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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New releases from JConcepts

The Winter Indoor Nationals in St Louis Missouri has seen JConcepts introduce a number of new parts including their new Finnisher shell for Associated T4.2. An evolution of the shell introduced not too long ago for the T4.1, it sports an updated front end to cater for the new shock position of the 4.2 as well as a number of new tweaks around the roof and rear of the car. For the B44.2 there is a new centre diff top plate from aluminium as well as a front steering system comprising of two aluminium steering pivots as well as a carbon Ackerman plate, the whole system moving on a set of bearings. Introduced at the Reedy race two weeks ago there is a complete set of titanium track rods, with sets to be released for more popular cars in the future. Finally a new 7 inch rear wing gives a new higher downforce option for

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2013 JConcepts Indoor National Series gets underway in Missouri

The opening round of the 2013 JConcepts Indoor National Series got underway in St.Louis, Missouri, this morning with SmacTrac playing host to the ‘JConcepts Winter Indoor Nationals’.  The first race on the 5 round calendar, the event has attracted a quality 300+ plus entry with all of last season’s champions in attendance as they look to defend their titles but they face increasingly strong opposition from Kyosho’s Jared Tebo and Associated’s Ryan Maifield, two big names drivers who have declared their intentions to go for the title in this the 3rd running of the series.

Champion of both 2 & 4WD buggy, winning all five rounds of 4WD buggy in last year’s series, Steven Hartson expects this to be his toughest race yet with the arrival of Tebo and Maifield but he is looking forward to the challenge and said the higher level of competition is good for the profile of the series.  Commenting on the track which facility owner Scott McDonald has come up with, the factory Associated driver said its fun to drive especially due to the nicely detailed curbing, but tighter than last year he feels it will be hard to race on adding that qualifying is going to very important.  Wishing that there were a few more jumps he said in the early runs both his buggies felt good. Also competing in 2WD Short Course the Californian said his SC10 needed a little work as it felt a bit loose.

Looking for a sixth consecutive win in 4WD Buggy, Hartson’s biggest treat comes from within his own team as Maifield makes his debut in the series this weekend.  One of the sports most spectacular drivers, Maifield said he is looking forward to a good weekend of racing adding that while the track is a ‘little small’ the surface is ‘really good’ and its ‘fun to drive’.  Also here from Associated is team-manager Brent Thielke, who after putting on the Reedy Race of Champion two weeks ago, will have a slightly less stressful weekend but as defending champion of the Mod Truck class he wont be able to relax to much.

His first time to race in the series, Tebo had an early start to the opening day of the event as he left his house at 05:30 this morning together with team-mate Cody Turner to make the three & a half hour drive from Raymore across to St.Louis.  From California, Turner flew out to the former World Champion earlier in the week so they could prep their cars together both running 2 & 4WD buggy with Tebo also doing truck and Turner focusing on 2WD Short Course.  Commenting on the narrow track after a few early runs, Tebo described the track as ‘very interesting’ adding that the racing should be ‘fun’.

Better known as a nitro offroad racer, making the final in December’s 1:8 Offoad World Championships in Argentina, Xray’s Josh Wheeler should be one to watch in 4WD Buggy this weekend.  Living just 25-minutes from SmacTrac, Wheeler runs regularly at the track saying when it gets too cold outside for nitro he does a bit of indoor electric running. Now that Xray has entered the electric market with their XB4, the RC America driver is doing a bit more running although he said for the 2013 season his main focus will remain nitro.  Also running a 2WD Buggy, he said this is purely to get track time and he hasn’t touched the Kyosho between runs, but with his XB4 feeling more similar to his nitro buggy to drive he is hoping to be up there in 4WD come Sunday.  Having only got the XB4 at the beginning of January he said he is still learning every run.

Factory MIP driver Matthew Olson is champion of 4WD Short Course and having also won the 2WD Stock Short Course title will this season move up to 2WD Modified SC.  Expecting a good battle with Hartson and Turner, he said the many elevations on the track are hard to determine from the drivers stand and for the large sized Short Course trucks the track is really tight and he expects overtaking to be hard.

View the event images gallery here.