot on the podium. Zack held on to the 3rd position and finished there with an extremely respectable run for such a young racer.
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Modified Final Results:
1 Robby Dodge XRAY M18
2 Michael Gee 3 Zack Barry XRAY M18
4 Tyler Gerber XRAY M18
5 Denmark
6 Wesley Dennis
7 Arron Wilson
8 Dave Berry 9 Chris Proctor XRAY M18
10 Mark Smyka
The performance of the XRAYs has undoubtedly been unmatched the past few years in micro sedan racing. All of the cars in the top 10 of both the Stock and Mod A-Mains were XRAY M18's of one form or another, proving that XRAY's quality is top notch. Thanks to RCAmerica and XRAY for all of the great products and support.
