The 2013 ROAR Nationals for 1:8 buggy and truggy were held at the Gulf Coast Raceway. Serpent team driver Billy Easton has this report:

This year’s ROAR Nationals were held in Porter, Texas. The facility was actually the same facility that held last year’s 200mm Nitro Touring World Championships. The facility is top notch when it comes to what every RC racer would dream of having near them so its lucky for those that live in Porter. The off-road track was covered, so the worry of rain would not be a problem. The dirt itself was a very pure red clay with very little sand. The track surface had a glaze and was quite shiny for most of the entire event. The grip was kind of slippery for the first three days then the track started to come around. As hundreds of laps were logged, the grip came up as well as tyre wear. The tyre of choice at this event was the new Pro-Line X2 and X3 compounds. They had the best overall grip and life.
Unfortunately I had very little time to prepare for the event due to my other work obligations. I started the event with my basic set-ups that I use here at home and tried to work around those for the best results. The Cobra truggy was actually really good from the start and seemed to be close. My Cobra buggy on the other hand seemed to require a bit more work. The biggest challenge of the track was finding steering at medium to higher speeds. The trick seemed to be finding the right amount of body roll onto the front while retaining rear end stability. The best solution for our cars seemed to be lowering the front roll centre, and making the rear slightly stiffer than we typically do. This helped increase the turn in while slightly improving the overall corner speed. As I mentioned earlier, the Cobra truggy was fairly close so, the overall set-up only needed minor adjustments. With the buggy I went through all sorts of things but it and never really felt like I was able to get a handle on the perfect set-up. It was close, but I figure it would have needed a couple more adjustments to make perfect.

Qualifying itself went well for me in truggy, while I posted a couple top ten runs ensuring I would make the 45-minute final. The buggy it seemed I was cursed with bad luck after bad luck. I missed the start of a qualifier, I was resorted into a bad heat race, blah, blah, blah – it never really seemed to end.
The truggy main was pretty good and although I was not the fastest car, my truck was stable and easy to drive for the 45-minute final. I felt I did just about as good as I could have done given the circumstances. Also Matt Schreffler did well and made the truggy main. The buggy semi-final was a mess, I was in sixth at the time and was hit from behind by another car forcing me off the track where my engine flamed out. Needless to say more back luck and a poor result.
Overall the race went very smooth, the program was run on time and never had any hitches. The growing Serpent team worked together well! The track crew and Jeremy Cupps did a fantastic job keeping the track in working order. I would say it was a success.

You can find my truggy and my buggy set-up here. Images courtesy of www.neobuggy.net

Source: Serpent