A personal email from Ray Munday to Jason Ruona, posted by AR

Hi Jason,

Just a quick email to let you know I won the 2wd mod title at the Australian Nats!! I’m still in a state of shock… my first Nats win, 10 years since I came very close but got taken out on the last corner..

Matt Griffin and I were easily the quickest in 2wd. He TQd, won the first final, then I won the next two. He was a bit unlucky (crashed in the second final while leading and popped a ball cup) but my car was working well and I was driving to be consistent rather than outright fastest. In the third final I kept myself together and won by 8s. I was using the Illuzion Scoopless body, 7″ V-wing, front scoop and JC Rulux wheels.

I ended up 4th in 4wd after some bad luck in the finals (Matt Griffin and I were the fastest but I got taken out in the first final and DNF’d the third final with a wheel drive pin snapping… lost 3rd on a countback). Matt Griffin won 4wd and deserved it.

I will send more news and pics in the next couple of days. I need some sleep tonight!!

Thanks very much for the support for the last year and a half – it is really appreciated and I don’t think I would be able to get a result like this without help from people such as yourself!

Thanks

Ray

Event: 2008 Cactus Classic
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Dates: March 14-16, 2008
Website: http://www.race-srs.com

March Madness in Arizona -

1/10th electric racing kicks off in 2008 with the Cactus Classic. With a healthy list of domestic and international competition this was set to be a heated battle in the desert.

The SRS track is very typical in size for 1/10th off-road but with a Joey (The Dirt) Christensen built layout and abrasive surface the difficulty skyrocketed. With lap times in the 18’s and 19’s, driver concentration and discipline was very critical. Set-up, tire choice and condition were crucial to success.

Qualifying was a toss-up throughout Friday and Saturday. Jared Tebo, Ryan Maifield, Ryan Cavalieri and Masami Hirosaka seemed to have the greatest touch early on. With each top qualifying in separate rounds, no one really seemed to have a complete grasp on the difficult SRS track.

The TQ came down to the 4th round of qualifying on Saturday evening with Jared Tebo top qualifying in the 2wd modified class, Ryan Maifield top qualifying in truck modified and Masami Hirosaka top qualifying in the 4wd modified class.

Early Sunday morning at the Cactus is always a bit of a rush and mystery.
The condition of the track is much different than each driver qualified on in the previous days so making those final adjustments and changes prior to he finals usually puts someone at an advantage.

2wd Modified -

In the 2wd modified mains it looked like Masami had done his pre-race work and really had the early morning conditions figured out. In A-1 Masami took the lead in the first 2 corners from Jared Tebo and took the win by looking very dominating. In A-2 Jared Tebo regained top form by winning by a slight margin a hard charging Jesse Robbers.

With nothing being completely decided the overall championship was up for grabs in A-3. Jared Tebo again jumped out into the lead with Jesse Robbers and Masami Hirosaka in tow. The top 3 exchanged the lead on several occasions with all 3 looking very smooth. With only a few laps to go all 3 drivers made critical mistakes on the triple jump section which seemed to decide the race. Masami was the last to bobble on the triple allowing Jared across the line in 1st place with Jesse Robbers in 2nd and Matt Chambers getting by Masami for 3rd.

2wd Modified top 3 -

Jared Tebo
Jesse Robbers
Masami Hirosaka

Truck modified -

Top qualifier Ryan Maifield has never looked better in modified truck than he did in A-1. Ryan pulled a comfortable lead over Ryan Cavalieri and held the distance all the way to the finish. A-2 started the same but this time a mistake by Maifield on the triple jump put Cavalieri out into the lead.
The Ryan’s battled to the finish with Cavalieri taking the win with Maifield in 2nd.

A-3 battle was set with many drivers having an outside chance at the overall. Maifield jumped out early with Mike Truhe in 2nd. Maifield was on cruise but Truhe looked to overtake and make it a challenge for the overall.
Truhe looked to be in control until Maifield put on a charge narrowing the gap to only a few feet of separation with Truhe in the lead. As the race progressed on to the final laps, Maifield was only vehicle lengths behind Truhe. A mistake by any driver would drop them out of the top position and their chance at the overall. Taking the final turn Maifield’s truck unexpectedly did a wheelie and flipped over backwards just before the finish line. Mike Truhe had already crossed the finish line in 1st place but the race was between the turn marshal getting Maifield truck and Ryan Cavalieri who was pushing hard to take 2nd. Cavalieri made a full throttle attempt across the finish line to beat Maifield and the turn marshal attempt by 2 tenths of a second. This last second pass would ultimately lead to an overall win by Ryan Cavalieri.

This race was apparently going down to tie-breaks between Mike Truhe, Ryan Maifield and Ryan Cavalieri as each driver would have a 1st and 2nd place finish. After the tie breaks were calculated Ryan Cavalieri came out on top of Ryan Maifield by a mere 2 tenths of a second.

Truck Modified Top 3 -

Ryan Cavalieri
Ryan Maifield
Mike Truhe

4wd Modified -

In A-1 Masami took the lead early with Cavalieri, Lee Martin and Tebo in tow. Tebo qualifying in the 7th position was on the move and passing drivers with very little effort into the 2nd position. Jared pulled up for a look on Masami on the step up jump and almost made contact and an overtaking move. Jared recovered and regrouped still in the 2nd position but crossing the step-up jump on the following lap Jared made his move again and overtook Masami with an insanely close inside move. Jared held 1st position and inside line all the way to the triple jump and just pulled away from Masami. Jared held on for the win with Cavalieri in 2nd and Masami in 3rd. A-2 started with Lee Martin challenging Masami throughout most of the opening laps. Lee looked to be on a mission, pulling away from Masami and yan Cavalieri with relative ease. The finishing order in A-3 was Lee Martin, Masami Hirosaka and Ryan Cavalieri.

Going into A-3 Jared Tebo, Masami Hirosaka, Lee Martin and Ryan Cavalieriall had chances to win the overall. Masami and Lee were out early and the avorites going into A-3. Jared Tebo who qualified in 7th had to work his way up and into the 3rd position and was now very close to the leaders. Lee had an electrical problem which forced him out of contention leaving Masami in the lead and Cavalieri in 2nd. Jared Tebo pulled all the way up onto the back of Cavalieri and made a brilliant move and into the 2nd position.

Masami, driving very wisely, looked poised but Jared put on a charge forcing Masami to push the limit. Jared again setup Masami and made a spectacular pass on the world’s greatest driver sending the crowd into a cheer. Jared made a small mistake and Masami regained the lead and appeared to have the race under control. Jared pushed hard but with only a lap to go it looked to be an insurmountable lead for Masami. As Masami landed the triple on the final lap his buggy made a weird hop and tumble which allowed Jared to overtake the lead and cruise through the finish line in 1st place and to a loud cheer from the crowd. Cavalieri made it by Masami also and finished in the 2nd position while Masami had to settle for the 3rd position.

4wd Modified top 3 -

Jared Tebo
Ryan Cavalieri
Masami Hirosaka

Cactus Classic -

It’s officially serious here in Arizona. What used to be just a battle between Associated and Losi has now turned Global. In addition to those chassis members, a serious contingent from Hot Bodies, Kyosho, Tamiya, Yokomo, Serpent and X-factory are now doing battle.

Associated is now promoting the 4wd class as heavily as 2wd and it appears 4wd might even be the biggest class in modified with the B44. Nobody would have thought that was possible 3 years ago.

I’m pitting next to Richard Cree, Richard Barton, Tony Truman, Paul Bradders and Neil and Mick Cragg all from England. They are all getting on quite good on the Arizona track. I would expect 2-3 of the English drivers to make the final. Neil Cragg and Lee Martin probably the heavy favorites although Bradders and the others are really wheeling it also.

Masami is here and he is running truck! I’m going to get some photos of this. I know I have raced against him once before in truck during the mid 90’s at Winter Champs but this might be his first run with the T4. He looks awesome in 2wd and especially 4wd. The Yokomo crew was nice enough yesterday to wear their JConcepts t-shirts. I think they look quite nice Masami is sporting the Hi-Flow body and it looks awsome in his paint scheme.

2wd World Champion Hayato Matsasuki is attending for Hot Bodies. No sign of the Hot Bodies 2wd but im sure they would have liked to have been running it so maybe a small delay until the debut. For now Hayato is still running the B4 with the Hi-Flow body. He looks good, I expect him to make the A-final for sure.

Brian Kinwald is here racing with his X-Factory cars. I would like to see Brian regain his past form and take one of the classes. He used to dominate this event back in the day. Brian is using our RC10GT body on his prototype X-60. It looks pretty good considering it is for a gas truck. Brian is a hard worker when it comes to preparation
and a real hobbiest when it comes to R/C. Also Ryan Cavalieri, Greg Hodapp and Josh Newman have all either ran a BK style paint job or are still currently using it. Brian has always been a big trend setter.

Mark Pavidis is running the Kyosho prototype truck here. It looks good and brings back some memories from the old Winter Champs days when Mark used to run white wheel dots on his RC10T.

Greg Hodapp has returned but this time with the Kyosho RB5. Greg is a fantanstic driver when he is applied. He looks focused and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him in the A-final. His buggy looks good with the Illuzion RB5 body. Greg is one of the few that could beat Kinwald and Pavidis during their respective primes.

We have some new JConcepts products debuting at this race. First the new 0062 – Hi-Flow T4 body and second the Rulux – T4 front and rear wheels (quick change rear design) .

I have also raised a bunch of eye brows this weekend by running the J82 in practice. Nothing funnier than the looks I’ve seen from drivers as I’m running away from a modified truck or running over a typical 1/10th buggy J82 jumps the double and triple on this track with ease. The J82 is hungry and its eating! Look for a racing class at this years ROAR nationals for the larger buggies

We have been doing a lot of tire testing at this years race. We have a prototype “black groove” tire called the Bar Codes that we are testing this weekend. We have a rear tire and 2wd front tire. We hope to eventually have the best tire for these type conditions but it requires a perfect combination of tread and rubber. I would look for the production blue compound Bar Codes in the next month in a half.

Practice is really hard at this race because the line is so long to hit the track, maybe 30-40 minute wait just to run 4 minutes. During that 4 minutes we try 2 pairs of tires. So basically 20 minutes of mounting and 30-40 of waiting for a couple laps of testing. Don’t forget that sometimes the track is dusty and it’s a poor condition for a proper test. I really wished i would have brought our Axial Crawler because it would be perfect to hold my place in line for practice and also it would be fun to crawl up the side of the SRS drivers mound. SRS does not really have a drivers stand for some safety reasons so they have more of a paved dirt mound.

Anyways- for years this event has been dominated by the BK Bar tire so it will be a serious challenge to de-throne that tire. Maybe it will happen this year or maybe it will have to wait until the ROAR Nationals in August. Looking forward to that.

Last weekend we had the biggest win yet for the JConcepts Racing Tires getting the win with blue compound truggy Double Dees at the Silver State so maybe we can make it back to back wins this weekend. We debuted the Rulux – standard off-set Half-ups wheel and also the Mono – Max-ups 1/8th buggy wheel in Vegas. For those that don’t know Half- ups are the same size as the “LPR” equipment and also the Losi 8ight-T truggy wheel. Max-ups are made to the largest legal dimension for 1/8th buggy racing and hints at this by the name Max. JConcepts is in town and bringing the style

It is a bitter sweet feeling watching the success of the B44.
Campaigning the BJ4 at this event for the past 3 years was really fun and competitive. Now that im the only AE team guy able to run the BJ4 it takes a little of the fun out of competing in that class.
JConcepts was a big factor in 4wd racing becoming popular once again and we take a lot of pride on the fact all the competition is based on the BJ4 design.

That’s it from the practice days. I hope to have some race updates later today.

Jason
—
Sent from my iPhone

We had a great turn out over the past weekend, at the third FL State Series Race at the Lake Park track.

Drivers got out there early and hit the track on Friday. Paul went down Friday afternoon with a truck load of tires and a pristine J82 that was just itching to hit the track. It was packed on Friday for practice and Saturday for the Nitro round was no exception.

Nitro had 254 entries on Saturday! A great turn out! And then the weather turned against us! The rain came down and flooded everything.

They stopped running for about 1 1/2 hrs and so drivers only got 1 round for qualifying. Pro 1/8^th was able to run before the rain but everyone else had to wait until the rain subsided. They did run 5 heats in the rain but the lightning was finally what called for the break.

Running until 3:30 in the morning was enough to reiterate the crew’s thoughts and the FL State Series decided to separate the Nitro from the Electric and run on separate weekends. They have been running Nitro and Electric on the same weekend for years here in FLA!

Paul and Andrew had their J82’s on display and available for anyone to drive all weekend!

The response was tremendous! The J82 is the JConcepts Conversion kit for the AE T4, which takes the T4 from a 1/10^th Truck to an electric 1/8^th Buggy, new wheels, tires, new body and the special low profile ball cups make this a must have.

The prestigious 2wd class has now gotten bigger. The J82 – Go Bigger, Go Longer, Go J82

On Sunday, we were able to set aside some time and let the racers test out the J82 for themselves. Paul ran his J82 during open practice first thing and then between rounds. At one point we had 10-12 people waiting in line to drive it! The common response we heard was “I gotta have one!”

The track was loose, very little traction for the regular 1/10^th buggy, but the J82 had more than enough traction!

We sold a few J82 conversion kits at the track and we can’t wait to run it in State Series as a competitive class as well. With lipo and brushless we can have longer mains, like at the Clash and more comparable to Nitro. The J82 will also be added as a class at the FL Regional’s which will be held in April in South Florida.

Electric drew 75-80 entries on Sunday, another great turnout.