The 1st leg of the prestigious WCORC series kicked off in the beautiful town of Kelowna B.C. Canada. Roughly 3 hours north of international hot spot Vancouver B.C. host of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics.
Myself and Greg Roberts (my pit guy) arrived Thursday evening to set up the XRAY Canada Pit area and prepare for the rest of the team to arrive early Friday morning.
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Friday morning, we woke up to see great weather and a fantastic pair (yes pair) of off road tracks. One is for electrics with its own drivers stand and the second one for nitro vehicles. Since the tracks are open at 8am for electric only I decided to get some final tweaking done on my XB-8, seeing as the surface of the track had awesome grip, when wet and fairly good grip when dry, I tested with a set of Panther soft step pins and found the grip to be exceptional.
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I made a few adjustments to the WERKS LC21 B7 Collari engine as the air density is different from home and within the first few minutes of testing I was navigating the track with relative ease and making really good power. The rest of the XRAY Canada Team began showing up. After briefing the rest of the team on what I had found they soon were practicing and laying down some fast runs showing that the XB8 was definitely going to be in the show. The guys went over what tires were working and comparing set-ups. Most of our cars in the XRAY pits were running similar set-ups by days end with minor differences to suit driving styles.
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The new redesigned track layout now running in reverse direction from the previous years of the series was challenging but very fun. The practice day for me was a good indication of what track conditions would be like in race conditions as maintenance was not as often as during qualifying and race day. This was indeed a great track to run on and I ran many tanks while tuning grinning from ear to ear. I settled on a set of Panther Komoto2â™s with the Panther molded green inserts, which would be the tire all weekend for myself, and the rest of the team drivers. It was consistent and gave excellent off power cornering while providing fantastic forward bite.
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Qualifying was set for three rounds on Saturday with a final round for Sunday. I felt very confident with the car knowing I could put a fast run down with the track in fairly good shape. Greg Mills (a young driver from Calgary) driving an XB8 who was also pitting with us showed he would be a fast guy and someone to recon with over the weekend laying down an impressive run in the same qualifying heat as me. I took the TQ for the round with that run with 11 laps at 5:14. That time would stand for all four rounds. however since the race was going by qual points we would need to be consistent
Round two saw some faster laps coming from Gord Barr (XRAY Canada team principal) as he was getting very comfortable with the car as well as the other members of the team. With two rounds in the books XB8â™s were sitting in a position to have 6 of the top ten spots in qualifying and round three would prove not be much different
The interesting fact about the line up was that ½ the XRAY cars in the main were privateerâ™s. One on these drivers was telling me that XB8 is so good it drives itself around the track. He running a XB8 has significantly reduced the usual performance difference you see between sponsored and non-sponsored drivers. This was very evident as the B main featured factory sponsored drivers by rival teams.
The fourth and final round of qualifying was great for me to watch as I opted to not run in it in favor of giving a couple of the other guys a hand with pitting and going over my buggy to make it ready for the main. The real excitement came when the results were posted to see who made the show and since only 8 would be in the A with two bump-ups I was sure that the times would be close and the racing even closer with reliability being the biggest factor in a qual points qualifying race. XRAY had 6 of the 8 main slots showing that this car is not only capable of going fast but doing it consistently without failures or breakages.
Qualified Order before bumps.
1. Rob Sorjonen - Xray
2. Gord Barr - Xray
3. Greg Mills - Xray
4. Jordan Dombrosky - Xray
5. Gary Fleigel - Mugen 6. Navaz Walji - Xray
7. Brad Davis - Hyper 8. Greg Gavelin - Xray
The main proved to me that relaxing and setting a personal pace without trying to overdrive the car would be the way to do it. The start looked to be a bit messy as overzealous drivers frantically trying to dive into the lead and take positions on the first few corners made for two or three pileups with a couple of cars that started in the way back able to squeak by for the lead. After being cornered and getting back into the race I went from pole to 7th place and would be driving hard but pacing to catch up. The leader was pitting on a 5 minute pace while I (and the rest of the XRAY cars were using the cars drive train advantage to go much longer) were on a 6-7minute stop strategy. After 15 minutes I managed to work through the field driving as patiently as possible with any passes so I would not cause any timely accidents I managed to catch the race leader while he was in pit and as I went by pit lane he was exiting putting on a good run for a few minutes. I managed to put some distance between the now second place car and my XRAY. I kept the lead for the rest of the race just pacing the car and keeping a smart pit strategy with some great pit work. while giving some mental attention to how the rest of the field was doing. Later in the race Gord Barr moved his XB8 buggy into second place and made a strong showing charging the field because of a bad start. After a few more laps I heard more changes to the race order for third and fourth place as Jordan D. and Greg Mills would put their cars into the top 4 making the win much sweeter for XRAY.
I Would really like to thank all the guys in the XRAY Canada pits who without their input collectively we may not have done as well as we did, the track owner/ operator, Rob Schneider of Kelowna Hobby and Speedway and the great group of guys there who put in countless hours to put on this race, keep the tracks in awesome shape and feed us some great breakfast, lunch and dinner (a huge thanks to Rob\'s parents for their efforts and cooking for all of us) and we want to thank the host of the event, Kelowna Speedway and Hobby. We look forward to the next race of the series.
Final Standings:
1st Rob Sorjonen (TQ) - Xray
2nd Gord Barr - Xray
3rd Jordan Dombrosky - Xray
4th Greg Mills - Xray
5th Gary Fleigel - Mugen
6th Colin Branch - TTR
7th Brad Davis - Ho Bao 8th Greg Gavelin - Xray
9th Rob Schneider - Mugen 10th Navaz Waljii - Xray
