The ROAR Region 9 Championships took place this past weekend at Starcar Raceway in Corpus Christi, TX. Starcar has a great off-road facility located in one of Corpus Christiâ™s city parks; they also have great club members who put in a lot of hard work to revamp the track to make the setting for a great Region Championship. The track gave true meaning to âśoff-roadâť in tat in every round with the clay/sandy mixture combined with high winds the surface became very rough which made for a very tricky and tough racing surface.
In qualifying it was feast or famine and with the track deteriorating quickly mistake free runs were hard to hang on to. I took TQ in the first round and set the fastest run of the day but in the second round to many mistakes cost me and Team Xray driver Roger Ayers was able to set TQ for the round. In the third round it was between Roger and me for overall TQ and it came down to the last lap where I clipped Roger by less than half a second.
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In the Sportsman A-main top qualifier and Team XRAY driver Ethan Lefebvre checked out leading by a comfortable margin until a screw came loose causing his rear turnbuckle to come loose from the shock tower. Ethan continued and even though he was loosing time to the leader he never gave up keeping himself on the lead lap. On the last lap of the race the race leader ran out of fuel allowing Ethan to pass him earning him the win and his first Regional Championship. Great job Ethan!
In the Expert Truggy main Team XRAY driver Nick Lefebvre (Ethanâ™s father) got off to a good start and settled into third. He continued to run at a consistent pace keeping the race leaders in front of him who were slowing each other down allowing Nick to slowly catch up. Sure enough the leaders experienced problems allowing Nick to take the lead holding off second place to take the win and his first Regional Championship.
In the Expert Buggy main I got off to a great start and I could see a huge pile up behind me allowing me to have a comfortable lead by the end of the first lap. I managed to hold on to lead from wire to wire to win the main and make this my fourth Region 9 championship in a row. Nick Lefebvre, winner of the truggy main, drove a great race to make it a 1, 2 finish for XRAY.
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1/8 Expert Buggy A Main Results
1. Jason Branham (TQ) XRAY XB808
2. Nick Lefebvre XRAY XB808
3. Mark Morrow
4. Thomas Wells 5. Roger Ayers XRAY XB808
6. Ramon Sigrist 7. Derek Buster XRAY XB808
8. Jonathan Eschbach
9. Nathan Vivares
10. Jerry Lewis
Congrats to Team XRAY on a great weekend and well deserved wins!
