This years finals showed to be one of the most trying as far as setup went. The track became completely blown out by the second day of practice. I felt very confident with both my buggies going into qualifying that I even quit practicing on the last day at 3pm to start prepping for the next day. The track was run wet and I quickly had found that the AKA Enduro's were by far the best tire I had in my arsenal. Mainly due to the high bite, insane bumps, and high speed sections. The City Blocks and I-Beams were too tippy for the conditions and the Gridirons didn't generate enough rear traction for my car. But this was to all be questioned for the first two rounds of qualifying because the track went to dry and they weren't watering. The car was hard to drive to say the least and it would show because this would be the only round I didn't TQ in electric and got 3rd in Pro Nitro. But once the water came back it was time for some better times.
The electric class had 5 people that could ultimately win it so the pressure was on. Luckily I had 8 points over 2nd place qualifier Mitchel Gardner which made it comfortable to go into the mains. This turned out to be a false confidence because I had left my car at the track the night prior to the mains and it got below 40f. For the first main I go out to run my car and right before I finish my first lap the spur lost 6 teeth all next to each other. Gear mesh was perfect and nothing loose so I believe the spur got brittle. And Mitchel won the first main so now it was time to buckle down. 2nd main I take the win and was heavily pressured by AE's Kraig Krueger. After regaining the lead from him though his car shut down at the end of the straight due to a wire that I believe became frayed which gave me a comfortable lead of 12 seconds over Speedster Hobbies owner Chris Allison. In order to win the Final and the overall National Championship I was going to have to beat Mitchel and it started off amazing. About 5 minutes into the main I had a 23 second advantage over Mitchel but then my car just shut off at the end of the front straight. I was about to walk off the stand but decided to try it one last time and sure enough 6 seconds later it started working again. I drove the car 1/4 throttle from that point and at the 8 minute mark it happened again and Mitchel got as close as 4 seconds to me. For the next two minutes I decided it would be smart to actually roll all the way into it on the straights to get more airflow and this proved to get me over the line in first. Turns out the fan on my Tekin speedo had failed and was shorting (bec) just enough when it kicked on at 140f to shut it down.
David used the Tekin Rx8 and T8 Redline 1900kv motor to power his car to victory!
David Joor
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