Serpent Success At Sour Grapes Race

Report by DJ Apolaro

This past weekend we had our annual Sour Grapes Race to hand out trophies from the Florida State Series. We had a typical State Race format, running 4 rounds of qualifiers and then the mains. I showed up Saturday morning to break in a motor and try some things out on my 733. I am playing around with the set-up trying to get ready for the Worlds in July. We had temps in the upper 90’s and track temps around 140. The competition was good as Paolo, Tosolini and myself all ran sedan to push and see what we can improve. Toso ran his Capricorn, so this helped us to compare to the performance of the different cars. He currently was the holder of the track record, set at the last Winternats.

At the start of the weekend my car was ok, but I was looking for more steering going into the turn and more traction coming out. I also wanted the car to be less lazy from left to right. I made a few changes and the car was getting better and better. After all 4 rounds of qualifying I was able to take the TQ and also set a new track record with 24 laps in 5:07. It could have been a 5:06, but on the last lap I got mixed up with a back marker and lost about a second. In the end I was really happy with my car and was pretty much the fastest all weekend. Saturday night we had a banquet for the awards and the racers got to hang out and just have some fun. Rino Lino, one of the Serpent racers got a great third place for the season running his 733.

For Sundays final I made a plan and worked on my car to prepare it for the final. I rebuilt the clutch and checked the car out and made sure it was ready to compete for a 30 minute final. The race started and Paolo and I got a good start. I was able to start pulling away and by the first pit stop I must have had about a 6 or 7 second lead on Paolo and was already starting to lap most of the other cars. Halfway through the second tank my car started to have problems and the motor was cutting out around the left turn just before the high speed esses going into the timing and scoring. It would shut off at the same spot and I decided to just stop racing and try to save my motor. This allowed Paolo to take the victory for Serpent. I figured my tank must be bad. After the race I checked it out and the tank was bad and it had already ruined the motor also.

All in all I was happy with the weekend. I learned different things about the car and was able to push it to new limits. I would like to thank the Forgass officers and crew for having such a great series every year and to the Ft. Myers club for holding the race. The track was great and the traction was awesome.

I would like to thank Rino and Ronnie for the pit work and Rick Pinard for helping turn marshall in the final. Also to my sponsors that help make my racing possible; Serpent America, Serpent, Xceed, Novarossi World, ContactRC Racing Tires, Airtronics, Faskolor and Paintin Pete.

Results, pictures and information can be found at www.forgass.com

 

Source: Serpent