I'll skip most of the stuff I covered in other entries here and just do the stuff that I thought was interesting.
The track was a very similar surface to ours and looked a lot like our old track at BFG with a little more banking. They kept the track wet, which Arnie indicated was the way that Street Tracs like to run without wear. Arnie did a good little piece on track prep during his seminar later in the evening. Wet track is great for rubber tires like Street Tracs and keeps the wear down. As a track dries out, it becomes more abrasive and starts to put down rubber. This leads to the Blue/Black groove conditions where foam tires are really the preference. The way I relate that back to our racing is that if we want to move towards foams, we might have to change our watering strategy a little at BFG. It's not my track or my call, just saying that's what the CW guys were saying. For purposes of this race, they intentionally kept the water on it, which was good for me because that's the way I've always run better.
The chasis seminar from Nathan Dean and Arnie Fie was very informational. They covered a lot more ground than the previous session that I attended out at Dukes. Everything from hub carrier adjustments to why you do just about every adjustment on the car was covered. I have several pages of notes that I'm going to distill and put together in a series of blog entries that, hopefully, will spread that knowledge out a little more to all of the racers that read this blog.
Butch had a pretty good Late Model, much better than mine and he managed to qualify for the B main. Not bad when you consider they were running an E main and the A was populated by Team drivers and National Champions. I had horrible qualifying efforts and ended up in the D main for LM. I won the D, but was taken out a few times in the C and could only manage 3rd of 8 so my run ended there. In the end, I just couldn't get the looseness out of my car without tightening it up too much on entry.
On the ride home, I think I got something figured out. Earlier in the day, I had moved the hub spacers forward in the front of my Rocket to get more turn in before I went back to a stock setup. After listening to the chasis seminar, it makes me think that that's where my problem was. A day late and a dollar short on that one.
In Mod Sprint, both Butch and I were WAY underpowered, but I think that actually resulted in better finishes for both of us because a lot of racers just couldn't get a handle on their bigger motors. I went to a 10.5 and Butch stayed with 13.5 so we were really better off rolling the corners than the guys running 5.5's and 7.5's. Butch qualified for the C and transferred to the B with a solid run. I made the B, qualifying 9th of 30 or so Sprint cars so I thought that was pretty solid. I think I had a car capable of transferring to the A if I didn't get taken out three times in the B. Like I said, there were guys out there with a lot more motor then skill. It might be a lesson for all of us back at BFG.
In the end, it's probably a good thing that I didn't make the A because there were a few guys that could in fact, put the power down as it were. The top guys were in the 50-51 lap range where I was running a 48 lap pace at times and ending with 47's for the most part. My fast laps were somewhere around four tenths off of TQ pace, so it wouldn't have been very much fun moving over every lap for the fast guys.
Street Stocks were a riot to watch. They use buggies with 21.5 motors so the speeds were a little slower, but the racing was side by side all the way around the track. Very cool class for guys that don't want to spend a ton of money or time on their rides. The PA Nitro tour in Pennsylvania gets 20-30 a night from what I hear because it's very accessible for the average RC person. I would be very interested if something like that took off at BFG. 13.5 is too much motor IMO for the track.
13.5 seems to be blinky every where we go now. It keeps the playing field a little more level, although the fast guys are always running up front no matter what you do. As much as it pains me to say this (since I love my boost), it wouldn't be a bad idea to consider going that route at BFG to keep things simple.
The tech table was very nice. It was basically a box with the diameter of the car measured to spec. If it rolled through and met the length requirements, it was good. If not, it wasn't. These are done out of plexiglass with a laser cutter. The guy that does them, charges $250, which is probably a decent enough deal (as long as it wasn't my money). If we wanted to start doing some self tech, we would just need someone that's good measuring and cutting to put some template jigs together out of whatever material we could find.
The way they ran tech is that they only teched the top three from every round. If you failed tech, you lost that round of qualifying. During the mains, everyone had their batteries checked for voltage, then the two transfers went to tech before they could advance. One local racer got DQ'd for not having his speedo in blinky mode. He was pretty salty about it, but the tech guy and the tech table were up there all weekend for people to check their stuff. I had to trim my wing on my sprint car because I hadn't cut it right to the inside of the little lines when I cut it out of the kit. It wasn't really an advantage having an extra 1/32nd of an inch of lexan out there. Butch had to move a wing brace position which also gave him no real advantage. Rules is rules thought I guess. The downside is something to think about before considering getting serious about DODC rules. Personally, I'm a fan since I'm not the one who's going to have to deal with the disgruntled racer when he gets popped for unintentionally missing the spec on something. The tech guy is not going to be a very popular person. The one we had was really nice and very anal, which is probably what you want. He made no bones about what the rules were and had a copy of them right there if you wanted to dispute them.
Speaking of rules, there were some changes to DODC implemented recently that are worth noting. The spoiler in the back of Late Models was reduced to 2.5 inches. I never did have mine to 2.75 since I thought it looked dorky so it really didn't effect me. The EDM cars have different templates too. Basically the same without the crazy billboard side panels. There was also talk that ROAR might un-approve the new D3.5 motors that everyone is using. They were allowed for this race because there was no notification of the change before the race. Butch pulled his out because he didn't like it, borrowed an older Thunder Power motor from Rob Mulvaney and his car took off. It's a crazy world and like the song goes "all that is gold does not glitter" (I'm aware that the Led Zeppelin variant is different). It's dirt where turning and handling are typcially more important that horsepower.
The secondary class out there besides Street Stock is the BMod class. It's basically a spec body from stalker that actually looks like an EDM like we see in the midwest draped over a buggy chasis. Pretty cool looking, although I'm not sure what purpose it serves in the classes since Street Stock is about the same thing with bumpers. I guess it's a matter of whether or not you're more of an open wheel fan.
Hope to see you all at the track soon......
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