26th Annual Arizona State Championships

Sat-Sun November 19th - 20th, 2011

This past weekend I raced in the 26th Annual Arizona State Championships at the Scottsdale RC Speedway.  It was a great event, and I had a blast.  SRS did a outstanding job with this event, and track preparations were well done and the layout was great.

For this event I shared a pit space with my friends Dean and Dragi from Wolfpak Racing and our friend Ernest.  For this event, I decided to enter into the Novice SC class, I felt that I would have more fun with this class because of still being on the learning curve for rc racing.  Dean with some inspiration from Ernest decide to run his buggy in two classes with Ernest by swapping motors between the 2wd Buggy Stock 17,5 and the 2wd Buggy Super Stock 13.5 classes.  Both did a great job in running both classes with the motor swaps.  Dragi entered his buggy into the Novice Open Wheel class.  You can see a full write up and details on their racing over at the Wolfpak Racing blog.

Track layout was fantastic.

Saturday Nov 19th 2011

Day one started out with some interesting news when we were at the Drivers meeting. They announced that Scottsdale Speedway had been sold to the owners of Hobbytown USA in Tuscon.  This should bring some interesting changes to the racetrack as well as the hobby shop.  The first change to the hobby shop that they made, was that they moved the existing location of the shop to the building that now has the shop front faced to Scottsdale road.  This space is much larger, and in my opinion a great layout with much needed room.  Here is a link to the Hobbytown USA website for the Scottsdale store : http://www.hobbytown.com/Scottsdale-AZ/.  I'm not sure if they are going to change the current SRS website.

Pit table, Day 1.

Saturdays schedule was three rounds of qualifiers.

Round 1 - 5 minute qualifier
This round started our great, and the track felt perfect, but on the third lap, after hitting very hard on the big jump on the front left part of the track, my dog bone decided to go find a dog to chew on it and flew farther then my truck did.

     Novice Short Course
          Frank - 3 Laps - 2:04 (37.23 fast lap) - broke just over 2 mins in.

Round 2 - 5 minute qualifier
This round was a lot smoother then the first round, although I was still trying to get a handle on the big jump on the front part of the track, I feel overall things went well (honestly, I meant to launch off the big jump and try to land behind the retaining wall; twice).

     Novice Short Course
          Frank - 9 Laps - 5:31 (32.4 fast lap)

Round 3 - 5 minute qualifier
After making some slight mods to the truck and coming up with a good tire selection, this was my best round of the day.  Although I still only pulled 9 laps, the truck felt great, and my lap times improved by over a second.

     Novice Short Course
          Frank - 9 Laps - 5:27 (31.25 fast lap)

With the day coming to a close, I was in good spirits, I was getting a handle on the truck, and I felt my driving skills were improving.  I was really looking forward to day 2.  Below is a video I took of some of the racing from day 1 using my phone.

Sunday Nov 20th, 2011

Sundays schedule was the final round of qualifiers, and then the mains.  For the 4th round of qualifiers, they changed up everyone, to place them with other drivers that were closer to their own times.  They placed everyone into the qualifiers based on their current points placement.

Beginning of day 2, Dragi from Wolfpak Racing on the left and myself.

Round 4 - 5 minute qualifier
For round four, I was having some traction issues, and seemed to keep sliding out in the corners.  Overall I felt I did good, but again I pulled 9 laps, and my laps times stayed about the same as round 3.

     Novice Short Course
          Frank - 9 Laps - 5:12 (31.37 fast lap) - Finished in 3rd place

Mains

I ended up qualifying for the B-Main for Novice Short Course.  They decided that they would not do bump ups for the novice class, and although I was highly disappointed at this decision, it was what it was, so I made the best of it and decided to just go out and have fun for the B-Main.

     Novice Short Course B-Main
          Frank - 9 Laps - 5:03 (??:?? fast lap) - Finished in 2nd place.

On the drivers stand during the B-Main.

The rest of the A-Mains was some great racing, below in one of the A-Mains that I recorded with my phone, and it was some of the best racing of the day.  You can also check out my UTube channel to see some of the other videos that I have posted :

UTube - Draft Wheels Racing (http://www.youtube.com/user/fjlilly?feature=mhee)

This was a great weekend and a great event, and I am looking forward to next year.  I am also looking forward to next weekend, which will be round 3 of the KBRL Series which will also be at this same track.