johnnydmd
Beer drinker and hell racer
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This was one I had circled for a while. While I would be limited to bracket racing (which I'm not a fan of), I just wanted to participate in a national event or two this year. Weather had been pretty mild in recent weeks, then of course we get this stupid "heat dome" for the weekend. I kept wondering if things would get rescheduled, because in all truthfulness, it wasn't safe to be out there, especially for people who don't know how dangerous it actually is. Luckily no one was taken away in an ambulance. That's the good news.
The turnout was massive. Somewhere around 100 racers I think.
The track was in great shape, but it took work. The track owner generously used his streetcleaner to try and remove the dirt, but in the end, it took a bunch of guys with push brooms and blowers.
We got set up quickly. There were three N301 racers, with a couple of wives present. Two racers who were coming opted out because of the heat. I quickly started up my cars and tried to tune them best I could.
There were a lot of people waiting in lines to do test passes from 12:30-3:30, with racing starting at 4:30. While the staging area was somewhat shaded by tents, it was still blazing hot, and waiting in line with a running nitro car wasn't feasible, so I waited for a moment when the line was short and quickly fired up Invader 2 to do a test pass. Since this was bracket racing, my plan was to do an all-motor pass, set my dial in for a touch under what I ran, and have nitrous on standby in case I was losing I could hit the button and try to win. Well, my pass was not so good at 3 seconds, as the engine bogged and sputtered down the track, far too rich. Tuning to these temps was a nightmare actually. I had leaned it out some, but nowhere near enough. Went back and tried tuning more on my bench. I was literally a full turn in from my normal tune. I really didn't know how this would behave if I hit nitrous on this tune and had no more time to make another test pass. After some thought, I opted to just run the small block Hissed Off since being fast wasn't as important as hitting your dial-in, and Hissed Off is super consistent and decently fast enough to make up for errors.
At this point, this is where things started going wrong IMO with the event. For the next hour the pairings were set up. There were numerous mess-ups, and me and one of my teammates got left out of our class brackets and had to go up to tell the organizer. This happened to a bunch of other guys too. When I got up there, I noticed there was a lot of copy-pasting of stuff, and I felt like it wasn't the most efficient or organized method. I'm not familiar with the Portatree system, or what software he may have been using, but I know that Trackmate's software is super easy to set everything up and you don't have to re-do the pairings and stuff after each round, it does it all automatically.
Each racer got what was called "double entry", which was that there was an A and B bracket for each class. This I think is part of what really went wrong with all of this in the end. A single entry, first round buy-back system would have been far better. It was clear that with the amount of brackets and classes, and the delays in between with all of the manual work, there was no chance in hell this was getting done by 11pm (which was the curfew of the track - more on that later).
The races got started with the ultra fast outlaw prep tired brushless cars. Eventually it got to the bracket class, which had 32 racers and was the largest class. In my A bracket, I was matched up against a guy that was from a rival group in our area. Super nice guy. I had zero test passes with Hissed Off, so I just guessed a 2.7 since the car has typically run 2.7-2.8 most of the time, with it's fastest being 2.5 seconds. I was going up against a 3.49 car, so that was so weird with him leaving early, very tough to concentrate. I left on time, but only ran a 2.9 as I didn't hit the nitrous until 30 feet out. My opponent, well he ran exactly 3.49! Eventually my B bracket race came up, so this time I dialed in at 2.8, and hit the nitrous early. However, for some reason the nitrous delayed firing off probably due to me having a little too much pressure for the solenoid, but it did fire, and I blew past my opponent, running a 2.8 on the nose.
My next race wouldn't be until dark. That's how long this thing was taking.
This is really where things started getting off for the event. People were exhausted, some not feeling so great (including us). The temps were dropping pretty fast, but the toll was definitely there. The racing was moving far too slowly to possibly be completed, and there seemed to be some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication about what time it had to be shut down.
Meanwhile, I got to the line to race in bracket B second round. Kept my dial-in the same as I nailed it on the previous race. Figured I'd again wait a little to hit the bottle, and this time I also dropped to 70 PSI to ensure that it fired exactly as I hit it (may need to look into a stronger receiver pack in the future). I knew nothing about my opponent other than she was from NC as were a lot of the racers (six or so states represented here). Her car was slower, so she was getting the head start of course but I felt good about winning. I felt like I got off the line ok, a bit late, but I hit the bottle and flew past her at the finish line, beating her by a car or so. Then I hear "right lane red light". What the heck? I congratulated her for the win and went back to my tent to watch the video my wife took. This was supposed to be a .4 Full Tree, and there is no way I was under .4 seconds! RCHRA Top Sportsman Rules
I knew that either way another round wasn't happening as it was already close to 10 pm, so I didn't bother protesting, and I just let it go. We looked at the video, and sure enough, you can see that my opponent (who waited for the light to turn green to go) - shows that it was 1 full second between the last yellow and green.
My teammates were still alive though, so that was good. Then the total poop-show started. The organizer came on the loudspeaker and said that things had to wrap up at 11pm and seemed either surprised or pissed off by that. Now as someone who has raced at this track a few times and has met with the owner (super nice guy), I personally knew of the 11pm cutoff. I'm not sure if there was some misunderstanding or what, but what I heard coming from the loudspeaker was just uncalled for. What makes it worse (for everyone involved) is that a racer went over to the track owner and talked to him and had the place locked in to race until it was finished, no matter the time - and the organizer managed to ruin that agreement (I didn't hear this part firsthand). I'm not sure what happened, but my hunch is egos were involved. What a shame, especially for the racers.
We started packing up at this point. My wife and I left, my teammates lingered around a bit to talk to people, including the owner (since this is now our home base). I won't get into the details of what was found out here - but our fears that this event would reflect on us poorly were removed). We are in great standing.
Such a shame that this event fell apart as it did. I have previously had a lot of respect how the organizer has built this brand from the ground up, and it's come so far in the two years since he began with it, but I fear that he may have burned the thing to the ground on a 99-degree day in Maryland.
The turnout was massive. Somewhere around 100 racers I think.
The track was in great shape, but it took work. The track owner generously used his streetcleaner to try and remove the dirt, but in the end, it took a bunch of guys with push brooms and blowers.
We got set up quickly. There were three N301 racers, with a couple of wives present. Two racers who were coming opted out because of the heat. I quickly started up my cars and tried to tune them best I could.
There were a lot of people waiting in lines to do test passes from 12:30-3:30, with racing starting at 4:30. While the staging area was somewhat shaded by tents, it was still blazing hot, and waiting in line with a running nitro car wasn't feasible, so I waited for a moment when the line was short and quickly fired up Invader 2 to do a test pass. Since this was bracket racing, my plan was to do an all-motor pass, set my dial in for a touch under what I ran, and have nitrous on standby in case I was losing I could hit the button and try to win. Well, my pass was not so good at 3 seconds, as the engine bogged and sputtered down the track, far too rich. Tuning to these temps was a nightmare actually. I had leaned it out some, but nowhere near enough. Went back and tried tuning more on my bench. I was literally a full turn in from my normal tune. I really didn't know how this would behave if I hit nitrous on this tune and had no more time to make another test pass. After some thought, I opted to just run the small block Hissed Off since being fast wasn't as important as hitting your dial-in, and Hissed Off is super consistent and decently fast enough to make up for errors.
At this point, this is where things started going wrong IMO with the event. For the next hour the pairings were set up. There were numerous mess-ups, and me and one of my teammates got left out of our class brackets and had to go up to tell the organizer. This happened to a bunch of other guys too. When I got up there, I noticed there was a lot of copy-pasting of stuff, and I felt like it wasn't the most efficient or organized method. I'm not familiar with the Portatree system, or what software he may have been using, but I know that Trackmate's software is super easy to set everything up and you don't have to re-do the pairings and stuff after each round, it does it all automatically.
Each racer got what was called "double entry", which was that there was an A and B bracket for each class. This I think is part of what really went wrong with all of this in the end. A single entry, first round buy-back system would have been far better. It was clear that with the amount of brackets and classes, and the delays in between with all of the manual work, there was no chance in hell this was getting done by 11pm (which was the curfew of the track - more on that later).
The races got started with the ultra fast outlaw prep tired brushless cars. Eventually it got to the bracket class, which had 32 racers and was the largest class. In my A bracket, I was matched up against a guy that was from a rival group in our area. Super nice guy. I had zero test passes with Hissed Off, so I just guessed a 2.7 since the car has typically run 2.7-2.8 most of the time, with it's fastest being 2.5 seconds. I was going up against a 3.49 car, so that was so weird with him leaving early, very tough to concentrate. I left on time, but only ran a 2.9 as I didn't hit the nitrous until 30 feet out. My opponent, well he ran exactly 3.49! Eventually my B bracket race came up, so this time I dialed in at 2.8, and hit the nitrous early. However, for some reason the nitrous delayed firing off probably due to me having a little too much pressure for the solenoid, but it did fire, and I blew past my opponent, running a 2.8 on the nose.
My next race wouldn't be until dark. That's how long this thing was taking.
This is really where things started getting off for the event. People were exhausted, some not feeling so great (including us). The temps were dropping pretty fast, but the toll was definitely there. The racing was moving far too slowly to possibly be completed, and there seemed to be some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication about what time it had to be shut down.
Meanwhile, I got to the line to race in bracket B second round. Kept my dial-in the same as I nailed it on the previous race. Figured I'd again wait a little to hit the bottle, and this time I also dropped to 70 PSI to ensure that it fired exactly as I hit it (may need to look into a stronger receiver pack in the future). I knew nothing about my opponent other than she was from NC as were a lot of the racers (six or so states represented here). Her car was slower, so she was getting the head start of course but I felt good about winning. I felt like I got off the line ok, a bit late, but I hit the bottle and flew past her at the finish line, beating her by a car or so. Then I hear "right lane red light". What the heck? I congratulated her for the win and went back to my tent to watch the video my wife took. This was supposed to be a .4 Full Tree, and there is no way I was under .4 seconds! RCHRA Top Sportsman Rules
I knew that either way another round wasn't happening as it was already close to 10 pm, so I didn't bother protesting, and I just let it go. We looked at the video, and sure enough, you can see that my opponent (who waited for the light to turn green to go) - shows that it was 1 full second between the last yellow and green.
My teammates were still alive though, so that was good. Then the total poop-show started. The organizer came on the loudspeaker and said that things had to wrap up at 11pm and seemed either surprised or pissed off by that. Now as someone who has raced at this track a few times and has met with the owner (super nice guy), I personally knew of the 11pm cutoff. I'm not sure if there was some misunderstanding or what, but what I heard coming from the loudspeaker was just uncalled for. What makes it worse (for everyone involved) is that a racer went over to the track owner and talked to him and had the place locked in to race until it was finished, no matter the time - and the organizer managed to ruin that agreement (I didn't hear this part firsthand). I'm not sure what happened, but my hunch is egos were involved. What a shame, especially for the racers.
We started packing up at this point. My wife and I left, my teammates lingered around a bit to talk to people, including the owner (since this is now our home base). I won't get into the details of what was found out here - but our fears that this event would reflect on us poorly were removed). We are in great standing.
Such a shame that this event fell apart as it did. I have previously had a lot of respect how the organizer has built this brand from the ground up, and it's come so far in the two years since he began with it, but I fear that he may have burned the thing to the ground on a 99-degree day in Maryland.
