What a week! We travelled to Oklahoma for the Visions race,
Report from
Visions Off-Road 2023
What a week! We travelled to Oklahoma for the Visions race, where we ran 1/8 nitro and 1/8 electric buggy. The trip down was pretty smooth but when we got there, the shipping company had misplaced all the VP fuel, the tracking said it was delivered but no one seemed to know where it was. It took us several hours to finally locate it on a pallet on the other side of the massive complex property. Thanks to Kelley from VP fuels, my Mom and Brandon Rhode for helping us locate it through calls to the shipping company and the complex. As you can imagine arriving at the race and not having any fuel to run, made for a stressful start to the weekend.
The track was somewhat bigger than last year, and they brought in some new dirt and sifted the original dirt to get rid of some of the rocks and the surface looked very promising. The temperature was much nicer this year, only getting up into the low 30 degrees celsius, but with that came the chance of rain. The evening that we arrived it rained very hard, flooding the track and creating ruts through the layout from the running water. The track crew got the water off the track late in the day in preparation for the practice day on Thursday. I think the addition of this water to the track surface in my opinion made the surface hold up much better.
On the practice day at the start of practice the track was still pretty soft so drivers were hesitant to get on the track too early. Once we got some practice in we made some changes to the cars to adapt to the track layout and surface. We knew lap times would be very close and there would probably not be many mistakes made so we needed cars that were very fast yet stable so this is what we built the setup on. Going into the heads up qualifying I thought my cars were really good, but it would depend on my starting position on the grid as to how I would finish in the qualifier. Starting positions for each heads up qualifier were determined by random draw which was intended to give each driver a start at the front, in the middle and the back throughout the 3 qualifiers. How you finished in each qualifier would determine your starting position in the corresponding main event. What was very interesting about this layout and I think it stumped a lot of people, was the high fuel consumption for just about everybody. In the first qualifier race I would start in position #1, and was able to hold onto the lead through the entire qualifier and win, which would have me starting first in the #1 main.
For qualifier #2 I would start in the 8th position and I was making my way towards the front when I had a technical problem that would put me out of the race and I would finish that one in 13th.
For the 3rd and last qualifier, I would start in the 15th position and would be able to make my way up to 6th which is where I would finish that one, so I would start 6th in the 3rd main event.
Ebuggy qualifying went very well, I would take a 6th a 1st and 2nd which would give me the overall TQ and I would start first in the main.
Saturday was main day, the first Invite nitro buggy main went very well, starting out front I was able to take the win over a hard charging Maifield who definitely made me work for it.
Next up was the 2nd main for invite nitro would be much more difficult due to my trouble in the 2nd qualifier I would start 13th on the grid, the first few laps were very chaotic, but after the dust settled I would make some headway and start making my way through the pack, my car felt amazing and everything was working perfectly. I would make my way up to second which I was pretty happy with considering I started 13th , there was no catching Maifield who started 2nd on the grid and ran a good race.
Next up was the ebuggy main, I felt fairly confident and my ebuggy felt very good as well, I was able to maintain a comfortable gap throughout the whole race, Dakotah made a hard charge toward the end of the race but I was able to hang on and take the win.
The 3rd and final main of the invite nitro buggy would be up next for me, even though I was starting 6th on the grid and it was much better than starting at the back of the pack, drivers 1 through 5 were all very fast. Due to the format all 3 main results would count and I was in pretty good shape with a 1st and a 2nd, but the overall championship was still wide open. I knew I had my work cut out for me. The race got off to a good start but a few laps in there was a pileup which I got collected in and dropped back to 8th, once I got going again, I would slowly start gaining positions all the way up to second , because of how hard I was driving I knew I should conserve fuel so I just maintained my pace for the last few laps of the race and would finish 1/10 of a second behind Spencer. Which would give me 2nd and the overall win.
Although the RC portion of the event was over, the excitement wasn't over, we stuck around to watch the nitro circus event Saturday night, then headed back to the hotel to pack and get a couple of hours of sleep before being woken up to a tornado alert on our phones along with the tornado sirens, this would be the first Tornado scare we ever experienced. Fortunately the storm didn't turn into a tornado and no one was hurt, although there were some damages at the track from the wind and rain. Then to add to this, the first leg of our flight was delayed by 4.5 hours which made us miss our connection in Denver which extended our travel time to 30 hours. As I write this we are on the 4 hour drive home from the airport. I guess all I can say is all is well that ends well.
A big thank you to Ethan and Jason Mackanick for the team work, and chauffeur services this weekend.
Thanks to Mid America Outdoors for the amazing facility, thanks to Brandon and the Live RC crew for a great race, thanks to The Dirt crew for all their hard work.
I want to thank my sponsors for giving me the best products to compete at the highest level Xray, RC America, Hobbywing, FX Engines, Hot Race Tires, MKS, A Main Hobbies, HUDY, VP fuels, Protek Rc, EZ Customs, Stickit1, Avid rc, and 110% Racing.
Thanks to my family for all their support, help and the sacrifices they have made throughout my career, being able to have my Dad at all my races, knowing I can count on him to be there for me, is a huge blessing. Most importantly I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without him I would not be where I am today.
The track was somewhat bigger than last year, and they brought in some new dirt and sifted the original dirt to get rid of some of the rocks and the surface looked very promising. The temperature was much nicer this year, only getting up into the low 30 degrees celsius, but with that came the chance of rain. The evening that we arrived it rained very hard, flooding the track and creating ruts through the layout from the running water. The track crew got the water off the track late in the day in preparation for the practice day on Thursday. I think the addition of this water to the track surface in my opinion made the surface hold up much better.
On the practice day at the start of practice the track was still pretty soft so drivers were hesitant to get on the track too early. Once we got some practice in we made some changes to the cars to adapt to the track layout and surface. We knew lap times would be very close and there would probably not be many mistakes made so we needed cars that were very fast yet stable so this is what we built the setup on. Going into the heads up qualifying I thought my cars were really good, but it would depend on my starting position on the grid as to how I would finish in the qualifier. Starting positions for each heads up qualifier were determined by random draw which was intended to give each driver a start at the front, in the middle and the back throughout the 3 qualifiers. How you finished in each qualifier would determine your starting position in the corresponding main event. What was very interesting about this layout and I think it stumped a lot of people, was the high fuel consumption for just about everybody. In the first qualifier race I would start in position #1, and was able to hold onto the lead through the entire qualifier and win, which would have me starting first in the #1 main.
For qualifier #2 I would start in the 8th position and I was making my way towards the front when I had a technical problem that would put me out of the race and I would finish that one in 13th.
For the 3rd and last qualifier, I would start in the 15th position and would be able to make my way up to 6th which is where I would finish that one, so I would start 6th in the 3rd main event.
Ebuggy qualifying went very well, I would take a 6th a 1st and 2nd which would give me the overall TQ and I would start first in the main.
Saturday was main day, the first Invite nitro buggy main went very well, starting out front I was able to take the win over a hard charging Maifield who definitely made me work for it.
Next up was the 2nd main for invite nitro would be much more difficult due to my trouble in the 2nd qualifier I would start 13th on the grid, the first few laps were very chaotic, but after the dust settled I would make some headway and start making my way through the pack, my car felt amazing and everything was working perfectly. I would make my way up to second which I was pretty happy with considering I started 13th , there was no catching Maifield who started 2nd on the grid and ran a good race.
Next up was the ebuggy main, I felt fairly confident and my ebuggy felt very good as well, I was able to maintain a comfortable gap throughout the whole race, Dakotah made a hard charge toward the end of the race but I was able to hang on and take the win.
The 3rd and final main of the invite nitro buggy would be up next for me, even though I was starting 6th on the grid and it was much better than starting at the back of the pack, drivers 1 through 5 were all very fast. Due to the format all 3 main results would count and I was in pretty good shape with a 1st and a 2nd, but the overall championship was still wide open. I knew I had my work cut out for me. The race got off to a good start but a few laps in there was a pileup which I got collected in and dropped back to 8th, once I got going again, I would slowly start gaining positions all the way up to second , because of how hard I was driving I knew I should conserve fuel so I just maintained my pace for the last few laps of the race and would finish 1/10 of a second behind Spencer. Which would give me 2nd and the overall win.
Although the RC portion of the event was over, the excitement wasn't over, we stuck around to watch the nitro circus event Saturday night, then headed back to the hotel to pack and get a couple of hours of sleep before being woken up to a tornado alert on our phones along with the tornado sirens, this would be the first Tornado scare we ever experienced. Fortunately the storm didn't turn into a tornado and no one was hurt, although there were some damages at the track from the wind and rain. Then to add to this, the first leg of our flight was delayed by 4.5 hours which made us miss our connection in Denver which extended our travel time to 30 hours. As I write this we are on the 4 hour drive home from the airport. I guess all I can say is all is well that ends well.
A big thank you to Ethan and Jason Mackanick for the team work, and chauffeur services this weekend.
Thanks to Mid America Outdoors for the amazing facility, thanks to Brandon and the Live RC crew for a great race, thanks to The Dirt crew for all their hard work.
I want to thank my sponsors for giving me the best products to compete at the highest level Xray, RC America, Hobbywing, FX Engines, Hot Race Tires, MKS, A Main Hobbies, HUDY, VP fuels, Protek Rc, EZ Customs, Stickit1, Avid rc, and 110% Racing.
Thanks to my family for all their support, help and the sacrifices they have made throughout my career, being able to have my Dad at all my races, knowing I can count on him to be there for me, is a huge blessing. Most importantly I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without him I would not be where I am today.