I'm having a great RC summer so far. I've been out more than I usually get to and I think that I might actually understand more about the hobby than I ever have before.
Running out at Dukes Proscale, I've held my own with some of the best RC drivers in the area for a few minutes which is pretty good for me. It's frustrating when that one mistake costs you the race, but that's how it is with those guys. The really good ones stay focussed through the entire race, start to finish. I just don't know if I have it in me to stay that dialed into what I'm doing and what everyone else is doing at the same time.
Even if I can't win the race, I still enjoy the racing. If I can pull up on Randy Erb or push Chuck Lonergan for part of a race, I get a lot of satisfaction just from that.
Don't get me wrong, I win every now and again, just never when the fast guys are having a good run. My goal is to have everyone get a good clean, fast run in and to come out on top in that race. It's fun to win whenever you can, but it's a lot more enjoyable if it isn't because someone had a part failure or got caught up in a wreck.
Last night saw some killer action in Dominators. I am not a 4wd fan, but I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out. They are so darn competitive in that spec class and run side by side very clean most of the time. It was fun watching Andrew Knapp hound Chuck without resorting to putting the bumper to him. Eventually, they got together and Andrew got bounced out. It seems like there's door to door action in that class every week.
My 2wd late model took a step back this week to be sure. I waited on the track to come in to my setup and it just never did. I probably should have picked up on the fact that it wasn't going to and altered my setup to give it some rear bite. I wasn't the only car that struggled out there, just goes to show, that you can't stand pat on the dirt. Conditions always change and you have got to change with them. Not chasing the track too hard, just trying to figure ut where it's going to be by the end of the night.
One thing I haven't seen recently and that's the new guy. There's not many fresh faces in the hobby right now and that's not goo for its health long term. I've got some ideas on why that's the case.
Too serious. While I spend most of my time trying to figure out how I can pick up a tenth of a second, most people that are considering this hobby are looking for something they can have fun with right away. I don't think they want to hear about the endless hours of track time required to master their car control techniques. They want to get out there in something that looks cool and let it rip.
The cost of entry into the hobby is certainly a concern. Since there aren't too many of us to begin with, creating a production run of anything is tough to justify. The cost of the molds or machining is spread out by a small number of customers, making the product fairly expensive. If there were a few hundred thousand dirt oval fans out there, you an bet that someone in China would be cranking out these things for a hundred bucks. All things factored in, Custom Works is a pretty good price for the most part if you ask me.
Lately, there's been some interest in a street stock class. Essentially, it's a buggy with a street stock body and some kind of motor/tire spec. It's probably not in their best interest, but if Dodc gave some guidance on a class like this aimed at lowering the barrier to entry and keeping costs down, it might have a chance at taking off.
The other thought that I had is that track surface plays a big part in how competitive A new racer can be. High bite, perfectly consistent tracks are what we all hope for, but maybe it's not what we need. Nobody likes the idea of running on a rutted up track. It takes away our ability to predict and tune our vehicles consistently, which is a huge part of the dirt oval experience. Maybe loose dirt would help?
New racers don't have the know how or ability to get their cars working at peak efficiency. To some degree that's a good thing. It gives them something to shoot for. Where it is not advantageous is when they can't get around the track or they are so much slower that they are spending the entire heat moving over for faster vehicles. That's not a whole lot of fun.
I don't know what the answer is here. Maybe our tracks and our classes are fine. I'm having a blast. I just wish more people were out there with us. It's more fun to race with fifty racers than it is with twenty five.
I'm out for a week or two. It might be time to give the Dominator a whirl next time out and see what all the fuss is about.
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