Semi Finals update From The World Championships

Semi Finals update From The World Championships

Dakotah Phend would be in the second semi final main. This was really good as we saw lots of flame outs in the first semi.  We talked a little strategy with Dakotah before his run telling him to just keep moving forward and be safe at the start.  We even played it a bit safe on fuel with so many flame outs in the first semi we wanted to make sure we were good pitting him at 6 minutes.  He ran very safe and stayed right with the front runners to take 3rd and secure himself into the main event.  Look for Dakotah to let it hangout in the main and move to the front quick.

Adam Drake also made the bump this morning into the semi finals and was looking strong to move onto the A-final.  He was running between 4th and 5th for most of the semi until a miscalculation of fuel taking the chance with the 10 minute pit stops will put him unfortunately watching from the sidelines with a really fast and consistent TLR 8ight 2.0.  

At the moment they are running the +35 race with the 60 minute A-Final to start directly after.  They will do the driver introduction and photos first.  I am not sure where Dakotah starts at the moment as I ran back to the hotel to upload this post.  There is still no wifi at the track. Track is looking really good and dry.  There are so many bumps on the track so the main event is going to be exciting to watch.  Look for Dakotah!! Wish us some luck in the main event!!!  

Day One of Finals at the IFMAR World Championships

Day One of Finals at the IFMAR World Championships

Today was not just the start of the finals; it was also the start of rebuilding the track along with the pit area after all the rain.  I was quite amazed when I made my way over to the track in the morning to check out the damage.  The organizers had many people there working and they brought in a sewage pump truck to suck the thousands of gallons of water off the track in no time.  Once the water was off the track many of the racers and mechanics helped out getting the rest of the track prepped and ready for IFMAR to start on time at noon.  It was quite amazing the track was like new and when the first race went off the cars were staying clean and mud free. 

I had the chance to watch many of the lower mains today and the best race of the day was the 1/32 final with Team Losi Racing driver Hannes Kaeufler with three other racers the entire main event.  Hannes lead most of the race but the last half was a great battle back and forth with Hannes taking the second spot and the bump up into the 1/16 final where Hannes would end his weekend short of the world championship.  The 1/16 final was a very tough race with Team Losi Racing driver and former world champion Mark Pavidis in the bunch also looking to keep his hopes alive and move onto the final day of the world championship.  Mark would do just that by driving a consistent race keeping the wheel side down.

Tomorrow is going to be a tough day as the fields of top drivers are very spread out as many had a hard time in qualifying.  We have a couple of guys up first thing in the morning in the 1/8 finals and we are really pushing for them to make the bump into the 1/4 final to up our odds with seven cars in the 1/4’s.  I have looked and the other drivers in there heats and I feel we are in very good position to make the bumps into the semi finals and then on to the A-Final.  

The track at the end of the day was much bumpier then it has been all week due to how soft the track was but I feel the track is much better also.  What I mean by this is the bumps are more round and not so square edged.  The cars will go over larger round bumps much easier than smaller square edge bumps.  There were also a couple of the bad jumps fixed and packed in really well so they should hold up nice the rest of the weekend.  I just have the gut feeling the guys and going to get in a nice groove tomorrow with this new track and be ridicules fast!!

Final Day of Qualifying Cancelled

Final Day of Qualifying Cancelled 

 Well, not much to talk about today as when we woke up this morning to rain.  Shortly after getting to the track with the amount of rain falling and the track quickly getting covered in water they decided to cancel the event for the day.  This would mean there would be no round 6 of qualifying and instead of taking best 4 out of 6 they will only be taking best 3 out of 5.  It was really a shame that the rain came down as we were really looking forward to the final round to secure our team into the semi finals.  With the new format we will have to do a little bumping come Saturday with five drivers in the 1/4 final all looking to take the bump into the semi's.  It is going to be a difficult task tomorrow to get the track ready for the lower mains and I really not think it's going to be possible with the amount of rain that has come down.  I have a feeling we maybe running all mains on Saturday. I will give an update in the morning as soon as we get some more information on what they will do.  As of know the start time is noon!!

Day Two of Qualifying at The IFMAR World Championships

Day Two of Qualifying

WOW, what a day today was!  We saw a super high speed track become very bumpy and there was also quite a bit of dust on the track today making it very loose.  The bumps were really the hard part of the track today with most of the bumpy sections being right in front of jumps.   This was making it very difficult for drivers to get over them.  It is one thing to have tons of bumps in a straight line but when you have to go through bumps and still make the obstacles it is nearly impossible like we saw today.  I think the other challenging part for most of the drivers when it came down to mistakes is not losing your cool and make five more because of it.  It’s hard for a driver on a track like this to make two or even three big mistakes and still feel like he could have a good run, but as we saw today you can have tons of mistakes and still have a good run due to everyone making many mistakes.  The track got to a point in the last round today where some drivers decided to roll some of the jumps, with the feeling that if they had less crashes and did slower laps their runs would be faster. This strategy worked well for some.

The team is very upbeat and ready for tomorrow.  Adam Drake has been very consistent and sitting on the bubble to be in or out of the semi-finals come Saturday.  I have a feeling we will see a stellar run from him in the morning to lock him in.  Dakotah Phend had a rough day trying to find his way around this tough track like many did.  He was really looking good in the final round and had loads of confidence in the car until he had a run in with a crashed car that he couldn’t avoid, which damaged his servo putting him out the race.  He will need a really good solid run to make the semi-final.  I will say I was relieved to see Darren come around today not getting the best of runs but looking much faster and more confident in his driving.  He will need to punch it tomorrow to get the best possible points he can.  I had a chance to spend some time with one of our German driver s,Hannes Kaeufler, as we went and watched many of the races together.  He is a great driver but as many here, he is just having a hard time like everyone else with the super rough track conditions.  After the first four rounds Hannes was setting 54^th overall.  I am so pumped for him!  Our Floridian driver JR Mitch is the man!!  I wish everyone could have seen him wheeling his TLR 8IGHT around the track in the final round today.  A 10^th in round 5 today will keep his semi final hopes alive going into the final round of qualifying tomorrow.

At this point there is not one driver standing out over anyone else.  The track is getting rougher by the minute and all the drivers were so up and down all day.  After our team meeting this afternoon we have a pretty good game plan going into the final round. Hopefully our game plan for tomorrow will work for the team. 

The Start of Qualifying at The IFMAR World Championships

The Start of Qualifying at The IFMAR World Championships

It’s was a surprising day to say the least, I thought I would be waking up to a lake outside my hotel window.  It only ended up being a bit cloudy in the morning but the clouds would clear off rather fast and from then on it was all sunshine with a nice breeze that came up mid day almost making it beach like weather.  Who would have thought 90% chance of rain would turn into a perfect day.   We may need to watch out for the 0% days from this point on. :-)

The track today was pretty consistent for the most part, with it just getting bumpier as the day went on.  The bad part about the bumps developing on the track is they are the nasty square edge bumps that just want to stop the car's in their tracks.  The bumpy conditions makes it really hard for drivers to consistently do laps and find their racing groove.  The biggest thing I feel that caught us off guard was the temperature change from round one to round two, it got a lot hotter outside.  Some of the guys didn’t make the change from the soft tire to the harder tire.  This was the case for Dakotah Phend with a stellar first run finishing second for the round just 4 seconds back from the TQ.  The soft tire in round two didn't work out so well making his car hard to drive and edgy everywhere.  He will start on a hard tire tomorrow morning.  Adam Drake didn't have the run he was looking for in Q1 with some small mistakes but was able to salvage the day with a solid Q2 finishing up 11^th.  He will stay with the harder tire like Q2 but go much softer with his shock package for his first run hoping it will absorb more of those nasty square edge bumps.  Your 2012 European Champion Darren Bloomfield is having a hard time finding his way this weekend.  He has had his share of problems with a break in Q1 and bad tires choose like others in Q2.  Darren is looking at this like a true champion and getting the bad luck out of the way early and moving onto tomorrow.  He will make a big change to his car for tomorrow and put Miguel Matias’s complete set-up on for tomorrow. Miguel’s car looked solid around the track and he put in two very consistent runs and is very confident on this choppy high speed track.  One of our German team members Hannes Kaeufler had some pretty solid runs in today.  He went up in his diff oil and went to a very hard tire making it much easier to drive for him.  Hannes plans to make a couple of small changes for the first round in the morning and hopes to get some speed out of his car but more importantly some consistency and easy of driving.  I am seeing a good day from Hannes tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a new day and also three more qualifiers, yes three rounds will be run tomorrow since there is still a big threat of rain to come later in the week.  This is for sure the right thing to do since we should have no problem getting them done in a descent time frame.  Sorry about the lack of videos but I have done all I can do with no luck to upload them.  I will keep trying but at the moment this is the best I can do.  You can follow the action throughout the day on twitter @TeamLosi_Racing

Final Day of Practice

Final Day of Practice

We woke up this morning for the final day of practice to see that we received some rain.  From what we could see from the hotel it was not enough to really flood the track.  Oh, but we were so wrong once we had made our way to the track and saw only the low sections were under water.  This would delay practice until 1 pm allowing the track time to dry.  We were still able to get in the two timed practice runs that were needed to seed the qualifiers for tomorrow.  The track ended up coming around very nice after the first few heats had ran.  This was mainly due to all the sawdust that was put down to absorb the water. 

It was a bit of a flip-flop today with the team but we did learn a lot about where we needed to be with set-up.  Yesterday we had some of the team go in one direction and some go in another direction.  Today, the goal was to take those two directions and make them into one and we were very excited to do so.  The team is confident in the set-up we have going into qualifying tomorrow.  The team is also very up-beat and excited to have qualifying start tomorrow. Leading the team is Dakotah "The Phenom" Phend with his Orion powered Team Losi Racing 8IGHT 2.0. Dakotah ran strong each run and ended up 3rd overall out of the two practice runs. Team leader, Adam Drake, had a solid run to put him 19th overall followed by the 2012 European Champ Darren Bloomfield in 23rd. Then Matt Castellano 31st, JR Mitch in 37th and Australia's Craig Laughton in 38th rounded out the top 40. 

Weather!!. Mother nature has been the concern all week but more so today than any other.  From what we saw today from the little rain we did receive last night and what we hear is coming for the next three days, it’s not looking good for the event. As Dyno said in his LiveRC interview "It's gonna be a mudder." Only time will tell and we will have to see in the morning. When we left the track today the weather was looking quite ominous. 

  

Team Losi Racing Update for the Final Day of Free Practice

Team Losi Racing Update for the Final Day of Free Practice

The end has come to a great day of practice here in Argentina at the 1/8th IFMAR World Championships.  We could not have asked for better weather today as the sun has come out and has glistened our skin and tanning us quite well.  The weather is still uncertain for the rest of the week and we are looking forward to more days like today.  The track was by far the best it’s been with very little dust flying around, which was nice. 

It was a pretty tricky day today on what to do with setup on the Team Losi Racing 8IGHT's.  We felt like we wanted to make a couple of small changes but we also don’t want to get lost.  The track was still developing throughout the day and changing a lot.  It was hard to say if we should wait and see what the track does for tomorrow and start making some changes today.  Some of the guys like Darren Bloomfield make a few changes to make his car a little less grabby in the front and add some rear grip.  Most of the others have decided to hold off until tomorrows two timed practice runs to see what the track does.  This is also a big chance as it eliminates a lot of time to make changes.

Tomorrow we will run two timed practice runs that will be a total of 10 minutes each with only the last 5 minutes of each qualifier counting towards the seeding. We will then have the opening ceremonies shortly after the two rounds, then they will run one final round that will be 3 minutes in length in the new qualifying heat.  This round is mainly to make sure everything is set in the computer correctly so qualifying goes smooth.

Overall the day was very quiet for our team and we are looking forward to the timed practices tomorrow.  

I have been trying to post some photos and videos with no luck at all.  The wifi is very bad today for some reason.  I will try again in the morning to get something post for everyone to see.  I have a video trying to upload for the last 4 hours. 

Update on Day Two of Practice

The Weather is looking great today and the track is the best it has been since we have gotten here.  We have ran only one round today so far and the team is looking good.  Looks like some of the guys will be going with a softer set-up for the second round today.  They had to do a small amount of track work after the first round to fix the loop that was coming up on the straightaway but everything else is looking good.  Let's just hope the weather holds like this all week.

Day 2 Report From Argentina

Day Two Report From Argentina

Today was a big day at the World Championships!  We finally got to put some laps in on the huge track, about 15 minutes worth.  They ran one free practice round today after all the check-in and tech.  Practice started just after 2pm which was great since the track needed some more drying time to get the last of the water off before the sawdust would go down.  Funny thing is we were all so worried about all the wet spots and not thinking about all the rest of the track that was bone dry and soft powder.  This came to realization when the first car hit the track and the pits turned into dust bowl (LOL good times).  

The team really ran great today as far as we could tell with the fast changing track.  Their were no real problems other then a couple of flame outs from Drake, Phend and Bloomfield but this was just a matter of tuning to the fuel for the first run.  The big thing we learned today was tires.  We started on a little harder tire then we should've so tomorrow we will start with a softer tire and more of a block style as well.  We are also hoping once the track gets cleaned off more we can get a better reading on the fuel mileage.  It was not so good today for anyone on the team but the grip was extremely low.     

My final thoughts on the track development are up in the air!!  Track started really dusty but did start to clean off a bit at the end of the day but not nearly enough.  My other huge concern is the rain that could come and sooner then we thought (TONIGHT)!!  This would be great if it was just a little bit but we all know that won't be the case.  We will all see in the morning as I will post a weather report.