Although Saturday’s event was personally a great achievement for me, Sunday’s Modified race was where my true desires lie. Unfortunately, my attempt to maintain a setup throughout the day was nowhere to be seen.
 
Setting of the Landscape 
The two day Event at Whalan (in the western suburbs), had all the Winter Champ Nitro classes and the electric HPI Challenge on Saturday and all the Winter Champ Electric classes on Sunday. Both days were cold, but Sunday I don’t think the mercury never rose above 16 degrees and the wind was quite fresh for most of the day.
Morning Setup/ Practice
Once again we got to the track at around 8am in the morning. There was enough time to get in some practice before racing started at 9am. Our pit area was set-up again (thanks SORMCC), so we started to glue up our tyres. Anthony just loves this job, lol. My car was still pretty good from the previous day, so all good so far.
 
Qualifying
In the time that qualifying came round my car went from good to “No idea”…. It basically didn’t have enough rear grip. This was the case throughout qualifying and I ended up in P15…. No happy. 
Anthony was doing better then I as he was in the back end of the A. We discuss at length about the pro’s and con’s of what was so different between the cars and the difference between the track from yesterday, and made several changes in hope of improving our positions.
Finals
B Final
The wind picked up just before my final race, and the track had gotten slipperier, so I wasn’t expecting too much from my race. I managed to come home in 4th spot, a slight improvement to a puzzling day of racing.
Mod A Finals
 
 
 
 
There’s been a bite of talk on some forums about the quality of the racing over the weekend, but there was a lot of great racing on show as well. The racing between Simon Nicholson and Jake Zarb was truly outstanding, none more so then in the 2nd final. These two Racers showed incredible skill to run virtually nose to tail for the duration of the race without a hint of a collision; just beautiful to witness.
 
 
 
 

Side Note: Simon was running one of my brushless motors from the second qualifier onwards…. (wish I could have gone that fast with it…hmmm)

 
 
 
 
Anthony struggled big time in the finals with fading grip, and we were at a loss to explain our woes, as none of the other 9 competitors in the A seem to be struggling.  There was a 40minute break between the 2nd and 3rd finals, when we reflected some more and Anthony decided to make one last change for the final race. The turnaround from this one change was simply outstanding. Anthony was on fire, the car had all the grip it needed, regrettably it all came too late.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing; but for us it was just plain heartbreaking as we both contemplated if we woulda, coulda, shoulda…..
Once again, a big thanks  goes to HPI for there Sponsorship, the SORMCC Club, the Canteen Staff, and competitors and Spectators.
Regards,
Peter