Ryan Lutz "Quadfecta" at the RC Pro East Division Rd. 3

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Mike Garrison

0 Sept. 4, 2012, 5:49 a.m.

There is nothing to fear about Cape Fear, unless you consider what mother nature can dish out. I headed east across the country to attend a second RC Pro qualifier for the Finals in November in Houston. I arrived for some practice on Friday and then a full day of qualification and mains on Saturday. On Friday the track owner Ed and crew had put in countless hours of preparing the track and facility and it made for an absolute blast of a track. Usually I am not a big fan of practicing because I begin to get bored with it. But at Cape Fear I just wanted to keep running and running as much as I could. My car that was most fun to drive on that day was my DNX408 Nitro buggy. It just felt great and as the day wore on I even decided to try a ‘crazy’ diff oil setup just to see what it would do. I went from the 5-5-3 that I was running to 20-20-4 and on this particular track it felt amazing. With all the high speed corners I could grip it and rip it and quite often not even lift it (the throttle) as I just pulled trigger to the max around many corners. It was awesome! Using my radio lap stopwatch I clocked in multiple low 39 second lap times and even one 38 when I was told no one had ever broken the 40 second barrier. The track and my cars were dialed!

Come Saturday morning though Mother Nature stepped in and defied all the weather forcasters (there paid to be wrong, right?) and she let loose a downpour for a good 3 hours overnight. With truckloads of sawdust / woodchips and some tireless hard work by Ed and the track crew the track became runable by around 11AM. The first round was quite muddy as the red clay was wet a couple inches deep but as the day wore on a groove started to form and the track came around quite nicely for what had transpired. There were only 9 heats of racing and I was attempting to race in 4 of them. I had many back to backs and got quite proficient and changing my throttle finger from vehicle to vehicle. Running my Durango DNX408, DEX408, DNX408T, and DESC410v2 I did my best to adjust to the constantly changing track conditions as it morphed through the day from super wet to mostly dried out. They had to shorten the program a little to 3 qualifiers instead of 4 due to the late start. By the end of qualifying though I was able to take the overall TQ in each class to accomplish the first goal of the ‘quadfecta’.

Come main time there were 14 races and I was schedueled to race in 8 of them. Including a stretch of being on the drivestand for about 1 hour and 40 minutes straight! My Nitro vehicles were on point with my Alpha Ryan Lutz Edition engines just running flawlessly the entire mains and weekend. I was able to win both Nitro mains by about 3 laps I believe. They felt awesome and I almost wish the 30 minute mains could have been longer! In the Triple A-mains for the electric classes I was able to take a clean A1 in both classes to victory. In A2 I would crash early in both and make it interesting. In SC I was able to get back and take the win. In E-buggy I made a few more mistakes and had to fight super hard at the end to catch up. I crossed the line on the potential last lap only a second or two behind the leader and I got caught by the line by like .2. I wasn’t told that right away and on that next lap I was able to pass the leader but later found I got caught by the line. So A3 was in the cards but the drama quickly ended as the winner of A2 bowed out early in A3 and thus I knew I had secured the win!

So for the first time ever I completed my ‘QuadFecta’! Feels good to do that especially with how busy a day it was. I was in 17 races in one day so it really showed the quality of my Durango’s and all my sponsors products to stand up to a day of abuse! All in all I had a great time and really look forward to my return trip to Cape Fear! That is one extremly fun track that I will always fondly think about!

Next up is the first ever race at A-main Hobbies new Silver Dollar Raceway on Labor Day weekend. I can’t wait. The track looks insanely amazing!

-Lutzinator