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Ciccarello 2nd in modified with S120 / Snowbirds (11/02/2009)

By:
Reporter

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Serpent S120 1/12th scale


I arrived at the Snowbirds early this year to enjoy the warmer weather with my wife. We got to Disney and a few other places. It was a great time.

Ok, on to racing. I was able to see Markus and Butter Monday. I was checking out Markus’s cars to see what he was doing and for the most part we were on the same page. Butter was building his car so he had some questions and we got him on the right track.

Tuesday was practice and I pretty much worked with tires trying to figure out what worked best. I tried yellow rear and pink front to start and they were not all that great. I was kind of sliding around. Next I asked around and most guys were running Magenta all around. So I tried that next and it was a lot better but I was really not all that happy with the car at that point. It was sliding a little in the rear and that made it a little hard to be consistent. I was not sure at that point if I needed more rear grip or the car just had too much steering.

For Wednesday I decided to take the route of taking away some steering. The reason the car would get loose I think was the car would lift a little then slide. I needed to keep all 4 wheels on the track to be fast. So Wednesday- Thursday I was taking away steering and the car was really not getting any better it just was starting to push. I went to thicker center shock fluid, took out caster, went to 3 deg blocks and cut my tires smaller. Finally Friday I switched to Pink front and rear tires and this transformed the car. Now all 4 wheels stayed on the track and I was able to dial more and more steering back into the car to get faster lap times. One problem is it was a little late because there were only 2 qualifiers left and I did not want to change too much at once. So I did a little at a time between the last qualifier and the mains. I went back to 6 deg blocks, went a little lighter on the center dampening, and added a little castor. The last qualifier was good but the track was slower and I slowed a little the last 2 laps so I did not improve on my time but the car was indeed better. I qualified 4th and Markus qualified 2nd.  It’s great result for the 120 for the first big race in the States in the Modified class.


For the main I knew the track would have a little less traction so I decided to try the batteries all the way back. This was a great change and my car was great in the main. I was able to stay close to the leader for the first 5 minutes about 1.5 seconds back until I hit the inside of the sweeper. This killed my battery and a little of the handling so 3rd and 4th were able to catch up, but I was able to hold them off the rest of the race.

I finished second and now have a great setup going in the Nationals to start with and for the first race in mod with the 120 I was really happy.

My set-up is in the set-up section. http://www.serpent.com/product/410001/setups/

Paul