Nor-Cal USRA Championship - Feb 19, 2005

Hobbytown - Fresno, Ca -

By Rudy Garriga (in place of the OWL!)

Greetings race fans! The first race report of the year will be written by me, Rudy Garriga, since the Owl and Al Chuck took off after the race to the Far East! The Owl must be chirping in some kind of Chinese bird language by now, so I’m stuck writing the newsletter by myself this time!

The start of the 2005 season began with a bleak, stormy weekend in Fresno. Al Chuck and his Owl met with me at my house, and together we took the long drive on Friday morning.

 We stopped at Casa De Fruta and loaded up on nuts, dried fruits and these awesome walnut filled dates, which I chomped on the rest of the way. Al and I talked about these, wondering if dates were considered a laxative or not.

Later, after going through several rain showers, we reached the hotel, got settled to go to the track and went to do some testing.

We reached Hobbytown, and were met with none other than Fred Hood, who was tuning on his racers and I handed him a box full of prototype Mini Motors for him to do some more testing for Slick 7.

Rich Bass was there, along with local jets;  Steve Hylton, and “Rocket Rod” Roseling. They were  all testing the new cars for the 2005 season.

This year we are campaigning new LMP class cars, with Contender or Super Wasp motors, and a new 100gram min. weight. The new weight limit took me off guard, as my LMP weighed in at 105 with all the weight off the car, OOPS!

After testing all the cars, Al found that some new bodies he brought on the 27 cars were perfect for the Hobbytown track, with no glue; I found instead, that the Parma Phantoms I mounted did not work at all!  I moved them back on the car and it seemed to help, but the Koford Peugot I had from the Buena Park Gr-7 car seemed to work much better on the Box stock car, and I changed bodies!!! What a kludge!

Well, after I managed to get thing sort-of working, we packed up, and went to do Al’s favorite non-racing past time! FOOD!!!

We met with an old, non-racer (A golfer!)  friend of mine, and we went to Red Robin for a good meal, before heading off to the Motel for a good night sleep, but not before I found out first hand that Dates are indeed a laxative, so I lost some un-wanted pounds in a manner I rather not discuss, before going off to bed. 

(Click on the title to go to the race:)

LMP:

Doug Marchese served his duties as Tech inspector, even though he had a quadruple heart by-pass surgery 3 weeks ago! Who says slot racers are not tough!

After the LMP Race, we all went off to lunch. Of course, this is Al's favorite pastime, so we had a big break, and came back a little late to start the Box stock race!

Fred Hood, after his LMP win, is ready to run the races!

This season, we will be having Box Stock every race, but with 2 separate series, this month’s race, although it’s a no-glue race, is part of the glue series.

We had a total of 12 entries, with more guys in the Racer class! But we could have easily had more, except Al and Greg did not enter, because the cars were not working well, and guys like Jim Ward were in class re-unions, so we expect to see this class swell to over 15 entries the rest of the year!

Box Stock:

Well now for the fastest scale car class in Northern California! we only had 4 entries, but it was quite a race!

 Eurosport:

 We will have a couple of 27 races this year, this being the first one. The rest will be one motor Gr-7 races

Gr-27

 We had an awards celebration at 7:00PM, giving away box plaques for 1-2-3 in all classes that is for Pro, Amateur and Racer classes for each event! We also had payouts for the top places plus one raffled position, so everybody has a chance to win, even if you are not fast or have problems!

 We thank Fred and Hobbytown for having us,  the facility is always a pleasure to race at, even though the locals have a big home track advantage!

The new pay system paid off twice the money that we paid the track last year, so even though we had 3 fewer entries, we had almost twice as much  cash to the raceway than last year.  I can’t wait for a big event! We should be providing the raceway a good size pot! 

March 19 is the next event , This will be the first of the "ODD" month sseries, and will be printed along with this report on the written newsletter. The race is at Nor-Cal Collectables in Santa Rosa, and will be for the “ODD” series cars; Can-Am, GT-12, Box Stock (No-Glue) and C-12!

I have already been receiving calls for new drivers to enter our series, so look for over 20 entries in Box Stock! - let's see!

We should have a big turn-out! See you then!

 Rudy