Thread: Electrathon - A Different Kind of "Hotrod"

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Extenuating circumstances kept me from making it to the January and February races, so nothing to report there. In March we had our "Speed Races" at Middleton High School in Tampa. I did a write-up on it, but when I posted it, it went into the great unknown and never showed up here! I was too disgusted to rewrite it then and since forgot about it. So.., we call that event Speed Races because we set aside the usual one-hour enduro style racing and shorten the races to 20 minutes. It is run on a quarter-mile track around the football field. The short duration race time allows us to dial the throttles up and let 'em fly.

Since my original controller had malfunctioned back in December I needed a different one. I tried a borrowed one and it didn't work either. By the time I discovered the problem, I didn't have time to buy a new controller. The only option I had was to put in the one that was acting erratically at the Middleton race back in October. In the first race I took off, eased up to full throttle, and was doing fine for about 3 laps. Then the car started slowing down! I got lapped once by my closest competitor (in my class) and after he gained about another half lap on me, my car started speeding up again. That's how we finished - me in 2nd place 1 1/2 laps behind first place.

I loaned my car to pit steward and flagman, Mike Frederick, for the "Sponsor's Race". He ran it wide open for 15 minutes with no problems and finished 2nd behind one of the Lithium battery cars.

In my second race of the day I was running good, leading my class... for the first six minutes... until my rear tire went flat!! It takes more than the 14 remaining minutes to change the rear tire, so I was done for the day. As it turned out, my good friend, Rodney Schreck got first, I totaled enough laps in the two races to get second. The only other competitor in our class had worse luck than me; he ended up third. There were only three in our class at this race.