Traveling to Other Tracks

This past weekend, I got to travel to my first "non-local" track to race touring.  It was challenging and exciting!  Living in North Carolina gives me access to all types of race tracks, but not many of them are in the outdoor asphalt touring category.  (I'm lucky enough to have one of those within 15 miles.)  So when it came time to travel, we looked to Virginia.  Debbie's RC World in Chesepeake, VA is located about 3 hours from where I live.  The locals at DRCW use the RCTech.net forum to collaborate and converse about RC, much like other clubs.

First of all, the local racers were very hospitable and friendly.  Secondly, the facility was great.  The track was prepped well (purple soda) and looked great!  The racing went down in the normal format.  Three rounds of qualifying and then the mains.  When I went out on the track the first time to practice and learn the layout, I realized how good this was for me to grow as an RC racer.  A whole new track! A whole new layout! A whole new group of competition (aside from the friends that came with me)!  After running a few slow laps to get the layout down, I did a few hot laps to get my timing and braking down.  I was pretty satisfied and decided I'd go with my original setup for the first round.  I won my heat and landed the fastest lap!!  A few of the locals caught up to me later in qualifying and I ended up starting third in the A Main.  Not bad for my first time racing on a whole new track.  After starting third, I quickly found myself in first before the end of the first lap!!  My car was glued to the track.  Although it wasn't the fastest, I was certainly consistent.  I think a gearing change would have helped greatly as the second place racer would catch me and then make a mistake over and over until he finally got into a groove and drove off into the sunset.  So, I finished second out of 11 racers and had a good run at first.

I really liked the facility and racing at DRCW and plan to return in the near future.  I would like to travel to some other facilities and see what I can throw down there.  What a blast!!

Enjoy this video my buddy Bryan took and you can see the A Main!! Like I said, I start third (yellow, green, black body).

-Fishhook