Sunday, September 7 was Finals day. With Saturday's rainout, the final qualifying order was based on qualifying points for Friday's four rounds of qualifying.

The weather forecast for today was cloudy skies, but with all remnants of the hurricane moving out so quickly, we were greeted with bright sunny skies and the prospect of an excellent day for racing.

The track was re-sprayed, and with an hour or so of practice it should be in reasonably good condition for racing. As the day goes on, it should improve.

The Finals are being run in an "IFMAR style" ladder system. The first two finishers in each lower final will bump up to the next higher Final. The next three cars in each Final will receive the awards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for each race.

Scott Kimbrow, TQ, 1/8 Open

Eli Ezrow, TQ, 1/8 Masters

Chris Whitney preparing the track at dawn

301 Raceway during Qualifying

Scott Kimbrow on his way to another TQ

Mike Swauger, Up Close

Because of oncoming hurricane Hannah, the race schedule was adjusted to hopefully get in as much racing as possible despite the nasty storm. The forecast remains good weather until tonight, when we get clobbered with lots of rain. We are expecting Saturday to be lost to the weather, and therefore the goal is to get in four rounds of qualifying today. The plans call for a re-sort of the qualifiers after the first two rounds.

As this is being written, early Friday morning, it's bright and sunny outside. The track seems in great condition. Practice started early, just a little after sunrise. It will continue until the driver's meeting, scheduled for 9am. Racing starts at 9:30.

The track opened at 8am Thursday, as racers came in to set up their pit areas and started practicing. It's unusual in much of the USA to find an r/c track with as much space as is available at 301 Raceway. Chris Whitney owns a huge tract of land. There's plenty of space for everything, and lots of room for future expansion. The available space reminds me of the World Championships at Club Pegaso, in Mexico. It's a far cry from the limited space at most race sites here in the US. The actual track size is currently 250 x 130, with a race line of 1125 feet.

The rest of the race officials flew in last night. Steve Webster will be the Race Director, Ted 'X' Brown will be doing Announcing. Bob Ingersoll will be the Tech Director. Rubin Benitez will be doing Timing and Scoring. Ed Hill will be the DRO (Designated ROAR Official). Track owner Chris Whitney has signed in, and may run himself. Chris usually races in the 1/10 scale class.

The Racers

ROAR (Radio Operated Automobile Racing) is the sanctioning body for Radio-Controlled (R/C) car racing in the US. This year, the 1:8 scale (eighth scale) on-road National Championships are being held at 301 Raceway in Brandywine Maryland.

1:8 scale cars are the scale equivalents of the LMP cars in the LeMans Grand Prix series. They run on a road course, and are the fastest cars in R/C racing. They run on .21 cubic inch fuel-powered engines, have two speed automatic transmissions, four wheel drive, independent suspension, and vented disc brakes. These cars have everything their full scale counterparts have, including camber, caster, toe adjustments, and many more adjustments. If you can change something on a full-size car, you can make the same adjustment on these model racing cars...

Click on the images below for a larger view.

301 Raceway during open practice Wednesday afternoon

A view from behind the Driver's Stand

This is likely to be more of a 'blog' than a race-report, so if you're not interested in a lot of random text, maybe skip the reading, and move on to the photo, or wait for the upcoming write-up on the 301 National. If you're interested in r/c photography and GPS units, read on.

Saturday, August 16 was a simple practice day at Homestead RC Raceway. About a dozen people showed up, some just to have a fun day at the track, and others getting ready for a club race at Ft. Myers scheduled for the next day, with Hurricane-to-be Fay heading for the same place. There's a big State Series Race coming up in just a few weeks, but I'll be off at a major Quarter Scale event that Friday and Saturday, and I doubt I can make it to Homestead on Sunday. In the meantime, just about every Saturday at Homestead is a practice day.

Lazaro Alonso at Homestead RC Raceway

Friday, August 8, 2008. I'm finally finished up with most of the reporting from the Great Lakes Challenge, but I've still got a ton of interesting photos that ought to be written up and displayed on SGrid Online. However, I'm tired of going through photos endlessly, and I've already posted what might be too many articles on the race. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as lots of good people wrote me with information they'd like to share, and I know that as a reader, I'd find all of it fascinating.

After going through my email, I find a rather puzzling message from Doug McNeely. Apparently there's something posted on the forum for the Homestead Motor Speedway that some well known international photographer would be showing up at the track's r/c club race the next day, Saturday, and all racers should put on their best t-shirts and clean up their cars for photography purposes. I wondered if he was referring to me, but then again I didn't even know there was a club race this coming weekend. So, an email goes off to Doug, with a copy to Art Carbonell. It turns out that the race is for real, and Art's going. It sounded like a great way to spend Saturday, so I finished up my reporting, put some batteries on charge, and made plans to go to the track with Art the next day, with the goal of spending the day at the race, and then doing another write-up with Art on Saturday evening.

The Homestead Track - start of the 1/10 A-Main

As a thirty year veteran of almost every type of RC car, I'd like to share my experience with what I would call one of the best engineered 1/8 cars on the market. Having designed complete cars (EV10), helping with the stealth off-road design and quite a few weird innovations like the "Ugly Axle" and "Jump Jets" I really appreciate when someone builds a car that not only has all the right geometry but the biggest deal is that you can wrench this baby in a New York minute! Try infinite front belt tension adjust in maybe twenty seconds. Try pulling the wheel, axle and CV joint out of the car with one "c" clip in less than ten seconds. Try not having to get carpal tunnel screwing into plastic all day. All the bulkheads are precision German made anodized aluminum. I even thought about weighting my Hudy wrenches so I could spin them till they then stopped tight, cool, huh?

Dan Louis wiht the Shepherd Velox

the Shepherd Velox

This project was a joint effort between myself and the US importer for Robitronic, SK Motion. This is an up and coming class, and I felt that the BR50 from Robitronic would make an excellent platform from which to build a GT class car.

The BR50 is a desert trophy class truck, built upon the Mantis Truggy chassis but uses shorter, buggy length arms. I received the BR50 less than a week before the GLC. I proceeded to remove the bits that would not be needed, and scrounge around for parts for the conversion. I found a 2-speed that was originally produced for the Lightning Street, a bumper for the OFNA GTP, a Losi LST clutch bell, some Mugen aluminum clutch shoes/1.1 springs, OFNA CLK body, wing stay for the Robitronic buggy, pinions were a mix of Losi and HPI.

A look at the car, body off

Well the Great Lakes Challenge has come and gone. This is one of my favorite races of the year. The Toledo track is one of the finest in the country and I am lucky enough to call it my home track as well. In the five years I have been to this race it has transformed into one of the major national events, drawing racers from all over the country. Of course what everyone loves about this race is the emphasis put on FUN and enjoying our time spent not only racing but hanging out with good friends.

Bobby Flack, 1/10 GLC Champion

Bobby Flack in the 1/10 A-Main

Oh boy! Where do I even start..... It's now Wednesday, and I am just getting things back to normal after a great week of r/c racing. There really is something special about hanging out with good friends, being engaged in fierce competition, and enjoying racing an r/c car.

Unfotunately, things didn't quite finish up the way I had hoped. After four days of everything going perfect, the last day went all wrong........

Scott Kimbrow, with fiancee Sherry

Scott in action in the Main

Hi, I am Gianfranco Becattini. I am 13 years old and I live in the Dominican Republic. For my summer vacation I came to visit my father to New York. My dad has raced 1:8 scale for many years and one of my dreams was to stand in the driver stand next to him driving my own car. I told my dad that I wanted my own RC car. I got inspired with the 1:10 scale cars because they are interesting and at the same time they are fun. My dad bought me my own Kyosho FW-05 ready-to-run sedan.

My dad told me that he was going to go to Ohio to a big race (GLC) so I convinced him to talk with the Race Director to see if I could only practice the first two days of the week that aren’t official practices for the race. The Race Director said I could but only the first two days.

Gianfranco Becattini

Gianfranco on a nice line!

After not being at the GLC for a couple of years I decided to try and get some track time with the Serpent 960 08'. Since I am mainly a sedan driver I felt I needed to race some 1/8 scale and this would be my third race. I did not register for sedan; this way I could focus on 1/8 scale only and provide tech support for the other serpent racers.

I arrived to the track Thursday around noon and started with a stock setup on the 960. I tested the Central body and the new Zytec that did so well in the Euro's. I must say the new body was great. I first wanted to learn about the motor and clutch and was going to worry about the chassis later. I knew that getting a setup with a bad clutch meant nothing, since the clutch is so vital to the cars performance. Thank God I went to this race. I fought the motor and clutch package the first two days before I learned how to tune the motor and clutch properly. This will save me time at the nationals. After the first day of qualifying I was happy to be in 8 or 9th considering my problems. I knew I could improve the next day with the knowledge I now had about the clutch and motor.

DJ (left) on driver's stand during the A-Main

DJ's Serpent 960

Parma has produced the new R-12 body for 1/8 scale on-road. Racers seem to be very pleased with the performance. At the 2008 Great Lakes Challenge, Josh Cyrul used one to win the 1/8 4WD, and Skip Starkey used one to win the Masters Class.

Josh Cyrul at the 2008 GLC - Click on image for larger view

Going into this year's GLC there was already so much that had changed from last year and the years prior to that. New sponsors for both car and engines for the '08 season has really left me doing a lot of testing and learning to find not only good set-ups to generate fast lap times but also the feel I am looking for from the cars. In 1/8, the switch to Motonica after nearly 6 years at Kyosho has been relatively easy but at the same time hard to break old habits that I had developed. With help from Garen at Motonica USA, my initial start was pretty good but finding exactly what I am looking for has been tough testing at some of the major races early in the year. After Ft. Myers, RAMS 40th, 301 and some club races at Toledo, I finally found a set-up that is very comfortable to drive, easy on the tires and will run the fast lap times without having to push the car over the limits. In 200mm TC, the switch to Xray has been the same but different. The Xray car is extremely fast but finding the set-up that makes the car "feel" the way I would like has kept me on my toes and searching. With their super light drive train and quality of the parts it just always feels like there is so much more out there if I could find out the little details of the set-up I feel I am missing when I hit the track. Again, I think just a product of running something else for so long and having such a comfort level with it.

Josh in action in the Sedan A-Main

Josh following Scott Kimbrow in the 1/8 A-Main