USA Race Number Three: Tacoma, Washington!

Qualifying Heats and Main Events

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Racing started right after the Concours Challenge winner was announced, beginning with the Electric car classes. Nitro ran next, then the off-road classes of HPI Truck (featuring mostly Nitro MT's) and Electric Rally.

The Fantasy World Pacific Northwest HPI Challenge T-shirt!	Loads of spectators...	Some brought their own shade just to watch!
Saturday morning practice	Innovative corners - they barely moved!	The busy timing tent

Qualifying

RS4 Electric Stock
With just enough racers to fill two heats, the new racers weren't too far behind the better, more experienced racers. The more advanced racers did a great job getting around everyone, and at the end of Saturday's qualifiers Rodney Nilles was on top of the leaderboard, but Jeff Woodruff would take hold of the TQ spot after the third qualifier. Scott Kovalik was right in there, though, and ended up second on the starting grid for the A Main event.

RS4 Electric Pro
Local fast guy Jon Sterling, always near the top at Fantasy World, was set to battle it out with "the other John", John Crandall and Southern California racer Charlie Barnes. With just 13 racers in this class, 8 racers were in the A Main and 5 were in the B Main.

RS4 Nitro Stock
By far the fastest guy in Nitro Stock was Arizona racer Rovic Clemente, who set TQ and looked forward to an easy win ahead of the rest of the field.

RS4 Nitro Modified
John Crandall looked to have this class in his hand at the end of the first two rounds of qualifying, but Rodney Clemente and plenty of other racers wanted to make it as tough on him as possible! Almost 20 racers signed up for this class, making it a two-heat class, but it was still kept very interesting by the constant action of the turn marshalls, the pit men and the drivers themselves!

RS4 Super Nitro Modified
The biggest class of the weekend was definitely the Super Nitro class, which made it extra-tough to do well. Over 40 racers signed up to compete, and we were able to have four full main events.

HPI Truck and Super Nitro Rally
With just three entries in HPI Truck and three more in Super Nitro Rally, both classes were run at the same time but scored separately to decide who would win. This class was run after the Electric Rally class and used the same jumps and obstacles.

RS4 Electric Rally
Eight racers signed up for the Rally class, just a couple of entries shy of a kit prize, but that didn't faze the racers in their zeal to win! Concours Challenge winner Steve Phemister was in this class, and everyone watched carefully as he ran his winning body in the first qualifier. Carefully constructed jumps were laid out for the Rally racers, as well as other "obstacles" like a large swatch of carpet and a sheet of linoleum (meant to provide a slick surface). Lots of spectators gathered around to watch this class!

The Electric Rally class was organized a little different from the other classes. Similar to a full-size Rallycross type format, each round of racing was a heads-up points race between all the racers. Each racer would get a certain number of points, determined by their finishing order in each race. All the races were run on the on-road race track, but the jumps and obstacles were changed for each round of racing.. As with real Rally car racing, there were no throw-outs, so every race counted! Drivers couldn't depend on having their worst race deleted from the standings.

Note: normally, the Rally races would have points determined by the most laps/lowest time system among all the Rally class racers (meaning that a racer in another Rally race could go faster than you and get more points in that round), however with one heat of Rally racers the points scoring was made easy - just score all the racers in the one race that we had!

Here are the points for the first two rounds:

We'll catch up with the remaining two rounds of racing at the end of the Main Event reports for the other classes.

Meanwhile, here are more neat visuals from the weekend:

The Woody team	Early morning fog on Sunday	The Fantasy World signage
The tech inspection table	The sun sets on racers practicing (some stayed till 3 AM!)	The Saturday night pizza party at Round Table!

Main Events

The main events, as usual, were an interesting mix of runnng pitmen, splashing nitro fuel, wild first laps and anxious drivers. In the end, though, we can safely say that all the participants, whether they were racers, pit crew, family members or just spectators, had a very interesting weekend! Below we will try to account for you the races, and as always if you have anything to contribute please do so.

Now to the racing!

RS4 Electric Sport

RS4 Electric Sport - A MAIN
The start of the Electric Sport A Main was apparently controversial to several of the racers who were in the race, with the first two qualifiers being turned around at least once (see the picture to the left), but after everything was sorted out 2nd qualifier Scott Kovalik was leading the way, followed very closely by Rodney Nilles. TQ Jeff Woodruff wasn't too far behind, and all three cars started making their way around the other cars. Because the class was pretty small, the A Main ended up with drivers of varying skill levels, so it got pretty hairy sometimes for the leaders, but in the end Scott didn't make a mistake and finished just ahead of Rodney, with Jeff rounding out the top three!

RS4 Electric Pro

RS4 Electric Pro - A MAIN
TQ Jon Sterling took the lead and kept it throughout the race, followed very closedly by SoCal racer Charlie Barnes. They would trade fast laps during the entire race, at times Charlie would close in but then Jon would turn some quick lap times, or Jon would pull away then Charlie would get in a few good laps, but ultimately Charlie tried to cut a few corners too close in the last couple of laps, and would go from just a few feet behind to a couple of corners back. Jon would win it, breathing easy, with Charlie in a solid second place, a full lap ahead of third place A.J. Wingerter.

RS4 Nitro Stock

RS4 Nitro Stock - A MAIN
As expected, this race started out with Rovic Clemente taking a big lead and holding it for quite some time. The rest of the drivers spread out behind and started battling for second spot until, several laps from the end of the race, Rovic's car developed a strange handling characteristic. As it went around the track, it was obvious that one of the rear tires had come unglued and the insert was causing the tire to get stuck in the body, making the car very tough to drive. When all the cars were brought in for their technical inspection, it was found that Rovic was using Super Nitro foam inserts, which are illegal for use in the 1/10 scale cars, at least for the HPI Challenge races. Rovic took it in stride, though, never complaining, and therefore the win went to Owen Minor, with second place going to Patric Shain and third to Charles Bellesteros.

RS4 Nitro Modified

RS4 Nitro Modified - A MAIN
Once again, TQ racer John Crandall had problems during the warm-up period for this race, which let second and third place qualifiers Rodney Clemente and Tony Doblin battle it out for the lead. A terrific pit stop at the halfway mark of this 10-minute race let Rodney pull away from Tony, and the race could have ended there. Rodney finished in first, with Tony second and James Harris third.

RS4 Super Nitro Modified

RS4 Super Nitro Mod - A MAIN
For anyone who says you can't win a race in the first corner, this is a lesson for you - it IS possible! Of course, you have to drive well the rest of the race, too. This is how Mark Skala was able to win the Super Nitro A Main: a pass for the lead on the first corner, getting around TQJose Morales. The rest of the race was smooth driving for Mark and the battle for the remaining plaque spots. In the end, Mark lapped the whole field at least once, and Lee Robertson came in second, with Jose in third.

HPI Truck / Super Nitro Rally
With just three entries in each the HPI Truck and Super Nitro Rally classes, it was decided to run the cars and trucks together over the rally jumps and obstacles, but score them separately with regards to getting plaques. The winner also took home an HPI Oval shirt, so there was more at stake than just bragging rights!

Electric Rally - the final races!
At the end of the day Saturday it looked like it would be a close battle between Scott Kovalik and Weseung Hwang for the overall win - both had one win and one second place finish for a total of 45 points each. However, with Russ Whittington coming on strong and a couple of problems for Scott, the situation changed quite a bit! Scott finished the races on Sunday low in the points, while Weseung and Russ both split the wins.

When the races were over, it was a clear winner that stood out in the Electric Rally class Weseung Hwang! Consistent finishes put Russ Whittington in second, while the bad luck of Sunday's races haunted Scott Kovalik and left him in third.

That was it for the races! Please be sure to check out our Thank You page to see all the people that were responsible for organizing the race weekend.

Main Page for this race | Concours Challenge | The "THANKS" page!

Check out the Fantasy World Toy and Hobby web site for more photos!