John L

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futureal

Alright, back home finally. As always I have loads of pics and some video to work on but it will be awhile, I just have too much to do and I start work on Tuesday. Randy, I moved out last week. Haven't even unpacked yet, went to the Reedy instead.

Hope everybody enjoyed the race coverage, big thanks go to Fred at Tamiya and of course Scotty Ernst for putting on a great show as always. I've been to just about every major race in the US now and I can see why the Reedy is so popular, it was definitely one of the best.

Also, more big thanks to Dave and Rob Bowser for letting me use their power in the pits, and for giving me a place to hang out away from the sun.

Hebiki

iTrader: (26)

shane.. did you get my PM? hopefully u can join us for some parking lot races.

futureal

Yea, I got like 30 PMs in the past few days (to add to the hundred or so unanswered ones I already have) and although I read them all, I haven't had a chance to really respond to anybody.

Hebiki

iTrader: (26)

sweet. just curious. thanks for the awesome coverage of reedy! i was up in san jose at my brother's house.. and rctech was the best place to get updates. thanks for all your hard work!

futureal

This is very correct, and goes a long way towards explaining the randomness of the results. Many drivers had equipment failure as well, things not brought on by crashes.

In two instances, Tosolini and Surikarn rounded corners without touching anything and their cars just inexplicably broke. In another case, Tosolini and Cyrul each had cars just up and die, both when they were on first place runs. Hodapp blew a motor while running away with a heat. There were many other examples, those are just ones I remember. Motor leads were coming unsoldered in the heat, that was one of the bigger problems.

The starts of the races were typically brutal. Todd Hodge and Ralph Burch just could not catch a break. Both of them got brutalized over and over again on the start, straight to the back every time. Hodge finished DFL but not so much through any fault of his own. Burch was way back there as well but had one of the fastest cars out there.

It's just a tough race. For Hara to do what he did -- four 1sts, 3 2nds and a 3rd -- is very, very impressive. Although he didn't win, that was arguably the most impressive performance, along with Hodapp's. Were it not for the aforementioned blown motor, he would have had a fifth win and a dominant victory.

futureal

Here's a good idea of how close each heat in invite was. Every single start looked just like this. Even with the best in the business, contact happened in 90% of the starts, and more cars broke on the first lap than any other time.

Doug Gaut

Way to go HARA!! Hope to see some setup hints soon too.

Congrats to Kyle Skidmore from Oklahoma. Nice to see a local guy do real well!!

Hebiki

iTrader: (26)

wow!

the car behind josh numan is about 2-3 inches away!! holy cow. i cant wait to see the vids!

Hebiki

iTrader: (26)

is it me.. or in that picture.. is hara's front left tire almost off the ground???

rtypec

iTrader: (2)

edited: Hi guys

Nice picture futureal. What you guys can't tell from the picture is that they are that close with GIGANTIC amounts of horsepower.

futureal

I have it on video. But will not get to those for awhile. In the meantime, here's what was left of the car afterwards. He got broadsided in the sweeper by a car going full speed, just the single hit. Remember, he had one of the biggest leads of the day at the time, so this hurt!

futureal

Masami Hirosaka put on a couple of drifting demonstrations with Yokomo's drift cars in the downtime between heats; and as many have probably heard, he is quite adept at driving with his feet.

futureal

Pile up going into the sweeper!

johnbull

Are you American?

If so, you don't sound very patriotic to me.