Race Recap: Successful Start to 2019 Large Scale Speedway Season

One Seven RC kicked off our 2019 Large Scale Speedway season yesterday at HBLSS.
2 out of 3 of the team were in attendance, 1NZ Kenley Brown took the 77B car up to test a new suspension setup with the 1NZ car still awaiting new parts and Allan being tied up with work, and 6B Ron Groom also attended.

10 Dirt Mods arrived and were split into 2 groups for qualifying. Kenley was placed into Group A and Ron into Group B so we could share race director duties. 
Heat 1 saw 1NZ start off the front row, and pulled away off the start, even with a standard can exhaust what the car lacked in straight line speed, it made up for in the corners with the new shock package working excellent. A mistake on lap 2 saw Kenley on his roof and sent to the back for the restart. The car was much nicer on restarts compared to the old setup, and was able to carry a lot more corner speed which saw the 77B/1NZ back to the lead within a few laps which is where the race would finish, taking out the first race win of the season.

On damp tracks the next 2 qualifying heats would finish the same way, with the 1NZ on top after having great battles with the other Group A drivers. 

Ron, who is normally a Group A driver started strong, but had to battle for his race with from the 91B of Alan Rudge, who had a heap of pace after a few meetings away. Ron eventually came away with the race win. Ron's heat 2 wasn't as good however, with a servo saver issue the car wasn't handling the best. Ron ended up putting one some of the most impressive aerobatic displays we've seen for a while, barrel rolling and ending up on his roof about 5 times in 1 race. After the race an issue was found, and unfortunately it had destroyed the steering servo so that was his day done, while we had spare servos we didn't have a spare servo saver on hand.

Heading into the finals, Kenley retuned the 77B/1NZ car as it was feeling a bit flat on power. Finals heat 1 was once again a wet track which worked in his favour with the setup working great, he took the win from the back of the grid, with some great battles and side by side racing on the way through. The car still wasn't 100%, more tuning before the second finals heat was done, lining up mid pack, the car was better in the early running of the race, a few on track mistakes, and the car once again going flat towards the end of the race Kenley still managed to come home with the win, but only just with an epic finish across the line with the 11B car of Matt Pedersen.

Heat 3 was quite a different track, with it having dried out, it went very dusty and slick. Kenley missed the setup on the 1NZ car by a fair way and the car was a handful to drive, very loose with not a whole lot of traction. Starting up the front Kenley opened up a lead, but made a mistake, jumping the infield pipe and getting stuck. Sent to the back as the cause of the red he started moving forward but the car was just to hard to drive, more mistakes and unable to catch the leader he came home in 2nd behind the 11B of Matt Petersen.

Overall a Successful day for the 1NZ, having used the 77B car that is now setup and ready for Allan to get back on the controller at the second meeting. While Ron didn't have the best of days, we already have a fix underway to stop the same issue happening again.

Thanks to the team sponsors for their continued support

One Seven RC
K Brown Designs Limited
Pollys Toys & Gifts
PM Burling CA Ltd
Roydhouse Performance
RevXS Customs

Our next meeting is 1/10th Electric Off-road at Raukawa International Raceway in Palmerston North this weekend (20/1/2019). Where we plan on having our final test runs in the stock 17.5t 2wd and 4wd cars before the NZRCA North Island Champs in 2 weeks time.

*Photos featured in this article supplied by Legaspeed Multimedia