RC America has sent the whole XRAY USA team to the most anticipated off-road race event. David Joor has been making almost live reports from the race and posts pictures at the rcamerica.com web.
For all the XRAY members we will mirror short reports and few photos. For more visit the website www.rcamerica.com
Intro
(click to enlarge)
This is the race that we have all been waiting for. Harlingen Texas is the home to this National event and with it brings a different style of track. It is hard packed, dry, not too many jumps, and a ton of straight away. Anything will work but to be the best of the best, you will have to tweak just that little bit to keep that corner speed up while maintaining stability. All the teams are fighting for this title because there are a lot of new versions of cars out there this time around, a lot of team changes, and most importantly a lot of bruised ego's from races past. The Nationals is where all the smack talk is settled and usually one of the most fun and anticipated races of the year.
Wednesday
source www.neo-buggy.net (click to enlarge)
We are now two days into practice and the numbers are coming in. The competition is closer than ever. The track has allowed for laptimes that are relatively close to each other so it is coming down to consistancy. For a National level race, the track is holding up very well and I just went to the track this evening and saw that they are adding more concrete patches to some of the faces that have gotten blown out.
source www.neo-buggy.net (click to enlarge)
As usual the fast guys are the same and there are no surprises but what is coming to light is the way to be fast. After round two today, the track came up in traction quite a bit. Car began getting on two wheels and the bumps were coming out. A lot of guys are turning fast laps but wrecking every couple of wrecks which ruins everything they gained by turning the fast lap. So the question in hand is to drive for fast laps or for consistancy. Driving for consistancy is not much slower but mentally it goes against all that we have learned as racers, try and push the car to go fast.
source www.neo-buggy.net (click to enlarge)
The Xray buggies are hooking up very well and once again we are all setting our cars up a little differently. Josh and Justin arrived today and got one tank in, both looking very good right out the get go. The whole team is running 28's so we are feeling good, there are a few fast guys running high 27's but no one is doing them extremely consistenty yet. As the times should be getting faster, the track begins to fall apart a little more not allowing the times to increase as much as they should.
Tommorow is the last day of practice and it is time to get it all straightened out. Due to the changing conditions, no one has been able to get comfortable with what they are running. We all have hopes that the track conditions tommorow will be more consistent.
