Practice Update
Practice for the opening round of the JConcepts Indoor National Series is complete with the leading entries declaring themselves happy with their days running at the SmacTrac track in St.Louis, Missouri. With no official timing available for the open practice sessions, we will have to wait till the first round of qualifying in the morning to see who has their gear sorted and who still has work to do. In general the main focus of the drivers today are tyres with sanding or cutting pins pretty much the order of the day.
Defending buggy champion Steven Hartson said due to tyre preparations he didn’t get as much track time as he would have liked but from the runs he did do he was happy with how his Associateds worked, in particular his B4.2. Running JConcepts green compound Barcodes on the rear and Rips on the front of his 2WD buggy he said it felt real good and it is ready for qualifying. Also happy with his 4WD, which he only got to run twice over the day, he said the one car that still needs work is his 2WD Short Course truck. Running JConcepts Pressure Points all round on the SC10 he said it lacked forward traction which the 21-year-old believes is down to tyre choice so for qualifying he will switch to Barcodes on the rear for Q1.
Associated team-mate Ryan Maifield said it was a pretty straight forward day at the office with him having to do little to his buggies over the day. Running the same set-up on his 2WD Buggy as he used at the recent Reedy Race of Champions the Arizona ace said it felt decent. Having done some testing with his B44.2 on asphalt prior to the event to test some ideas he had he said the set-up he concluded from that testing is working out well. Having did little racing with his Mod Truck recently, Maifeld said he did a number of set-up changes to the T4.2 and is comfortable with where it is at now.
Champion of the Mod Truck class, Brent Thielke said most of his work today apart from prepping tyres was also with his T4.2. With the advantage of having been to SmacTrac on three previous occasions, he said the track they have created for the Winter Indoor Nationals is a lot of fun and keeping your cars on the dirt over the elevating track takes a lot of discipline. Running his buggies just as they came off the track at the Reedy Race the Associated Team Manager said he plans to rebuild both tonight in preparation for tomorrow’s qualifying.
Kyosho’s Jared Tebo was pleased with his days running saying he really likes the track which is similar in size to that of his local home track. Starting out the day running AKA’s Vector front and Handlebar rear tyres in soft compound on his Laser ZX he said a switch to Super Soft improved the buggy a lot but he added he is still playing around with the saucing, trying to determine which is the best additive to use. On his Ultima RB6, Tebo is running Super Soft Handlebars all round.
Kyosho team-mate Cody Turner said he was very happy with how his cars worked in practice and he ‘can’t wait to start racing’. A Pro-line team driver the 21-year-old from California said he is still getting to terms with how to best sauce his tyres for this his first ever time at SmacTrac. On his 4WD he ended the day with Scrubs on the front and Suburbs on the rear while on his 2WD buggy and Mod Truck it was M4 Suburbs all round.
Xray’s Josh Wheeler said changes to his XB4 for his final run of the day didn’t give him the desired results but happy with the buggy earlier in the day he will just revert back to his previous set-up. Looking for a little more steering around what is a tight track layout, he switched away from the standard caster block but said this gave him very snappy steering. Planning to refit the standard block he will also adjust the rear swaybar which he is confident will give him a comfortable buggy for the opening qualifier.
Tomorrow’s schedule for the JConcepts Winter Indoor Nationals will see three of the four rounds of qualifying run with two to count to determine the grids for the bump up finals format.
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