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Paul Ciccarello racing S120 in mod (21/01/2009)

By:: Reporter
Linked to:: Serpent S120 1/12th scale

Northeast Grand Slam Race # 3 at 360 Speedway

Friday I arrived to the track and it was the first time I had been to 360. Let me tell you this was one of the nicest carpet tracks I have ever been to. Very bright, clean, and had all the things you'd expect in a carpet track.

I got to run my 120 a few times during the day in open practice and right away it was one of the fastest cars there. It needed a few adjustments to take away some steering as the 360 track had a lot of traction. I decided to go to heavier dampening in the center dampener from 1000 to 2000 cst. This calmed the car down a little and made it easier to drive. I was going back and forth between the stock front springs and AE .020 and Friday the stock springs seem to produce the fastest laptimes.

Saturday morning I knew there would be even more traction so I waited to make some more adjustments until then. Saturday morning in the open practice session the track had more steering so I needed to make more adjustments. First I ran the car and there was some fuzz picking up on the tires so I right away I went to Yellow rear tires to keep traction the whole run. Normally this happens on a new layout and by the end of the weekend it goes away. From past experience Pink fronts seem to go well with Yellow rears so I decided on that combination. I also went to the AE .020 front springs so the car would be smoother with the added traction. The car mostly had too much entry steering so for the first controlled practice round I changed the 6 deg reactive blocks to 3. Man this made the car way better. Even though it was only practice I could see I had a leg up on the competition. I was a whole lap faster than everyone. I knew they would get closer but for now I was really happy with the handling of the 120 going into round 1 of qualifying. We got over with round 1 of qualifying and I was TQ!!

For the second round I made a few mistakes and Dave Chester was able to beat my first round TQ. As the day went on the car gained more and more steering and that is why I made the driving errors. I decided to make the top front arm longer for the 3rd round. It was the change I needs as I was able to Re TQ and go a whole lap faster. At this time Jeff dayger was second and Josh Cyrul third. After that I was happy and had a good night sleep!!

Sunday morning I could see another driver Donny Lia was getting faster and his car was working well in open practice. For the fourth round Donny was able to reset my TQ by one second. Although my car was working great I made some mistakes and was not able to improve on my time, so for the main I would start second.

The main was really exciting. Donny made a mistake right away and so did I. Jeff Dayger got by and so did Dave Chester so for the first half of the race I was running third. For the main I anticipated a lot of crashing and the yellow rear tires are really sensitive to chunking so I decided to run Pink rears. I was not exactly how the car would react but it wound up pushing a little bit more than I would have liked. The car was still fast but I probably needed to go back to the 6 deg reactive blocks and it would have been perfect or maybe try magenta rear tires. Back to the main, Jeff led the first half of the race with Dave and I really close, Jeff then made a mistake taking him out of the race so Dave inherited the lead and me second.
A little later on Dave made a mistake and I got the lead. I led for a little while but I could see Dave and Josh Cyrul pushing really hard to catch up. I made a few small taps that let Josh and Dave catch up. Dave then took out Josh and Josh jumped a board. Initially he got right back going right behind me since he gained about 20 feet in the wreck. I yelled at him and he backed off because it was only fair that he was not that close to me before. The bad thing for me is my laptime was still a few tenths slower than his on the same lap because I had to swerve out of the way of his wrecked car. It was a little questionable on the move he made but no one made a call on it and I though he backed off enough so I did not worry about it. Maybe I should have as I then made a little mistake and he got by me. In the end I lost the race by.05 of a second. Man it was a great race with so much action going on. All in all the 120 was a fantastic car for the first big race I used it and I am so happy to be running it!!

You can find the set-up here:
http://www.serpent.com/racing/setups/
or here:
http://www.serpent.com/product/410001/setups/

Here is a link to a picure of my car and the video of the main.

http://www.rctech.net/forum/attachments/electric-road/407454d1232200881-northeast-grand-slam-series-_dsc3548.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKTJADxhto&eurl=http://www.rctech.net/forum/electric-road/224471-northeast-grand-slam-series-26.html

S120 - Paul

Paul Ciccarello