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News  Racing
XB9 Wins Grand Opening Race In Irving, TX |
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| Race Report by Kurt Kellum |
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| This past weekend, Speed Monkey Rc, located in Irving Texas held their Grand Opening Race for the facility. First off, I want to say thank you to Steve Pac and his whole crew for opening a truly awesome 1/8 scale off road track and facility here in the DFW Metroplex. We had a great turn out for the race, somewhere around 160-170 drivers with lots of great competition from all over the southern US. The track opened up for practice on Friday at noon. I decided to make sure I had everything ready and plenty of tires glued so I could test tires and compounds throughout the day. I came up with a new setup for the buggy when I was on a testing trip to California. I have now ran this setup at Revelation in Ontario, at Thunder Alley in Beaumont, at Indy RC in Garland, TX and now Speed Monkey Rc in Irving, TX. All four tracks could not be more different in size, dirt, etc. and my car feels awesome on all off it with the only changing tires!! |
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| I started on AKA City/Beams (Soft), it was about 95 degrees, sunny, and dry track all weekend. The track had a pretty good layer of dust on it as it was settling in being brand new. The car felt awesome from the moment it hit the track! After my first practice I decided to try AKA Enduros (soft) because they had a more round shape and still have a large size pin or lug. They were definitely better than the City Beam combo not near as much side bite and faster overall. They did not seem to catch as many ruts and holes. After trying those two tires I made 1 change to the car I went from 3.5 degrees of anti squat and rear toe in to 4 degrees of anti squat and rear toe in. It helped lock the car in on power and mid corner and exit. After I made the change I wanted to try AKA Impacts and Gridirons because the track was starting to come in. So for the next round I went out on Impacts (soft) and it was the best the car had been yet! I could push it everywhere and it had tons of corner speed and traction. Only thing left for the day was to try AKA Gridirons and see if they would be better or worse than the impacts. I decided to wait till the end of the day to try them because that would be the closest track conditions to racing. Grids were dialed and they would be the tire for quals on Saturday. |
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| Saturday we had three rounds of 10 min rocket round qualifiers to decide who would be TQ overall for Sunday. I kept everything the same from practice and went out on a fresh set of AKA Gridirons (soft). I had a pretty good run but had a few errors from pushing to hard. I was still able to come away with the TQ for the round which was good. Even though I felt I could clean it up and run a better time. I didn't make any changes at all because I had the fastest lap and TQ in RD 1 so I just focused on driving and not crashing. The buggy was awesome, I set a new TQ for the round but it did not hold up. JB was able to beat my time by a few seconds a grab the TQ for the round. We ran round three at night which changed things up a bit with the track and visibility. It was a three way battle throughout the round between fellow XRAY driver Josh Glancy, Jason Branham and me. I had some trouble with traffic and Josh was able to get the TQ for the round but it was not fast enough for the overall it went to Jason Branham. |
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| As Sunday rolled around I only had minor work to do just some small things tires, and clutch bell bearings and my buggy was ready to go for the 45 min A main. I started 2nd on the grid behind Jason and just in front of fellow XRAY team mate Josh Glancy. Josh had a motor issue at the start that put him back in the field and Jason and I had two car fright train until I stuck it in the pipe about 5 min in. Jason built up a 12-15 sec lead at this point and Josh had worked his way back up through the field to third. Josh then made it by me when I came in for fuel at the 10;20 mark on the clock for my first stop. I pulled out of pit lane right behind him and we followed each other around the track and cut JB's lead down to 6 sec. At some point during pits we passed Branham and took over 1st and 2nd. when Josh came in for his 2nd stop I took over the lead and never gave it up from that point on. Jason was right on my tail after my next pit stop. We followed each other around the track for almost 8min less than 2 sec apart. I left the door open after the big table top and JB tried to take it but caught the pipe and got hung up. After that he ran out of gas during the race and I was able to build a two lap lead over him in 2nd. However at the end of the race with about 7 min to go my left contact lense fell out of my eye and it made it very hard to see the left side of the track and judge things. Then with about 2-3 min to go my throttle servo started to cut out and loose power, I had gas but no brakes!! Luckily I had built up a lead and was able to barley hang on despite not finishing the last lap lol. |
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| I cannot say enough about the new facility and the all the people that made this race happen !! We are truly lucky to have a world class facility like this owned and operated by racers for racers. Thanks Steve and the entire Speed Monkey RC Crew. Also I would like to thank all my sponsors without you none of this would be possible. RC America and XRAY, Hudy, VP Power master Fuel, Lucky 7 Rc, AKA Tires, Archway Coatings, Zig Racing, A#1 Air, & Out Front Frames.com |
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| Pro Buggy A Main Final results |
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1. Kurt Kellum XRAY XB9
2. Jason Branham
3. Mike Battaile
4. Hunter LaFlower
5. Michael Harrison
6. Andrew Clark XRAY XB9
7. Gary Haggard
8. Tony Keigley
9. Joshue Riewe XRAY XB9
10. Roger Ayres
11. Josh Glancy XRAY XB9
12. Hunter Kinsey
13. Brian Rickard
14. Pablo Tejada
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