Gillespie dominated on home track at 27th annual April Fools Classic

0 April 22, 2015, 4:58 p.m.

By Jason Luthman and Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

The 27th Annual Pro-Line April Fools Classic at Murf’s Intermountain RC Raceway went down this past weekend in Salt Lake City, UT. The event attracted over 250 entries from all over the western states for Sportsman, 17.5 Stock, 13.5 Super Stock and the coveted Open Modified Classes. Some big names were in attendance along with some familiar local names on the “Big Race” Circuit, most notably Steven Hartson, Drew Moller, Tanner Denney, Rob Gillespie Jr., Corey Peterson, Kobe Yonker and Joel Eaton, just to name a few.

AE’s Rob Gillespie Jr. earned TQ in the Modified Truck class with the new Team Associated T5m over top of Tanner Denney with Jason Luthman starting in third. Rob quickly wrapped up the title by winning the first two A-mains with pressure coming from Denney only in A2. Denney finished second with local guy Moose taking third. The new T5M swept the podium!

In the Modified 4wd Buggy class, Hot Bodies/HPI Racing’s Drew Moller ended up with the TQ after some intense qualifying rounds which saw both Drew and Rob put in the only 18 lap runs of the 4 rounds. Rob lined up second with Steven Hartson third.

The overall came down to the last main after Rob took A1 and Drew A2 with a blistering 19 lap run. A few laps into A3, Drew’s Hot Bodies tumbled heading into the off camber corner and let Rob around for the top spot. Drew ended up breaking down 9 laps in and Rob Gillespie Jr. went on to take the overall win! After a 3 way tie breaker for the rest of the podium between Steven Hartson, Moller and Kobe Yonker; Drew Moller took second and local AE/LRP/Pro-Line driver Kobe Yonker earned third.

In the Modified 2wd Buggy Class, Robbie Jr took the TQ after the first 3 rounds of qualifying, but it wasn’t without significant threat from Steven Hartson and Drew Moller, both coming within 2 seconds of the TQ time for each round. TLR/Orion/JConcepts driver Corey Peterson lined up second on the grid after taking Q4 with a nuclear run with Drew Moller lining up third and Hartson in fourth.

Rob took A1 over top of a hard charging Tanner Denney who came from seventh on the grid after some unlucky qualifying to finish second with Kobe Yonker finishing third. A2 saw Drew Moller take the win with Rob in second and Peterson third. Again, the overall came down to A3. In front of his hometown crowd, Rob Jr won A3 with little pressure from Peterson or Moller, who swapped positions a few times before the tone, with Drew Moller finishing second and Peterson third which is how the podium would end up.

In the highly contested Stock 17.5 Buggy Class, local hot shoe Anthony Dubbelman scored the TQ with his B5m. In the single A-main, bad luck struck Anthony and allow local youngster Nickolas Stens through to the point also driving the B5m. Nickolas, who has only been racing about a year, held down the lead and finish in first, much to the cheers of the crowd, over Joel Navarro and Erik Evenson.

Special thanks go out to Matt Murphy and Steven Northrop and the rest of the crew at Murf’s Intermountain RC Raceway for putting together an incredible race. Additional thanks to the event sponsors Pro-Line, Team Associated, Reedy, Schelle Racing Products, LRP, Venom/Atomik, Lunsford, Tekin and LiveRC.com.

Here are the winners of the other classes as well.