He guys! After an exhausting week of RC racing I took some time to make a short summary of our impressions from the world’s biggest RC race, the Snowbirds Nationals.

We left to Florida on January 22 and had a good trip over. When we arrived we first picked up our rental car, woho…it was a Jeep Patrol with automatic transmission. Damn…never ran automatic transmission, so when we left the parking lot at Alamo rental, I fully stepped on the brakes. The guy at the gate maybe thought I bought my driver’s license at the Walmart. 

After a smooth ride on the highway we arrived at the Radisson Resort hotel and immediately went to sleep. As the weather was nice the next day, we visited Animal Kingdom. My wife and son, my buddies Jilles and Sven and me liked the park, it was fun.

Next day I worked some on my cars to get everything ready for the first practice day. When we arrived at the track next day, we were surprised by a strange layout. Lot of drivers complained about this, so finally the layout was changed. Track looked superb now.

The first practice runs were used to get the rhythm of the track in. The traction was low in the beginning, so there was no sense in changing setups. The cars felt ok.

In the 17.5 and 10.5 classes I was struggeling a bit with speed and electronics. This would follow me for the whole week.
The next few practice runs were fine, especially in stock my car was supergood in the infield. Still needed to work on the power issue. In Modified the car was ok, little tippy, but this was solved with some superglue on the sidewall of the front tyres.

Qualifying started Thursday and I was in a good mode I thought. In 17.5 I was 5th after the first run, but I was seriously way slower on power. In 10.5 I crashed and did not finish my run. In Modified it went ok, I was 4th after round 1.

Well, what can I say, in the stock classes I continued struggeling with my power, so in 17.5 I even had to run in the B-final. I gave it a last chance and changed speedo/motor setting maybe for the 10th time, it did not work out. I stopped in the main after 2 minutes, as there was no way to keep up. Pretty frustrating!

In 10.5 I could qualify 6th overall, but also here I lost 2 tenth on the straight every lap. The car was so good in the infield, maybe the best car of all, but I lost all on the straight. No matter what I tried, I could not figure it out.
Maybe also my own fault, as I did not try any in stock with Lipo cells before that race.

Modified went well, I qualified 4th. The US drivers/teams simply have more Lipo experience and for this I was quite happy. I needed little more steering now, but I simply was afraid the car would lift again.

On Sunday the A-finals took place. Modified started first. As the horn sounded I took off great, I was besides Blackstock. I did not want to crash and stay fair, so I gave him some space. Well, this resulted in a minor behavior from Herbert, who ran me off into the board.
I was extremely unhappy about this, as this is not the way to do it. I was dead last and my car was tweaked, so I only tried to keep the car on the track, which resulted in a 5th place.
Congrats by the way to the winner Josh Cyrul, he was untouchable this time.

In 10.5 I sweared to be aggressive at the start, no matter who was in front of me. Well, that was the right way, unless I do like to drive in this way, I started from 6th and was 3rd after the first turn.
In front of me it was Hupo closely followed by Schreffler. Behind me it was Jilles.

Well again, power was the problem. Hupo and Schreffler pulled away and I had a good race with Jilles. He was a lot quicker on the straight, so I had to drive hard in the infield to gain some space for the straight. This went well for 6 minutes, but than Jilles made the pass. I touched him in the next corner, which was not really fair, so I let him go again.

Power was fading a lot now and I had to let go Blackstock too. Overall this ended in a 5th place.

Hmmmm…..the conclusion is, there is still lot of work for the upcoming euros, specially in 10.5 I have to try a lot with speedo and motor settings.
I don’t need to change a lot on the cars, the first big race with the S120L went well and I am really sure the cars will be great at the euros.

Anyway, the week in the US was great and even with all the problems the result is not too bad.
I wanna thank my teammate Paul Cicarello for a great support. Its great working together with you buddy. Really looking forward working together with you at the Worlds.

Special thanks go to my friend Sven, who helped me a lot, to Serpent, Xceed, LRP, Jaco, SMC and Blackart.


Have fun racing!
Markus