by Tim Davis
JC Field Trip Planner
“Hey Andrew, can you tighten my slipper a half turn?” A common question we have all asked or heard at one point or another at a race track. What is so important about this question, here, in this race report, right now? Well, I posed this question to Mr. Moore at the track Friday, from the driver’s stand, across the track, with 10 other cars running, at a moderate level somewhere well below what you would call shouting. And he heard me. Perfectly – from his pit table – another 20 yards from the track. Did I mention this was an electric only event?
What a provocative title to a blog. Electric racing is back, and it is bringing back the old school racers with it. (notice I spelled ‘school’ without a ‘k’ in that context) It was not long ago when attending a regional or national event and racing electric meant tons of work, cutting motors, breaking in brushes, cycling batteries, traying batteries, repeaking batteries, blah blah blah. With the brushless and lipo revolution sweeping the nation, I’m here to report that this motor and battery maintenance hassle has ended.
This past weekend the JConcepts team headed down to the second round of the JC/RCSignup.com Super Cup event in Coral Springs. We gathered the troops at the JC factory Friday morning and loaded what Andrew called “a ridiculous amount of RC equipment” into the trailer. It had been a while since I had been to the Factory on a normal business day, and I was pleasantly surprised to see things humming along nicely. I have witnessed the birth of this company from the first B4 body for the ’03 Worlds, watched the company progress through the various stages of growth, the excitement of the BJ winning the stock nat’s in ’04(who knew what else was to come after that). The wild growth rate that JConcepts has experienced with the apparel and tire/wheel lines, has forced them to upsize the factory once again. The currently JC facility is spacious, well organized and state of the art in every way.
The ride down to Coral Springs was quite uneventful, the F350 with the cruise set at 80 just chugged along like a 18 double on 7 cells. We made it to the track in great time, thanks to Jason making some excellent traffic decisions. When we pulled into the track, it was instant flashback for me. I grew up racing in south Florida, and Coral Springs was one of the premier tracks for us, where we could always find a deep field of 2-wheel modified. I last raced at Coral Springs in 1994, and 14 years later, nothing had changed. The 2-wheel mod class was as deep as ever. In fact every class at this race was jam packed with talent. 103 entries for a single-day state race – with a gas race in Tampa the same weekend pulling 70 entires on its own – 103 entires is making a statement that people are ready to run electric cars again.
The track was in excellent shape, an amazingly fun layout with no step downs, X-jumps, flaming rings of fire, or windmill obstacles. Just a nice flowing layout with nice singles, doubles, elevation changes, rollers, off camber sections, etc. We used to call these offroad tracks, and it was nice to see one again. Qualifying got off on Saturday morning on a damp and tacky track. The JC team ran a few different tires, PW and I ran Goosebumps on the J-82’s and 2-wheels, while Andrew and Jason ran Double Dee’s on everything. The JC tires were so dialed, we nearly completely sold out of the stock that we brought to the race. The morning track with Goosebumps was so much fun with the J-82. It was full punch, crazy traction, and roosting the length of the straighaway. Did I mention this was an offroad race?
One cool thing about this race was the number of fast young guys out of Ocala. They come to these races in full force, and are super competitive. For the last few years, Electric offroad has been dominated for the most part in the U.S. by “The Ryans”, referring to Cavalieri and Maifield. After this weekend, It seems to me like in Florida, we are about to have “The Zach’s” I have raced with these young guys a few years ago in Ocala at the NewRed indoor track, and knew they could drive an RC car, but to see the improvement in all the Ocala young guns is impressive. The Ocala RC scene is turning out rc drivers like UNC turns out power forwards. I can’t wait to race mod with all of these guys.
So many of these race reports spend lengthy amounts of page space attempting to recount the small events that make up and exciting race, “Joe took off, Joe checked out, Joe bobbled, Mike got by,Mike/Joe wins!” I’m not going to provide that for you here, I’m going to give credit to the Coral Springs crew for putting on a great race. It should be awesome to have the 2nd Annual JConcepts Clash there in December – www.rcclash.com . And I’m going to give credit to Zach Genova and Zach Mote for laying it down in the stock classes. These guys can wheel a car…I’m looking forward to seeing them in Mod. It was great to have such a strong contingency of J82’s – people that drove them were impressed, and we sold all the conversion kits we brought to these test-drivers. We took tons of pictures and video, and full race results are available on www.rcsignup.com . See everyone at the next one!
