Mike’s Hobbyshop in Houston Texas hosted the 2011 RC Pro Finals with great success. The track and pavilion were extended a few months ago in order to host this event and it definitely paid off.
I would be defending my electric title this year. However, you know how once in a while you just have those races where nothing connects, you break in back to back qualifiers before the buzzer goes, the track feels so good that you just can’t help driving like a maniac, and your leading by a large margin with a few laps to go and the car just stops? Yup, that was me at this race. So no matter how hard you try things can still go wrong to the best of us.
I put in a few good runs in electric to get myself into the 3rd qualifying position behind Lutz and Dellinger so I was feeling good about a shot there. Lutz had amazing pace and I could match his average laptimes but he would have 3 or 4 laps that were around a half second faster than his average. So for the mains the RC8.2e was amazing and I had chosen AKA SS Impacts that were almost worn completely down because I had adjusted my setup to remove as much traction as possible. My goal was to get up to Ryan right out the gate and put in my best laps hoping if I could stay in his sights he may make a bobble before he could get into his time warp zone. A1 I had a great start but came up an inch short on the triple right in front of a marshal but another car had wrecked on an earlier jump that had been forgotten so he was trying to yell at another marshal to get him while every car went by. Now in 12th and 13 seconds down from the leader I made it back up to third by 5 minutes in and I was pleased with this because Dellinger was the only one I was in contention for the title with and I had enough lead in points to finish 2 positions overall below him to win. As I get lapped by Lutz, yeah I know! He begins to have some form of issue with his car so I got my embarrassing lap back and start charging to find that Dellinger had lost a rear turnbuckle so with 2 laps to go I take the lead and boy did I need those points and I was glad to take them! In A2 I had a good start and got into second on the first lap but my game plan failed again because Lutz immediately dipped into the 27 second laps but this time our fastest lap were just 3 tenths apart so I was feeling confident I could put pressure on in A3 and finishing 2nd in A2 I had already won the title s o it was all or nothing. A3 I get a great start, move into second on the first lap and hold onto Lutz for the first 3 laps before I wrecked again on the triple losing 10 seconds. From that point I just wanted a 27 second lap and every time I got close I would have to pass someone so I settled with 28.0 again!
Winning the Electric National Title again!!!!
Thank you to all my sponsors: Team Associated, Reedy, AKA, KO Propo, Tekin, Avid, Upgrade, FTW, BCE, EB Mods, Paint by Smiley
Words by David Joor