Saturday Club Racing, SDRC 2/22/2020

I return to racing after missing the last 3 weeks and the start of the 2020 Supercross Series due to a Gout attack in my left knee.  I wasn't able to stand, walk, or drive (full size) for 2 weeks!  This was also my first time on a layout at SDRC with 3 triples!

In heat 1 I finished in 6th!? with a 15:17, fast lap of 19.074, average lap of 21.134, and consistency of 87.40%.   I must've been rusty because I made a bunch of driving errors and crashed 3 times.

In heat 2 I finished in 7th with a DNF, fast lap of 20.997, average lap of 22.128, and consistency of 93.21%.   I DNF'd due to a stripped servo horn on my steering servo.  I guess I bounced off the pipes one time too many.

For the Main I qualified 6th and finished in 5th with a 14:07, fast lap of 19.660, average lap of 21.871, and consistency of 86.97%.  I would get up to 2nd for one lap, but promptly shorted the 3rd triple and went right back to last place.  If I was just able to drive without crashing I might have been able to hold that position.  I need to stop trying to go faster and get back to the basics of just not crashing!  I also forgot to start my GoPro, so I have no video of the race.  Doh!

From my 1 good race video of Heat 1, I could see my car bouncing upon flat landing which caused me to crash at least twice.  I also noticed my car bucking in some sections of the track.  I was too lazy to change shock oils at the track, since I wanted to learn the layout instead.  I was able to get 6 practice runs in!  Which is double what I would normally run.

At home when I dumped the shock oil out to change to thicker oil, I noticed that the front shocks had 1.8 mm hole pistons in them.  I thought I had installed 1.7 mm pistons in the front shocks when I built the car 2 years ago!  Sure enough I dumped the oil out of the rear shocks and it had the 1.7 mm hole pistons!  The front shocks are supposed to have the pistons with the smaller diameter holes in them! Doh!  So in addition to increasing the shock oil weight to 40/35, I also swapped the pistons rear to front, so that the 1.7 piston was in the front shock and the 1.8 piston was in the rear shock.  I must've checked it 4 times before reassembling the shocks and filling them with oil. LOL!

Hopefully now my car will be easier to drive and I'll be able to get a run in with no crashes or mistakes!