Lutz trifecta at Byron Fuels Heartland Challenge, King second in Pro Truggy after issues

Byrons Challenge at the HobbyPlex in Omaha, Nebraska September 28, 2015

Phew, four weeks of racing across the country has come to its conclusion for me at the 2015 Byrons Challenge. It has been a very busy month for me on the racing and home front, and there is a small sense of relief that a portion of it is finished for the time being. This was the fourth year of this event at the Plex, of which I have attended all four. I was able to sweep buggy and Truggy each of the last two years so let’s check out how this year went.

 

 

Track at the Plex

 

For this year I decided to continue my September schedule of running 3 classes and thus added the Ebuggy to this years proceedings. What turned out to be the biggest challenge this year was tires, and the track was always in limbo between wet, or dried out. A groove would form at times and some places it was higher bite, and others it was slick. Tires were decided for me between clay handlebars or typos, or super soft typos or catapults. Last year in the main the track dried much more than this year and SS catapults were dialed in the main. This year the track never seemed to be quite the same as each time I tried them they were just to slick. So the key for this year was clay tires and doing my favorite thing ever, saucing them. 

 

In in qualifying I had a bit of a mixed bag. Ebuggy I was able to TQ each round and used those runs to try out different tires in preparation for nitro. In Nitro buggy I struggled a bit in qualifying with finding my timing, and not making mistakes. I ended up qualifying 3rd behind Ogden and King. In truggy I was doing a bit better and King and I split Q1 and Q2 leading to a Q3 face off. Well we battled out for the first few minutes and King had to retire so I had a comfortable 5 second lead. When with a minute to go my aging engine blew a rod mid flight ending my run. So Ogden inherited the TQ and I would start 2nd for the main. 

 

Ebuggy Amains were pretty straight forward. I chose to run Clay Handlebars and they were hooking up pretty well. In A1 and A2 I would have a clean start and just pull away from the ensuing pack. I was able to take over a lap victory in both mains thus not needing to run A3. Both of my full pulls were within 2 seconds of each other which was cool to see as well. So a TQ and Victory in Ebuggy with my Tekno EB48.3

 

Ebuggy A1

 

Ebuggy A2

 

Ebuggy Podium

 

Next was the 45 minute Truggy main and boy was it eventful. Out of the gate, half a lap in, Ogden gets sucked into the pipe, and I got collected with him letting King by, as I fell to 4th. I quickly regained 3rd with Ogden right behind, as we battled for a few laps. At this point we were about 6 seconds behind King, who had clear track and had taken off. Eventually I got back into 2nd and started to whittle down at Kings lead.  At the first pit stop we gained about 3 seconds on him, and soon thereafter I was able to make it a battle.  King would make a mistake and I got by and started to extend out my own lead and got out to a 3-5 second lead which held for a good chunk of  the middle of the race. On my 3rd pit stop which got stretched a little long I was very fortunate, as I felt my car nearly run out of gas on approach to pit lane. I yelled down that it was out of fuel in hopes they could have the box ready. But I coasted in with the idle zinging as it does at end of tank, and I applied brakes as they fuel gunned me full of fuel. When I could hear the idle start to drop I started to blip the throttle and feed the engine and off I went, just narrowly adverting disaster. Well I had a 5 second lead which did extend, to about 10 seconds with 3 minutes to go and then my radio started vibrating in my hand! The battery was dying! For those last 3 agonizing minutes, I prayed that my radio could just hold connectivity long enough to cross the line. I tried to do less inputs to the controls, just anything I could to hopefully finish the race. Fortunately I survived the 3 minute hand massage that I truly didn’t want, and was able to come away with the victory.

 

Truggy A-main Victory

 

Truggy Podium

 

Nitro buggy would cap off the weekend and another battle was to be had. This time the three of us all made mistakes on the opening laps, each taking turns at the lead. My car felt really good at the beginning of the run, and when I got into the lead I pulled away a bit. As King and Ogden tusseled behind I got out to a 6 second or so lead. I was doing one more pit stop, but after my first stop I still had the lead so I thought perhaps I was safe as I’d already built my pit stop cushion. Well things started to get interesting after about the 3rd stop as I made a couple mistakes as my buggy was starting to get a bit harder to drive. King was catching up and at about the 2/3 mark he took the lead and extended out about 3-4 second lead. However he would make a mistake and as I was about even with him the marshal grabbed his pipe and snuffed him out. Bad luck on his end and a huge break for me. He got fired back up and was basically 1 lap down. I thought on this 20 second lap track that hopefully I could hang on to that. For the next 5 minutes we paced each other until I flipped off the track at end of the straight. I then continued to stuff every pipe and jump, that had gotten me all weekend. I must have given up 15 seconds on that one lap. King was back within 5 seconds and I was just hanging on to er. But he would crash on the front straight and someone would tag him just after he was marshaled breaking his shock, ending his run. This allowed me to cruise home to victory.

 

 

 

So a solid finish to the weekend, and month for me. As much as I wanted to sweep the month with how it started, my program just got worn out and tired throughout and mistakes were made. Overall though this month I ran 12 classes and got 8 wins, and 3 2nds. So I can’t be to upset about that. And I was able to cap it off with a hat trick.

 

Next for me is a 3 week moving process across country before Sikcross at the end of October. 

 

2015 Byron Fuels Heartland Challenge is over, and it was a battle. It was up and down in qualifying as I TQd both buggy...

blog comments powered by Disqus