Hosted by St Louis Dirt Burners, this year was the 10th Annual Futaba Nitro Challenge on Aug 26-28th. With over 200 entries, this race drew racers from all over the country to compete in the 3 day event. XRAY racers Dillon Caldwell, Josh and Justin Wheeler, and Brock Witmer and others were in attendance with qualifying on Friday and Saturday, and the mains on Sunday. This year also featured the Dash for Cash exhibition and a double A Main for the Pro classes.
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In practice, our cars felt pretty good from the beginning, needing only a few small changes to fine tune. Qualifying went well and I ended up qualifying 2nd behind Cole Ogden. The Dash for Cash is a lot of fun and it is 6 laps with no corner marshals. Only 6 cars in the race and they invert the order 1-6. With the inverted order I started 5th. I worked my way through traffic and was right behind Dillon on the last lap and ended up rolling it over going for the pass. Dillon drove a great race and it was great seeing him take the win. The only bad part was my rollover on last lap put me starting 5th in the first A main :(
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The first A Final started off with an early crash, and I was hidden between two jumps where no one could see me. I lost 3/4ths of a lap on the 1st lap and had to work my way through the pack. I moved to 2nd quickly but never could catch Cole Ogden with the big lead he had established early. With the short 20 minute format limiting the time to recover, I finished 2nd for the first main.
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In the 2nd A Final, I started 2nd behind Cole Ogden and we battled the entire race with the crowd loving every minute of the race. With around 3 minutes left to go in the race I passed Cole and was able to pull a small lead and win Main 2. The tie breaker would be combined time from the two races and with my bad start in the first Main the time difference was too much to overcome, with Cole taking 1st overall. With two 4th place finishes, Dillon was able to take 4th overall as well.
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Pro Buggy Overall Results
1. Cole Ogden 2. Josh Wheeler â“ XRAY XB8
3. Michael Paige 4. Dillon Caldwell â“ XRAY XB8
5. Mitchel Gardner
6. Jonathan Burkhalter
7. Seth VanDalend
8. Nick Gibson
9. Colton Kiefer
10. Jimbo K
11. Nate Jaskot
12. Matt Gosch
