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Tuesday afternoon I had finised running all of my errands and I was ready to pack my car to head down to Cleveland Ohio for the 2004 ROAR Carpet Nationals. All of the usual top U.S. drivers were expected to be there so it definatly was going to be a competitive race. I had been practicing with my car the few weeks before and I had been quite happy with it’s performance. I really thought this was going to be my best shot of the season at a really good result.

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Wednesday morning the track opened at 7am with practice starting at 8am for stock Touring. After getting my pit area set-up I took a look at the track from the driver’s stand to find what I thought would be the best place to drive from. This track was definatly technical!! A hairpin turn at the end of the main straight followed by a carousel, then several tight switch backs and chicanes. This was a track that gave you the room to turn some awesome lap times if you hit the line right, it could also tear up a car if you missed the line by even a narrow margin!!

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I set my car down and got used to the layout. Immediately my car felt pretty good but the lap times weren’t quite there. I ran a few more times and the day was done. The car wasn’t bad and I had used the evening runs to test motors so I could focus on the chassis when the traction was closer to race conditions.

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Thursday the track opened and practice started at the same times. My car was good but it was lifting the inside rear tire and it was a little unstable getting into the highspeed chicanes – especially the one in front of the driver’s stand. To fix this I leaned my rear shocks in one hole and softened my rear spring one step – this made the car much more stable and consistent. The only problem was that I lost a little bit of the rotation/steering around the hairpins and carousel’s.

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To get the steering back I raised the ball stud on the rear upright (hub carrier) by using a 3mm shim. This helped the hairpin steering out but I still needed more steering through the sweeper onto the main straight. That is where I finished up practice and I had to wait until the next day to test more.
Friday was qualifying. In the first round I had run my car as it was from practice the night before. My times were good but not as good as Mike Blackstock’s as I finished up 2nd for the round. For the second round I put on my new body (special thanks to Kolor’s by Kropy for driving to Cleveland to deliver it to me!!) which I mounted a little farther forward. This helped my understeer problem and I went 3 seconds faster!! Unfortunetly, it still gave me 2nd place in the round as Paul Lemieux upped the pace and beat me by .7 for TQ!!!

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After qualifying I was looking at Ralph Burch’s T1FK and I noticed he ran the al. rear uprights. I liked how rigid these were so I put them on my car to try them in Saturday’s qualifiers along with taking .5 degree of rear toe out of my car – this left me at 1.5 degrees of rear toe. We also talked about our motor set-up and we made some adjustments that we thought would give us more power in the last minute of the race.
Saturday the car was incredible!!! The al. uprights, the toe-in decrease and the motor adjustment were just what the car needed!! The balance of the car was nearly perfect as I could start the race running a 11.4 second lap, run a fast lap of 11.1, run consistent 11.3 and still finish on an 11.6!!! I improved my overall time by over 3 seconds and TQ’d the 3rd round!! In round #4, even after a small crash with traffic on the 3rd lap I was able to catch back up and TQ the round almost beating my previous best time!!! With the ROAR points system this gave me the TQ spot for the finals!!

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Sunday was the finals and I made no changes to my set-up. In the first A final, I was able to get a very good start and pull nearly 1 second on 2nd place in the first lap!! The others contunied to battle for 2nd place and I was able to slip away with a large lead and an easy race. The 2nd main wasn’t quite as easy as the rest of the field got a much better start on the opening laps but again while they battled for 2nd place it let me get away and ride out the 5 minutes!!! With this I had won the first 2 mains and I was not allowed to race the 3rd due to ROAR rules!!!

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I want to thank my sponsors Hudy, Jaco, SMC, Fantom, KoPropo, CEFX, LRP, Faskolor and Kolor’s by Kropy. I really want to thank Xray – with the work that has been done to the T1FK since the first time I drove it. I’ve had great luck and success on carpet I can honestly say that I think this is the best 1/10 Touring Car I have ever driven on carpet!! Now, for the outdoor season and I’m really looking forward to it!!!

Thanks for the hard work everyone!!

Josh


Thanks to Shane Archer for providing photos.