Mid America

General discussions for car and semi-truck racers.
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xanthrum
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Re: Mid America

Post by xanthrum »

All the Results are up and posted on the website... I would have loved to have done it earlier but it was all I could do to get everything cleaned up and transported home - before I had to get some sleep... started in on the results after church this morning and now everything is mostly up and complete on the website... http://www.midamericaderby.com - congrats to some VERY VERY fast racing some excellent cars and great racing yesterday that was the fastest and most competitive times I have seen across all divisions. Great Job Everyone. - Tell all those about an even bigger and better 2014 Mid America.
Greg Dawes
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Re: Mid America

Post by 4wheeldrift »

Thanks for the effort Greg, I figured you guys would be worn out as it was a long day.

We enjoyed watching from California and can't wait till next year. I wish I would've picked your brain some more when I had you on the phone last month ;-) I could've used some of those speed tips as your boys were laying down some fast times.

Thanks again.

Tim & Ryan
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Re: Mid America

Post by Noskills »

Sporty and Speedster just 0.0004 seconds apart...how cool. Bill Paul and Scott placed really well! I was 31/85...nowhere to go up up!
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whodathunkit
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Re: Mid America

Post by whodathunkit »

Thank's for shareing the photos Ickadod,
Lot's of Good Looking cars there & from the results lots of very fast cars as well.

Seth, Congrats on how well your car ran.. there must have been something in that Coke. :mrgreen:

Sporty, Thank you for DerbyTalk decals & and the help with makeing one of your spoon design cars.

And Congrats.. to all who raced.
What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
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sporty
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Re: Mid America

Post by sporty »

Congrats to all ! no matter if you made the top 12 or not.

You all totally impressed me. and it was fun to do this.

My son took 3rd place in the adult class and my father took 8th place in the adult class.

my younger son and step son, took 11th and 12 place in the kids class.

Sean did allot of his own work on the monster car and was really happy, that hes getting a trophy.


I think derbytalk has allot to offer and help people and if you applied what you learned from here and felt you did well or surprised yourself, then that's what its all about.

I still seen allot of cars not go sub 3.0 and many of the DT people did and way better.


To think, all the cars we sent in, were not track tuned and best guess on drift and limited tools I had on hand with me selling all that stuff.

Again, I thank the people who sent me stuff to help this happen for me and my family.

A special thanks agian to Bill at derbyworx for helping us out and Bill speedter and i forget who sent me the bsa kits, thanks so much.

Hay one more time, what a great bunch of people to talk with every week and all the emails and I really enjoyed and hoped some of you will want to get together and do something like this again in the future.

thanks for adding a decal to your cars.


Sporty
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Re: Mid America

Post by knotthed »

Thanks Everyone here at Derby Talk!

I have learned a lot, talked to some great people, and have really enjoyed this.

Ick, Thanks for posting the pictures. Do you have any more? I would like to get a looksy at the top 12 of each. Just started by looking for car# 2046, but did not see it.

I think we did very respectable. From the Stats, it sure looks like something happened to my sons car between race 4 & 5 - times just dropped like a rock. Anyone seen this before? I am thinking we lost alignment somehow. :scratching:

I guess we have 12 months to learn how to run oil to be more competitive for next year.
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Re: Mid America

Post by 4wheeldrift »

Knotthed, I noticed that drop in time as well and wondered if it was just the graphite wearing off?

I thought I saw something somewhere that indicated they may not run oil for the open Scout class next year. I spoke to Greg about it in April and was asking why they were allowing oil and at the time he said they were doing it to kind of show a difference between the qualified and open Scout class, but you'd think that adult would've been allowed to run oil as well.
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Re: Mid America

Post by knotthed »

Would have been happy to blame the graphite being gone if it were run 10+ but the 5th run?

Not sure about that one, hopefully some of the more experienced folks here can chime in with their thoughts.

Also, we asked for graphite for the finals if we made it and we did, but those times were bad also. In fact, if you look at the finals race numbers....one would question how that car made it there.

Even though we qualified 11th.
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sporty
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Re: Mid America

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I prefer not see oil. Many scout races around the usa, do not run oil. And I think if you keep the focus on being a scout race. you do one or the other. and I prefer graphite.

I think one day, tho, more scout packs will go to oil. less messy. But at this point and time it's just more common in scouts with the graphite.

and graphite in my 2 cents, is also more forgiving when it comes to shipping cars in early. I dont think oil is going to sit more than 6 to 7 days and still perform. Do that means more cars shipping last minute to be under a window of time, when the oil still works best.

I would likely only every be in favor of supporting oil, if it was no wax, ect allowed. I just think my view is from a scout format and scout race. 90 percent of them do not know the wax tips and tricks to see the super speed times that can be ran with it.

But Im also a person, who feels, all cars should run the same axles and same wheels for scout racing.

When you get into a wider range of what is allowed, i feel it makes it harder and more challenging and more costly to be compititive. And the average scout family has not the money to invest in all that.

The cost of the better axles and better wheels can easiy cost additional $50 to $60. per car.


And im sorry, just been to enough scout races over the years. I see the concerns and issues that come about. Money and so forth.

You can still do very well without all that costly goodies, but it does make it much harder to do well enough to perhaps see a trophy or it might effect more people when they see such a difference in what people are achieving in regards to track times.

Sporty

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Re: Mid America

Post by sporty »

I noticed the track getting accidently bumbed a few times and my sons car had a run that was really high number compared to his other 5 runs.

my guess would be, a hard hit on the stop section could have caused it. or If your car was running when one or a few times, when i think some care left there lane or whatever happened there. Might have touched your car and caused a issue.

But those would be my first thoughts. Just wait and, when you get your cars back, take a look and check your drift numbers, if you kept them from when you set the car. this could help you maybe pin it down.

Sporty


knotthed wrote:Would have been happy to blame the graphite being gone if it were run 10+ but the 5th run?

Not sure about that one, hopefully some of the more experienced folks here can chime in with their thoughts.

Also, we asked for graphite for the finals if we made it and we did, but those times were bad also. In fact, if you look at the finals race numbers....one would question how that car made it there.

Even though we qualified 11th.
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Re: Mid America

Post by 4wheeldrift »

sporty wrote:I prefer not see oil. Many scout races around the usa, do not run oil. And I think if you keep the focus on being a scout race. you do one or the other. and I prefer graphite.
I'm with you on this one Sporty in that I've been wanting to also start doing some league racing but when I look at the classes, few seem to carry over to what's typically run in the Scouts. Even the pure stock classes really are no comparison in that you can run canted 3 wheelers, oil, and grooved axles. All things that we can't run in our pack. I'm sure we'll be able to hone our skills by doing the league racing, but it's difficult when the pack car has to be tuned so differently...let alone run on a wooden track to boot.
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Re: Mid America

Post by Scrollsawer »

After reviewing the results online, I was struck by the most unlikely of findings. My boys' Minecraft 'Creeper' car won our Pack Derby back in February of this year. After the race, we just put the car on a windowsill of the house and left it stting in the same window for 3 months, getting dusty.

Last Tuesday, in the rush to get cars shipped to the Mid-America, I forgot to re-tune or re-graphite the 'Creeper' car. I just grabbed the cars, bubble-wrapped them, and away they went. That car went to the Mid-America 'as-is' after essentially being abandoned for three months.

It placed 6th in the Open Scouts Division. Boy's getting a Mid-America trophy to go alongside his Pack Championsip trophy.

Pretty funny, and really cool all at the same time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

As for Dad's cars,

I placed 11th overall in the 'Open Adult' division with the purple car, and the green car ran our fastest ever time with a 2.95. We had never gone sub-3.0 before this weekend, so am very happy with the way both cars performed in the 2.97 range across most heats.

Really looking forward to next years' race! I'm already thinking of ideas on the builds!

Regards,

Scott (Scrollsawer)
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Re: Mid America

Post by Ickabod »

knotthed wrote:Ick, Thanks for posting the pictures. Do you have any more? I would like to get a looksy at the top 12 of each. Just started by looking for car# 2046, but did not see it.
Knotthed, Thats all the pictures I had of the cars. I think I missed taking pictures of the open scout division. I am pretty sure Greg will post pictures of all the cars like they did last year. This is how I tracked down Sporty's cars from last year.

If anyone had a race with a "Hortman", then I probably have a video of the race if you want me to post it. I did miss a couple (chasing my 3 year old around) of the races, but have many of the preliminary races on video. Just let me know which heat, and I will try and find/post it.

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Re: Mid America

Post by pgosselin »

Congrats to all. I watched the entire simulcast and saw a lot of DT cars in the top 12 in many of the categories. Love the photos, Ick. You all got us cheering early since you all were registered in the qualified scouts division and you all had such great times.

Nice job pulling the race together, Greg. That was a long day and you all worked really, really hard. All of us here at DT appreciate the obvious hard work and passion. You must have been exhausted. I don't know how you even got the results up as soon as you did.

Team Gosselin had a very good day. My son Jon place 3rd in Open Kids. It was our first time facing competition like that.

I placed 9th in Open Adults and am still pleased with that result.

It was nice to be surrounded by so many DTers in the top 12. Seems like we were swimming in a sea of Sportys. Also saw a lot of 5kids. Wow, is that family fast.

Greg, while I thoroughly enjoyed the simulcast and am impressed that we can even use that technology to participate in the event, I have a few suggestions to make the event better next year.

1. Make sure that no one bumps the track. We noticed some strange times later in the day after the race officials bumped the track a few times. I totally understand why that happened. The officials had to be dog tired.

2. You might want to secure the track legs a little more so that an errant brush against the track doesn't knock everything all out of alignment. Perhaps adding some weight to the legs?

3. Some kind of visual announcement of finalists and winners. We couldn't hear the audio very well and were left somewhat in the dark as to final results and if our sons had qualified for finals.

4. Announce the 12 finalists from the preliminary rounds right after the rounds. Again, in simulcast land we were in the dark as to whether or not our sons were finalists.

5. Work on getting more than one camera or a better angle. We could see the computer screen and the results just fine. But we really couldn't get a good look at the cars. All we could see was the nose end.

I hope those suggestions don't come across as too whiny. We had a great time and enjoyed the simulcast, imperfections and all. I also know how tough it is to coordinate an event like you did. You also had to worry about all those racers in person. In fact, I would say that was your top priority.

Congratulations on another successful Mid-America.

Also, what were the final number of racers in all categories and how do they compare to last year?

Thanks again for all your hard work,

Paul
Last edited by pgosselin on Mon May 06, 2013 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mid America

Post by 5kidsracing »

pgosselin wrote:Also saw a lot of 5kids. Wow, is that family fast.
Thanks for the compliment Paul, you family is fast as well. It was a fun race:)
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