The newly opened SMP off-road track held its opening race on a Sunday that projected rainfall through out the day. When we arrived the track, it was wet from the rain the night before so I wasn’t sure if I brought the right tires or not. The track itself is an outdoor synthetic grass carpet type track, which should have high grip. It was a pretty big track but since I have never ran on this track, I really did not know what to expect. But I was anxious to race because I usually don’t get to race off-road at all.
I decided to run 3 classes, 2WD, 4WD 1/10 buggy and 4WD short course truck. I did not have time or chassis to run the 1/8 buggy class, if I did, maybe I would have, I know… I’m crazy. I had a good qualifying with my Team C TM2 2WD buggy as it was a new car and it performed well. Thanks to Jim Skinner giving me a motor just for off-road, my Thunder Powered with SP Reventon speedo TM2 took TQ. In the 4WD buggy class, I had some issues and was not able to do better than 5th in qualifying. For SC truck, I qualified second behind Hong Kong’s Frankie Tang, the newly signed Horizon factory driver who flew over just for this event.
Due to possible rain, the race organizer decided to only run two 8- minutes final for all classes and base results on the best run. In the 2WD buggy finals, my car felt so good to drive and I took the win. In the 4WD buggy finals, I was able to solve the issues I had in qualifying and the car got better and I was able to also take the win. The biggest challenge of the day was the SC truck finals which to be honest, I struggled a bit due to issues and could not push the car hard. In the first final, Frankie and I battled to the end and with only 1 minute left, I was able to get pass Frankie to take the win. In the second final, I had issues and DNF while Frankie took the win. But my first final result of 19 laps bested his second final result of 18 laps, thus giving me the winner’s trophy.
Off-Road is really fun!! I enjoyed it a lot and although it is not my focus, I hope to join more races in the future. Thanks for my sponsors Team C, Thunder Power, Speed Passion, and Savox.
