OCRC road trip! Sunday 8/31/14

I took some friends with me up to OCRC for some Sunday club racing, since neither of them have raced there before. The layout was the same as the Surf City Classic, which was held about a month ago.

This layout was difficult to get right every lap and very technical. It was also very bumpy in some spots, throwing the car around if you pushed too hard. It also had a big triple and a double triple, which a stock buggy could make, if you had no fear!  I found myself going double-single on the big triple and doing the double triple if I downsided the double well.

With only 3 practice runs and a difficult and technical layout to master, qualifying would be tough. Round 1 was a hackfest. I had a good run going in Round 2 until slower traffic screwed up my rhythm in the big triple and I jumped in between the pipes. Then a few laps later, again in slower traffic, I bounced onto the straight in the double triple, and ended up stuck where nobody saw me and had a nice 40 second lap :-/  I ended up qualifying 5th in the C main!

In getting ready for my C main, I was trying to replace my bent front bumper and failed to realize that I'd be in the 1st race. Thus I didn't charge my battery for the main!  I started charging it at almost 40A when I heard the call for the C main with about 5 minutes to go!  I was able to charge my battery for about 4 minutes, then rushed up onto the drivers stand, while my buddies buttoned up my car for me. No warm up laps for me!

I got an awesome start from 5th on the grid, taking the lead by the end of the 1st lap. I held it for a little while, but entered the wagon wheel a bit too fast, ending up on my lid and dropping to 2nd. I maintained 2nd (the final bump up position ) until about 90 seconds to go, when I crashed on the double after the straightaway. Oh well :(  Next time I guess. 

Oh ya!  OCRC doesn't use paper race results anymore. There are 2 touchscreens mounted to the wall where you can view your results. I don't remember if you can see your top 5 and 10 averages, but you can see the complete qualifying order for your class. I ended up getting my race results from Live RC instead. I guess they'll save a bunch if money on paper now.  I saw a picture of these screens during the coverage for the Surf City Classic, but thought it was just for that race, and not normal club racing. 

Our pit table at OCRC. 

My car all shiny after applying some SC1 Clear Coat to my body, wing, and plastic parts. It leaves a dry film to polish and protect the plastic parts. It's used on the plastic parts of full size motocross bikes to keep them nice looking. Seems to work great on RC cars also :)