Tessmann und Ciccarello siegreich mit Xray beim Psycho Nitro Blast

Am Wochenende lief es für Ty Tessmann beim Psycho Nitro Blast in einer tollen Halle und der aufgebauten Strecke sehr gut. Er konnte als TQ mit seinem Xray XB8’21 die Nitro 1/8 Offroad Klasse gewinnen.

Paul Ciccarello war der zweite erfolgreiche Xray Fahrer mit dem XB8E‘21. Paul war bei Elektro 1/8 Offroad 40+ erfolgreich.

Hier könnt ihr euch das Rennen noch einmal ansehen:

Englische Version und Race report by Ty Tessmann

This past weekend was my first time attending the Psycho Nitro Blast in White Pine, TN. This is a very unusual race in that practice starts at 6am Friday morning and runs for 24 hours straight, it is open practice with no limit to the number of times you can get on the track. The track is the biggest indoor track I have raced on, the surface is extremely hard packed and the track organizers did a good job keeping the track wet throughout all of practice. The layout was extremely fast with some big jumps and a dragon back followed by whoops that if you got through them cleanly would make a very fast lap but it could also bite you if you rushed it too much.

There was no seeding for qualifying and with 18 cars on the track at a time it made it interesting. Another unique aspect of this race was the use of a joker lane, which could shorten the lap by 6-7 seconds and you were allowed to use the joker once each qualifier but could not use it on the first lap.

In the first round of qualifying my nitro car felt amazing, and I was able to take the TQ. Ebuggy was up next and again my car felt very good but I would come up a bit short and get 2nd for the round. In truggy my truck would understeer quite badly, I had lots of grip and had lots of power but just lost too much grip in the corners.

All of the pro classes would be run together, so it was a bit chaotic to run all 3 classes in a very short time but then it gave us a long time in between to work on our cars, get food and get some rest when needed due to the long days.

They did a resort after round one. Round two nitro buggy the track conditions stayed consistent so I didn’t make any changes to the car and I was able to take the TQ which gave me the overall TQ. In Ebuggy we made some adjustments and it was better and I was able TQ this round. We also made a bunch of changes to the truck and it was better, but it still wasn’t fast enough so we would keep working on this.

Round three of qualifying for the pro classes would start at midnight which made for an extremely long day, the track was starting to dry out as they were watering less, with nitro buggy TQ already locked in I would try some different tires and make some changes to my car for the drier conditions which I found out weren’t that good. Even though the changes weren’t good I was glad I tried them as it gave me some valuable information, as I knew there wasn’t an A main warmup to do any other testing on Sunday. Ebuggy round 3, I didn’t make any changes to my car but with the track starting to dry out, I learned that we would need to make some different tire choices and adjust our car for Sunday mains. With my 2nd and first place finishes I would take the overall tq in ebuggy.

We headed back to the hotel exhausted from the long day and discussed what our plan was going to be for the mains.

When we got to the track Sunday the first thing we did was had a look at the track conditions, the track was very dry, much drier than anything we had run on up to this point, it was still smooth but there was somewhat of a groove developing with the driving lane being clean but with a lot of dust just outside the line.

Another thing that would be different for this race is the truggy and nitro buggy mains would be run earlier in the day, and the ebuggy towards the end of the day. For the mains we would get an extended pre race warmup, instead of a separate A main warmup. We were also allowed to take the joker lane 3 times in the 30 minute nitro mains which would make for very confusing and chaotic racing.

Up first would be the truck main, we made quite a few more changes to the truck, and up to this point we had been running the Bangkok V2 tire in the white compound which had been working very well, but with the drier conditions we knew we would need a harder tire, so we jumped up two compounds to the soft compound and when the warmup started I knew the tire choice was very good and my truck felt much better and I felt I could be competitive, but starting 13 on the grid in such a strong field it would be a difficult race. The start of the truck main I would be able to gain a couple of positions right away on the first lap and then settle in to a groove, and slowly work my way up through the field, I took the joker lane twice pretty early on to get out of traffic, but trying to keep track of my actual position in the race was almost impossible so I just had to drive as hard and as fast as I could. I saved the last joker lap until towards the end and that would put me in 5th but not close enough to battle for 4th, so I would finish the race in 5th. Although not the best results, I learned alot about the track I would be racing on later in the day in the buggy classes and learned about the truck in these conditions with the new tires and walked away from the race fairly satisfied with the result, given the knowledge we had gained.

After running the truggy main I felt I could use even a harder tire, so I mounted up some medium V2 tires as well as the soft V2 tires just to be safe. We also made some changes to the nitro buggy due to the drier conditions and what we learned from the truck main. The 5 minute warm up started and my car felt amazing with the medium tires so I opted to not change the tires, I felt super confident, my car felt awesome, my engine was perfect and my tires were hooked up. The start of the main went off perfectly and I got into a rythym and pulled away a little on the first lap, a few people took the joker lane right away which would put them ahead of me but I knew my pace was really good so I wasn’t too concerned. I just had to focus on driving fast as again it was really difficult to tell how many seconds you were ahead as you never knew who would take the joker lane and come out ahead of you. I would end up using 2 joker lanes and keeping one for the end of the race, I felt like my car was fast enough to catch up if I needed to. I had Dakotah and Tyler Jones just ahead of me, and I knew they had used all there joker lanes already and I had one left, so I knew I just had to stay with them and use my joker lane which would give me a 6-7 second lead. I ended up having some lap traffic problems which would drop me back a little bit. I decided to take the joker lane to see how much of a lead I would have and then just manage it. I was able to hold on to take the win.

Last up for the pro class was the ebuggy main, I would make a mistake early on, rolling over then I would use my joker lane on that lap and get back to first but fall back to 2nd when Spencer took his joker lane. I would make another mistake dropping me to 5th, and would work my way back up to 2nd place, I made a last lap charge in the whoops but couldn’t make it stick and would have to settle for 2nd.

Congratulations to Spencer Rivkin on the wins in truck and ebuggy, and congratulations to Paul Ciccarello for the win in 40+ ebuggy.

Overall it was a good weekend, I want to thank my sponsors for allowing me to do what I love to do and giving me the best products to do it with Xray, RC America, Hobbywing, FX Engines, Hot Race Tires, MKS, A Main Hobbies, HUDY, VP fuels, Protek Rc, EZ Customs, Stickit1, Lunsford, Avid rc, OCRC and 110% Racing.

Thanks to my family for all their support, help and the sacrifices they have made throughout my career and most importantly I would like to thank my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without him I would not be where I am.

1/8 Pro Nitro Buggy Results: