Event: Chi-Town Shootout
Track: Leisure Hours Raceway in Joliet, IL
Race Reporter: Mike Nelson
Leisure Hours Raceway in Joliet, IL held the Chi-Town Shootout presented by TrackPower March 4th thru the 6th. This year was the biggest Chi-Town race ever with 323 total entries! Besides the four qualifiers and mains, the weekend has four extra races added into the normal format. After three rounds of qualifying there is a ‘Dash For Cash” for the top four drivers in the three biggest classes. The purse for the dash for cash is 100% of the money raised from the raffle tickets for all the great prizes donated from Hobbico. This year it paid 345.00 dollars to win each Dash For Cash race! There is also a thirty minute endurance race for 15 two man teams. When they opened registration for the endurance race, people ran to the hobby store to try and get into the race before the 15 team cut off was met. It cost 10.00 dollars per team to enter the endurance race with the winners taking the 150.00 dollars.
The three biggest classes this year were Mod SC, Mod Buggy and Stock SC.
In the endurance race I teamed up with Corey Crosley and we used my SC10 to try and win the race. We led the majority of the first 15 minutes as Corey pushed the truck as hard as he could to try and get us a decent lead. We had a mandatory pit stop at the 15 minute mark where we had to make a battery and driver change. With a little trouble in the pit stop we lost the lead to Chad Due and Zak Rose and when I exited the pit lane I was a little over a half a track back to Chad. I pushed as fast as I could for the next 15 minutes gaining a little on the other team each lap, with ten minutes to go you could smell burning electronics in the air. As some teams started to slow I still had no problem clearing the big triple each lap. With about 5 minutes to go I had closed to about 6 seconds behind Chad, and about a minute later his truck came to a stop having power issues. As I finished the final lap after 30 minutes of hard racing I still had great power and traction and could still make the big triple without any problem. We took the win with our closest competitor being several laps back. I used gold Bar Codes on the rear and green Double Dee’s up front, the tires still looked like new after the 30 minute race!
After the Final round of qualifying I ended up 4th in Mod SC out of 57 entries. From the start of the A main the top two got away as three of us battled for third place, lap after lap we battled and swapped positions, with about a minute to go I finally got a little separation and was able to secure a third place finish.
It was a great weekend and I just want to say thanks again for the great JConcepts product!
