This weekend we had the 4th round of the Florida State Series.

I arrived on Saturday morning to find the track had been prepared very well. I decided to run both classes and looked forward to hanging with the boys.

I started practice with the 1/8 scale and felt like it was very hard to drive. I started working on the setup, but could not seem to find a balance I was happy with. The car was so nervous to drive I could not turn consistent laps. I decided to take a break and run the sedan for a tank to see what it was doing. I had my standard setup and it felt good. I parked the sedan and went back to the 1/8 car to try more changes.

Qualifying started and I was up with 1/8 scale first. Since I have not run in the series for this class I had to qualify with the slower drivers. They were all very nice, but it still made for a lot of traffic and I could not get in any good laps. I ended with a fast 24 lap run, but knew I could have done 25. All this while my car was only driving in 2nd gear. My 2speed had a stripped screw and the car would shift immediately. In the second qualifier I fixed the 2speed, but got hit by a back marker and ended my run. For the third qualifier I tried to make some more changes, but the car was a hand full. Needless to say I stuffed the wall and broke the car. In the final run I was on a TQ pace and my fuel tank or motor had issues and the car stopped on the last lap. I say the fuel tank or motor since I still had a lot of fuel in the tank, but the car just died. I changed both and still have not checked for the problem. This put me with 24 laps in 4:58 and 3rd on the grid. With all the troubles I was happy with the 3rd spot. For sedan It was a different story. I was able to set a fast run in the first round with a 23 5:12. This was having a few problems with back markers. I sat out the 2nd round since I was running 2 classes and felt my time in sedn was good. In the 3rd round I ran again and was on a 23 lap in 5:06, but mad a mistake and just pulled the car off the track. In the last round I ended up with the 23 lap in 5:08 and kept the TQ.

For the finals I felt good in sedan and made some changes for the 1/8 scale to try and get the car more drivable. I was up in sedan first and from the start was pulling on the field. After about 10 minutes I put on cruise control an brought home the win. With no break went straight into the 1/8 main. I the warm up the car was worse. The changes I made were not good and the car was not drivable. I started the main and was in second. After about 5 laps I already had my hands full and felt like I was going to break the car. Well 4 laps later I did just that. The good thing was I was able to watch Paolo lay down some crazy laps some as low as 11.7 seconds WOW. he pulled about a 4 lap lead when He lost 1st gear. Lucky for him I broke out and had a 1st gear ready to give him. Doug changed his gear and got him back into the race. At that point Paolo was now 1 1/2 laps down. Paolo got back one lap and with 3 minutes to go was charging fast to catch the leader. Then the leader stuff the wall trying to stay out front. This gave Paolo the win.

It was a great weekend for Serpent America and Serpent in general. We got the TQ and WIN in both classes. I would like the thank the Fort Myers club for getting the facility ready and the Forgass people for having the series.

Special thanks to all my sponsors; Serpent, Serpent America, Xceed, Maxy\'s Fuel, Novarossi World and Twister Tires USA. It is with these products I can complete and help the people in this great sport.

Till next race,

DJ Apolaro