Originally Posted by 51

Hey guys...just thought I'd give a quick update on day 1 at the Ko Grand Prix.

This event is taking place at the Tamiya America facility, host of the Reedy International Race Of Champions. There are 5 heats of modified and most of the top Californian drivers are in attendance.

Team Associated has four drivers at this race using the prototype vehicle. Rick Hohwart, Bob Stellflue (lead engineer for the project), Tommi Torikka (Reedy Electrical Engineer) and myself.

This is my first opportunity to race, tune and work on the vehicle and I can say that I am very impressed. My Factory Team TC4 was AWESOME at this track for the Reedy Race. The prototype has the same handling characteristics, but is much more forgiving and consistent. After some radio adjustments in round 1 of practice, I was immediately turning sub 13-second laps (pretty fast for this track & conditions).

Throughout the next 2 rounds of practice I continued to work with the setup and feel out the car, along with tire testing. As the first round started I made a poor tire choice and was off pace from my first practice run. Round 2 I got my tires better, but made some driving mistakes early in the race that cost me about 6 seconds and pulled off to save the tires. In round 3 I started 8th in the "A" resort and ended up 2nd in the heat behind TQ David Jun (Reedy Brushless).

There are 3 more rounds of practice tomorrow, followed by 1 more qualifiers and triple "A" mains. I'm looking forward to testing some more settings now that I have a day under my belt (no pun intended).

Rick also made a poor tire choice in round 1 and 2, but for round 3 was able to put the car 5th on the grid tearing through the "B" qualifier. He should be able to improve on his time pretty easily tomorrow.

Tommi was sitting 3rd after round 2, but in the re-sort got off to a bad start and had to let the car behind go and just couldn't get the pace back.

Bob continues to test settings and methodically going through tests while us racers are a bit more impatient and look for quick fixes.

From my memory, here is the top 10 so far.

1) David Jun - Tamiya/Reedy Brushless
2) Josh Numan - Tamiya/Checkpoint
3) Brent Thielke - Associated/Reedy Brushless
4) Barry Baker - XRay/Checkpoint
5) Rick Hohwart - Associated/Peak
6) Rod Canare - Tamiya/Orion
7) Tommi Torikka - Associated/Reedy Brushless
8) Jimmy Jacobson - Tamiya/Orion
9) Patrick See - Schumacher/Checkpoint?
10) Steve Weiss (Evicierator) - Hot Bodies/Novak Brushless

For those of you keeping track, that's 4 brushless systems in the main and two in the top 3.

If you're looking to attend a relaxed 2-day event at a kick ass facility, this is your event. Thanks to Tamiya and KO for putting this event on.

...more to come tomorrow...hopefully!

Originally Posted by JasonC

23t spec

TQ = Cory lewis (tamiya/promatch)
2nd = Tony Feiorla (sp) (corally / rcthunder)
3rd = fred medal (tamiya / li-po)
4th = Edgar Felios (sp) ( yokomo/lipo)
5th - Jason Colgan (yokomo / lipo)
6th ??????????????
7th ??????????????
8th ??????????????
9th ?????????????
10th Mike molina ( corally / rcthunder)

Originally Posted by J.Filipow

6th- J.Filipow (losi/trinity)
7th-Walter Cosico (xray/envy)
8th- Charlie Albrecht (corally/EA)