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The NASTE Forum → Posts by wb0s
Thursday evening after the Team IROC Race there was more time for tuning and practice before Friday's Individual Race. Much to my dismay it was announced the Individual Race was going to be contested on the Black Track. At that point a waiting line formed at the Black Track for practice time!
Thursday was the Team IROC Race. Mike Leech had prepared six Hot Rod bodied cars for Team Oregon to race. The cars were well prepped and handled great! They were also some of the most popular cars raced in the IROC set of races. The members of Team Oregon would like to again thank Mike for all of his hard work and generousity in supplying the team with cars and support! Thanks Mike!
Brad Bowman voluteered to be on our Oregon Team for the Team IROC Race. At the end of the Team IROC race we had posted a seventh place finish which I personally was very happy with!
Dave Smith brought some beautiful hand painted cars to the Fray!
The South Bay Team consisted of some of the nicest guys we had the opportunity of meeting and racing with! They went out of their way to help Anthony get his car up to speed and competitive by offering parts and tuning.
The South Bay guys had an awesome painter on their team, unfortunately I did not get his name. I believe his last name was Hurley? He had some very nice looking bodies for sale!
The Green Track was very difficult with the two sections of esses!
This was a very serious pit area!
These are the trophies that were handed out to the winners of the 2017 Fray In Ferndale. One trophy for the winning team, and one for the winner of the individual race. Neither of which made it out to my Nissan for the trip home.......
The Black Track was one of the most difficult for me. The extreme elevation changes added another degree of difficulty in controlling the cars speed through the corners. With that said it is a very cool track and also a crowd favorite. the Individual Race and Time Trails were held on this track.
Here is Richard Phillis in the flesh in his pit area working. My spy cam caught him in action. So if you don't think this guy is serious about T-Jet racing, you may be mistaken!
Some of the teams represented manufacturers of T-Jet HO parts designed specifically for Fray type racing. The Slot Tech pit area had many high quality parts for sale and available to racers.
There are NO easy tracks to race on tin The Fray. However I found Red Track to be one of the less evil tracks for me to negotiate. Half of the track was fast, the other half - not so much!
The Blue Track. Not only was this track difficult due to the tight sections between really fast sections, when we got to this track to actually race I realized I had not practiced on it at all. Never even ran one practice lap on any lane. I was feeling pretty intimidated. But then i realized Monte hadn't practiced on ANY of the tracks before the race! I felt much better, but poor Monte!
The Tan Track was another track I found less difficult once I kinda figured out the tight "U'" section following the 90 degree bank and 90 degree left at the end of the long straight.
Richard Phillis does an awesome job suppyling the basics for all the participants in setting up this event. There were tables set up for teams to use as pit areas all around the room. There seemed to be plenty of space for everybody.
The Purple Track was really tricky. Very technical on each end with nice long full out straights connecting them. Or at least that's how it appears. That top straight has a bridge half up leading onto it, and a bridge half down exitting it. Needless to say there were MANY offs at both ends of that upper straight. This was another track I practiced a lot on. It paid off as I had some good finishes on this track.
The different team's pit set ups were quite interesting. All the teams had poit areas with everthing you could possibly need to build or re-build your cars. Many teams had some very specialized tools built especially for racing the Fray type cars.
There were not a lot of racers around on Wednesday evening so there was plenty of opportunities to run on tracks by yourself which gives you the chance to compare the lanes closely.
The Pink Track was a lot of fun and really fast. Although it was less difficult to run than some tracks the gutter lanes still had some really tight corners. Dave referred to the "loop" as "The Toilet".
The Yellow Track was very technical and difficult. The only place you could carry a lot of speed was down the straight. The bridge half down after the loop was really challenging! We raced the Ferndale Team on this track. I totally sucked on this track coming off many times on the bridge half down!
The Orange Track was another very technical and difficult track. Nowhere on this track could you carry much speed. I had practice a lot on this track so I had my best results of the day here. I actually scored some wins on this one.
Into the night on Wednesday the practice sessions were pretty low key and there was plenty of opportunities to get time on any track.
Here Dave Smith is testing some cars after some "tweaking".
NASTE assembled a five member Oregon Team for the 2017 Fray in Fernadale led by team captain Dave Smith. Other members included Monte Saager, Mike Leech of Bend, Anthony Schoepflin, and myself. The Fray organizer Richard Phillis introduced us to Mike Leech who is a veteran of Fray races and thanks to Mike we had some quality and competitive cars to race. Mike let us race his cars in almost all the races, thank you Mike!
The Fray in ferndale is not new to Dave Smith and I, but my previous visit was under somewhat sketching circumstances....( a whole 'nother story!)....Dave and I had realistic expectations and goals!
I arrived Wenesday afternoon during practice. This is where and how I found Dave upon arrival, hard at work on the workbench!
When I arrived it was open practice and you had the chance to practice on any of the tracks. It was during these practice sessions I came to the realization that my cars were definitely NOT competitive.
A little later in the day Monte and Victoria arrived. The closest thing we got to any kind of award or trophy was the empty Pepsi bottle in Dave's hand (how symbolic!)!
Doc, let's see what the general consensus is this Thursday, and then you can finalize the rules.
Sorry for the lack of real time updates, but as you all know I do not have a Smart Phone and I like to travel "wire-less"! I will post a full review with some photos after I complete de-compression!
You got that right Howie! Personally, I think these cars are BUTT UGLY!
Random photos of "The Room"......
OH SO NICE!!!
Does that mean we have to paint Doc yellow?
BELIEVE me, I considered that, but no time to do it right.
I think we should have a YELLOW CAR Class, and MAKE Monte participate!!!
I might get a little more excited using bodies that lend themselves more to open wheeled type cars. Like maybe some sort of super modified type cars?
Let's cut up some bodies!!!
Thanks to Dave Smith I will have 4 cars for entries in the 2017 Fray. Dave built the four running chassis for me and I am very grateful! The cars run and handle beautifully! But I must say I just can't stand the looks of these cars!
Yes indeed Monte. The GT Class is nothing more than an unlimited-run-what-ya-got class. I'm thinking it would be better to re-define our classes narrowing the car types and just allow new folks to run what they have in any class. We could have a stipulation similar to the existing magnet rule, that after they won a race they must comply to the rules. How much easier can you get? Cheating is fine until you win!!!
I'm OK with having classes with two divisions, but anymore than that is just a pain in the you know what to score and keep track of (like our current F1 class!). My prefference would be to NOT have any classes with divisions but I am OK with whatever the group would like to do.
With that said, at some point I would like to "re-construct" our current F1 class as well as the GT class. Maybe turn them into multiple classes?
The NASTE Forum → Posts by wb0s
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