This past weekend(Week for most of us) held the 2021 Dirt Nitro Challenge. In past events, it has been held at various locations including the Nitro Pit in Arizona, Perris Fairgrounds in California and many others. This year would be different though, this year it would the event would be held at the famous Thunder Alley RC Raceway in Beaumont, CA.
WB Factory Racing would be in attendance with a minor team as we would get things started at our first event. For now, our only driver would be the team manager, Nick Wautlet. (For future events, we will be looking to gain two more drivers to fill our Factory Team.) Joining Nick would be our Marketing manager, Jordan Gold and sales manager, Caitlyn Giliam.
While racing our support team was also doing the wrenching for Ryan Reese, an HB Racing Driver that was competing in the intermediate Nitro buggy, Electric buggy and Nitro Truggy Classes. Our main focus was making sure that Ryan's cars were prepped and race ready for every heat and that he would no issues. We were able to do so from seeding to the mains. In qualifying, Ryan would qualify 2nd in the B-Main for E-buggy, 9th in the A-Main for Nitro Truggy and 2nd in the B-Main for nitro buggy. His mains would be overall pretty good. In E-Buggy he would break a rear arm due to the cold weather which would retire him early. In the Truggy Main, he get all the way up to the 2nd position and complete the 30min. main in 2nd. in Nitro Buggy, he would get the bump and go on to the A Main where he would finish 8th. Ryan Said, "Wallie is the only person I trust to work on my cars and he did a great job on my cars all week!"
WB Factory Race Team:
Wednesday Practice. There would be two rounds of Seeding practice that would sort the drivers into their qualifying Heats. Nick would continue making changes to his JQ Racing Black Edition buggy (The team will be using these until the Mayako car is available.) He would put together a 1:35.725, which would get him 22nd fastest in Practice. Knowing that the car could be better. He would make a few changes prior to qualifying:
- 7k Front diff fluid to 10k
- AE Blue Front Spring to HB Racing Gold
Moving onto the Buggy Qualifying day(Friday). Nick would start the first round of qualifying off with 22nd overall. Not the greatest start, but he had an idea of what the car need to improve the drivability. After consulting with JQ, he decided to make changes in the kick up, anti-squat and a rear shock position and spring change.
- Added 1 degree of kick up
- Added 1 degree of anti-squat (total of 1.5 Deg.)
- Moved Rear Shock to 1 out from center position on tower
- Changed Rear Spring to HB Racing Yellow
With the changes, Nick felt the car would be right where he wanted it...and it was. He would take the TQ for round #2. feeling that the car was pretty good, but maybe a little soft, he decided that he could leave the oil as it was for the final qualifier later that evening. As Q3 would come around, Nick would battle with Walker Spinrad for the heat win. With a couple great last laps and some mistakes from Walker, Nick would take the heat win. With the A qualifier up next, Nick would just have to sit and watch the heat and hope that his time held up. Frankie Contreras Jr., Davey Batta, and Buddy Christiansen would all battle for the TQ spot. As the clock wound down, each one of them would make a couple mistakes and they would all fall off the TQ pace. At the end, it would be Nick taking the Overall TQ for intermediate Nitro Buggy.
Main Day. After rebuilding all day and prepping for the main. Nick would start off the main with a good start, but coming around the end of the first lap he would find a hole and tumble out of the lead. he would be shuffled to the back and no matter how much he tried, it would just go from bad to worse. After a few minutes of being mid pack, he would have another crash that would lead him to being hit by another car bending his rear shock shaft. This made the car incredibly difficult to maneuver around the rough DNC track. He unfortunately would have settle for 11th, but was able to finish the race.
Overall, the WB Factory Racing Team had a great showing. We provided a lot of services, help and solid results to get the team out there and started in 2021. We will be looking to build on this result, build our race team and brand in the coming months! Stay Tuned!
We would like to give a huge thank you to the race promoters, Joey Christensen and Aaron Webb as well as the awesome staff that made for a great event. Jimmy Babcock, Kenny Brosh, Shawn Miller, Bryon Johnson, the Live RC Announcers Tyler Hooks and Scotty Ernst!
Please Check out www.rugspingraphix.com for more photos from the event!