| Race report by Gene 'the machine' Hickerson |
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| The final round, round 8, of the ROAR Florida State Series was held last weekend in Daytona Beach. It rained all week, so no one was able to practice on the new layout. The track crew did an excellent job getting the track back in shape Saturday morning. The qualifying was only delayed 2 hours so that everyone could get one run on the new track. The track was tight and technical. The lanes were only 3-8 feet wide, so traffic was going to be an issue. |
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| In round 1, I was on a TQ run, but through the 3 foot wide S section, another crashed right in front of me, causing a traffic jam and pile up. After loosing about 12 seconds, I was back on my way. My fastest lap was 37.7 seconds, almost a second faster then any other lap of the day. The average lap time by most of the racers was about 42 seconds. JR Mitch had a clean run in the last heat of the round and took TQ for the round, followed by Ryan Eckert, Anton Watson, and me. |
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| In round 2, the track started to dry in sections and was loose & dusty on part of the track, and wet & muddy at others. The track was also much more bumpy due to foot prints on the soft sponge like clay. I was only able to improve my time by 1 second, with the 2nd fastest time of the round. Mitch had the fastest time again by a few seconds over me. |
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| The main events were run under the lights as the temperature dropped. The moisture from the humidity and fog made the track wet again, providing awesome traction for the A-main. At the start of the 30 minute A-main, Mitch took the hole shot, followed be me and my Xray Xb8 in 2nd after the 1st turn pile up. One crash by me several minutes later allowed Mitch a 9 second lead. About half way through the main, I started to put down consistent fast laps and closed slowly on Mitch. After I cut the lead to 1.5 seconds, Mitch started to have excessive noise from his rear diff. Soon after, it let go and dropped Mitch out of the race. That gave me a 29 second lead over 2nd place Bobby Phillips. |
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I then went into cruise control and built up a 39 second lead. I then decided to make a splash and go for fuel with 1 minute left, and brought home the win, the only driver to do 43 laps. Phillips held on to 2nd, followed by Eckert in 3rd.
1/8th scale A-main
1. Gene Hickerson XRAY XB8
2. Bobby Phillips
3. Ryan Eckert
4. Gary Mazur
5. Jim Myers XRAY XB8
6. Jim Larrimore XRAY XB8
7. Dave Bengston
8. Anton Watson
9. JR Mitch
10.Jeff Keeton |
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