Beachline RC Raceway and Superior Hobbies hosted the second round of the Florida Super Cup series. This same facility hosted the 2014 ROAR Off-Road Nationals so it is a track and surface that I know fairly well. I showed up to the track on Friday in order to get some practice in to learn the layout and understand the tire situation. Here is breakdown of how it went:
Understanding the Traction and Tires
Off-road electric racing is crazy where I live in terms of tires. On the vast majority of our tracks a soft tire (M3, Blue, or Soft according to brand) on a 4wd electric car is a 5-minute tire, meaning that at the end of a single run you have slicks. Recently though, our tracks have started sealing the surface with what can only compared to as Elmerâ™s Glue. It basically turns the track into concrete and makes it real shiny. Due to this though we can now run MC or Clay compound tires and either run ghost tread or slicks for several runs.
So I threw down from the start with Pro-line MC electrons and ran the same set for most of practice and racing the next day. I used Liquid Wrench as traction additive as well. This setup up gave my car maximum traction and worked each time I set it down.
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My XB4 was hooked! Maybe too hooked.
From the time I put my car down for its first run it was pretty good. My lap times were a bit off in the beginning but as things went on and I made changes the car kept getting better. Ultimately, it was super easy to drive. Iâ™m confident anyone could have taken my car and put in solid runs.
Over the course of the weekend I tried all sorts of setup changes with different pills in the lower suspension mounts, moving weight around the car, and camber link changes. They all made a difference and I ultimately ended up with the setup that is attached. To make my car better, I felt like I could have used a little more rotation in the middle of the corner so I would have tried going back to gear diffs f/r, maybe a thicker rear sway bar, or 12* front caster blocks.
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The Racing was tight
I get to race with a lot awesome drivers, former world champions, form worlds finalist, ROAR finalists, and more. So qualifying is always tight and only a few seconds separate TQ from BQ. In the first qualifier I made a few early mistakes in traffic that left me 5th overall. My car was good but I was still searching for steering so I made a few more changes for the 2nd round. In the 2nd qualifier I was on a solid pace to put me in the top 3 but a late mistake saw me improve my position to 4th overall.
Starting 4th for a main event where the 1st turn is a 180* turn is always sketchy and this time proved no different. The race got underway and we got through it pretty clean. Unfortunately though it was the 2nd turn that proved disastrous. I was tagged from behind and dropped to dead last after the first lap. For the remainder of the race I put my head down and clicked off clean lap after clean lap. In the end I was battling for 2nd coming down to the wire but when the horn sounded I would finish up in 3rd spot.
With a good finish at the first race and rescuing a 3rd place finish here I am still in the hunt for the series win with 2 rounds left to go. The next race will be at Sundancers RC Raceway October 2-3. Stay Tuned!
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Final results â“ Modified:
1. Ryan Eckert
2. Daimon Borkowicz 3. Leon McIntosh â“ XRAY XB4
