The track was fast this week, fast enough for Steve Bahr to set the Late Model record and fast enough for me to break into the 3.9 second range in both Sprint and Late Model. Attendance was good, but not great. I'm guessing somewhere in the 30 entry range. There were a bunch of regulars missing which could have pushed us from four to five or six heats of Late Models. The Truck and Street Stock classes were also well represented. Two heats of Truck and a full heat (really full heat) of Street Stocks. Those Street Stockers look like a hoot if you could get the speeds down to where guys could drive them in traffic. If everyone local came out, we would be pushing 60-70 entries. That would be kinda fun.
It was also very refreshing to see Rich turn some laps on the oval in his Custom Works Rocket. If he keeps coming, he will be up in the front of the pack racing for TQ in no time. For anyone that knows Rich, they know he's a really meticulous set up man and a pretty darn good driver. I hope he keeps it up, he's fun to race with.
Some of the offroad guys are starting to show up now and doing pretty well I might add. Charlie was right up there in his Team C conversion for Late Model and Rich was pretty dialed for his first night back turning left on the dirt.
My Night:
I had a pretty good night in Sprint. I am committed to foam tires as I think they hook up way better and more consistently then rubber. Steve Bahr on the other hand, tried foams, went back to rubber, then set the track record. I was finally able to turn some 3.9 second laps, which as refreshing even though I felt like I still had a pretty good push coming out of the turn. It's probably the most stable and happy the car has been since we started racing indoors.
Late Model was the usual for me. The car was too erratic, pretty loose and hopping coming out of the corners. I ran Silvers all the way around and I don't think they helped much. I finally bailed on running blinky as I was tired of getting pulled down the straights and I picked up a ton of power and at least a couple tenths on the track. I'm not sure if 13.5 open is the way to go, but as long as it's legal, I'm going to run it if it makes me faster.
After getting the lucky bump to the A, I was doing ok out there until I got spun about 30 seconds into the race. It was unintentional and all, but it does deflate you a bit. I kept digging because you never know lately and sure enough, there was some action out in front of me. The two, three, and four cars all tangled somehow with only Chris Holiday within striking range of me (Bahr had checked out by then) after that. Chris was hunting me down and I could see his car coming up on me out of the corner of my eye. He would close, close, close, then blow a corner and I would get a little breathing room. Then I would bobble and he would be right back there. I'm pretty sure he had a faster car than I did and probably would have figured out a way to get by me if the race would have went five minutes.
All in all, a great race day as I had no expectations again of being competitive in Late Model. Next time out, I'm running the same compounds I ran on my sprint as I felt those tires had all kinds of traction out there.
Which brings me to my next point:
I'm all for having small heat races when you've got lots of cars because qualifying is all about getting your best four minutes of racing in to see how fast your car actually is. We also run 3 qualifiers and resort after the second to give everyone an opportunity to get that best run in. It doesn't always work out, but it's about as fair as you get in racing. My only complaint locally would be to run the mains the same way every week so we knew at the beginning of the night how it was going to play out. My vote would be for at least six in the main with a bump from the B making number 6 for 13.5, more for slower classes like Street Stock.
By the way, for the record, racing is inherently unfair. The fast guys are fast for a lot of reasons. Having good equipment in Dirt Oval is a lot less important than in some other RC disciplines, but it doesn't hurt to have good stuff to work on. One of the reasons the fast guys are fast is because they put the time in at the track. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to master any skill which has been documented on gifted people from Michael Jordan to Mozart. http://www.squidoo.com/10000-hour-ruleSome of us older guys might not have 10,000 hours left in us, but that doesn't mean that putting time in is any less important. Steve Bahr has been in the hobby for a long time and is out every week, two to three nights a week practicing. Is that cheating? Maybe :) What it really is, is putting the time in to dial in your car and work on your driving technique. Combine that with having some talent and you're likely to be running up front. There's a reason that the Chuck Lonnergans of the world can show up anywhere and be competitive in just about anything. Ask him sometime how long he's been in the hobby and that should tell you it ain't luck.
Steering back from my tangent to racing, qualifying is qualifying. Racing is racing. The mains should have stacked heats with bump ups. For me, that's where the fun is at. Once you are into the mains, it's no longer about running 60 laps or whatever the most laps you've ever run is, it's about finishing ahead of the guy in front of you. When you run out of people to pass, you win. That's how it works. It forces you to drive in lines that you might not have chosen and it also forces you to be patient when someone is in front of you. I spent a good portion of the B behind Rich, who was holding his line very steady. I wasn't fast enough to blow by him on the outside and I wasn't about to run him over because it's his right to hold his position and my job to pass him if I can. Now if he were multiple laps down, drivers etiquette says that he should move up and out of the way to let the front cars by, but even then, it's his option.
There is no doubt that it can get a little ugly with a lot of cars on the track at the same time. There's always someone that's out to lunch. And unfortunately, that means that you are going to end up in someone else's mess to take you out of the race. If you've ever watched any form of motor sports, it happens all the time. Very rarely do you see someone make a huge deal about it. It seems like every time they interviewed the King, Richard Petty, he would refer to it as "one of them racin' deals". There's a lot of fun out there in the chaos if you let it happen.
Getting wrecked also doesn't give you the right to go out and wreck other cars just because your run is in the tank. I don't know how many times I've seen drivers get wrecked, get marshalled, and immediately launch right back wildly into traffic causing another wreck. It's not how it's done. I take my queues from watching the fast guys. Guys like Randy Erb and Butch Beebe have put their 10,000 hours in so they know how to make the best of a bad deal. They get spun, they get their car turned in the right direction, wait for their opportunity, then get back under way. Low and behold, a minute later, they are right back where they were in line because they were patient. Don't believe me, watch Randy Erb sometime when he gets wrecked. He rarely loses his patience and I don't remember seeing him turn his bad run into someone else's. Good drivers also realize that you can't grab the throttle when your tires are covered in crap from being out in the marbles.
Set Up Tips (From Custom Works Seminar)
Sifting through my notes, here's another one that I didn't really understand very well.
Castor is the angle on the suspension of the car and it helps determine how the suspension reacts under load. Blah, blah, blah.
Here's the deal:
In general, the higher the degree of castor, the better off power steering the car will have. The lower the degree of castor, the better the car will turn on power.
You'll notice that when you look at the front of your RC car, the front shock tower is some percentage more than perpendicular. That's called the kick up. This is one component of your castor. On Custom Works short shock cars, that's usually a low number like 20 degrees. On the long cars, it's either 25 or 35 degrees depending on which generation vehicle you own.
The other component of castor is the castor blocks located near the wheels. It's the part that the king pin slides through to hold the axle carrier and axle in place. These come in varying degrees and are specific to right and left parts on your vehicle because they impart either a positive or negative value on the overall castor of the vehicle. Typically, they add to the overall castor, but sometimes you want to reduce the overall castor so you would reverse the right and left sides to get the negative value.
Ok, that might not have made a ton of sense, but this should. More castor is valuable in loose dirt/low bite situations because you are typically going to be off the throttle going into the corner. The increased castor allows the car to turn better when you're off the throttle. On high bite tracks, you may want a lower overall castor because you are more likely to be turning on power into the corners.
My notes indicate that these adjustments were more subtle and will not take your car from being a 5 and make it a 10, but it might get you from a 7 to an 8 or 9 in the right circumstances.
Well, that's all for this week. Good thing I don't pay by the word here.
Don't know if I'll be racing next week, maybe some practice. I could sure use it.
See ya....
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