Hobby Center of
Houston, Texas
Qualifying
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After
the Concours Challenge and driver meeting, racers prepared for the first
round of racing. As usual, the first racers on the grid were the Electric
RS4 racers. With just two heats of electric racers, however, the Nitro
guys started getting ready quickly!
We
can't forget to mention this: during the first round of qualifying, cooks
and waiters from Carraba's Italian Grill arrived to serve a delicious
lunch of chicken pasta, house salad and home-baked wheat rolls. The fact
that a restaurant came to the track to serve food was amazing enough,
however the food that was served was FREE to all the registered racers!
Issac paid for the food and the Carraba's personnel to serve the racers,
and not only was the food amazingly good (take this for a fact from a
racer who usually eats fast food at the track), but it was really appreciated
by all the racers.
The
first race started at about 12:30, with most of the Electric RS4 competitors
running Pro 2 cars. We did see one original Pro car, which is nice...we
don't like to think that all the older HPI cars are sitting on shelves,
we like to see them run! After all three qualifiers had been run, it was
Chris Tran and his Nissan Silvia-bodied Pro 2 in the TQ spot, on top of
nearly 20 other racers.
Next
up were the Nitro Box Stock racers, with 16 racers in contention for the
top prize. TQ was grabbed by Brandon Mize and his Diablo Nitro 2, but
close behind was Bill Norris and Ron Meloni (who was actually subbed by
Dave, Ron's brother). By design, the Box Stock class provides the closest
racing action, and we saw plenty of it! Wait until we get to the coverage
of the main events!
The
largest class by far was the Nitro Open class, which had 50 participants
out of a total of 100 racers! This was a close call to make also, but
at the end of qualifying was Jackob Ben-Ezra in the pole position. After
rebuilding his car all night to make it perfect, Jackob had only a couple
of hour's sleep, and had to help his cousin Brandon with his Nitro car,
but all the work paid off.
In
the Super Nitro class, the racing wasn't as close, but the turnout was
much better than last year's...almost ten racers showed up to compete
for the trophy spot, and we had some good races and showdowns on the track.
Ron Meloni, last year's winner at this race, was on hand to defend his
title, but racers Alonso Alonso, Curtis C. Hamlin from Florida and Bill
Norris were there to try and take it away!
While
we tried to get as many Proceed owners out to the track as possible, apparently
most were saving their energy for our upcoming race in Ohio, which will
feature nearly a full heat of Proceed race cars. Dave Meloni and William
Van Horn showed up with Proceed cars, ready to run...well, almost! HPI's
David Kouche helped William out with his Proceed, which needed to finish
the engine break-in, then Dave Meloni helped with the setup of the car,
getting the flywheel, clutch and 2 speed working properly. The Proceed
cars ended up being more of an exhibition run for Dave, and a break-in
run for William, but both guys had a good time on the 250-ft long straight!
Towards
the end of the first round of qualifying, we saw some ominous-looking
clouds coming over the horizon and tried to predict where the rain would
come from. (We took it for granted that it would rain, we didn't hold
any hope that it would stay clear all weekend.) Around 3 PM we were hit
with the first light drops, which turned into a downpour in about 10 minutes.
Although the locals and regular racers tried to tell everyone that the
Hobby Center track is sloped and dries quickly, many people left for the
day, so hopefully they'd gotten a good run in their first qualifier! More
people left to get dry clothes, but most racers stuck it out under their
tents or the covered pit areas that Issac provided next to the track.
After
the rain blew over (about 45 minutes' worth), the "squeegee army"
took to the track and swept off the puddles that didn't drain away. Because
of the great sloping design of the track and the hearty work of several
volunteers, the track was mostly dry within and hour and racers were practicing
on it again. By 5 PM racing had continued, and we were able to work through
the entire second round of qualifying while the sun was still well up
in the sky.