Ty Tessmann has been spending some time at Pro-Line this past week and took a little detour to Leduc’s (Curt, Todd and Kyle) race shop to check out the latest short course truck technology. It was here that the racers shared their passion for racing of all types. Ty was even offered the chance for a test fit into the driver seat of Todd’s PRO 2.

I would have never imagined how fast the short course truck class would become so popular here in Southern California as it has in the past year. I’ve been racing my Jammin SC for the past three or four months now around all the tracks in So Cal, from smooth indoor tracks to huge loamy 1:8 off road tracks with monster size jumps. I mainly race at my home track Hot Rod Hobbies in Santa Clarita, CA. We normally have 80-100 entries on a Tuesday night and 70% of those entries are short course trucks. The indoor tracks that I race at are very similar to Hot Rod’s in regards to the entries, so I don’t think this class is going anywhere but becoming even more popular, thanks to the product Pro-Line produces and the manufactures of the trucks!

I’ve been having a blast racing these trucks and I honestly believe its been helping my driving in the 1:8 nitro classes as well. Below is a link to many of my races around So Cal racing my short course truck.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mrbirdman100&search_type=&aq=f

 Best Regards,

Chad Bradley

This past weekend the 4^th annual Ice Breaker was held at Indy RC World in Garland, TX.  Even though the turn out was a little lighter than in years past that didn’t stop the talent level from showing up in full force. The track surface at Indy always provides great and fast heads up racing. With a smooth, grooved and consistent surface lap times were very close and one mistake could easily loose you half a track if a marshal couldn’t get to you quickly.

In qualifying it was the Ryan Lutz show and with top qualifying honors in both truck and buggy he was the likely favorite for when the mains rolled around. My buggy and truck were working well from day one of arriving and I knew that if I could get my tire choices dialed in then I stood a good chance of having great success, Indy was usually a good venue for me and I always seem to be fast there. In buggy I could never seem to have that one clean run but still I managed a respectable rd. 3 and would set my self up 3^rd on the grid for the main less than half a second from 2^nd.

In Truck qualifying I never quite had the correct tire choice until the last round in which I TQ’ed coming with in tenths of a second of Ryan Lutz’s TQ time therefore securing 2^nd on the grid and raising my confidence going into the main. Through out qualifying more and more rubber was building up on the smooth surface giving the track more traction, which can be good or bad. On M3 Revolvers my car was a little too hooked up so I tried M2’s in the A-main warm-up and if I didn’t stay in the groove then I got loose real quick. I decided to go with the M3 Revolver with the closed cell foam so hopefully it would keep the rubber from stretching and I would have good traction through out the main. In truck I decided to go with M3 Calibers knowing that when I wore down the top layer of the pin then the tire would really come in and be good on the high bite surface.

In the truck main, TQ, Lutz suffered early problems, which would take him off the track for repairs to get back into the race. I took full advantage as I lead from lap one and even though I was getting some early pressure from Team Pro-Line driver Derek Guidry I eventually pulled away, only having to be marshaled once in the 45 minute final. I would go on to take the win leading from wire to wire with Derek Guidry finishing 2^nd to make it a 1 – 2 finish for Pro-Line.

In the buggy main Lutz again suffered early problems when his motor cut in the first corner off the start. Team Pro-Line driver Kyle Skidmore, who was 2^nd in qualifying, got caught up with Lutz when his motor cut allowing me to make a move to get around them to take the lead. Skidmore worked his way through field fast to eventually catch me and through out the 45 minute final we swapped the lead multiple times giving the crowd a great show. With 5 minutes remaining in the main Skidmore had a 5 second advantage on me so I began to push harder and harder to catch him. With 30 seconds to go in the race while on our last lap I had regained the lead but it was not to be. I clipped a pipe forcing me to swing wide in a corner and that was all Skidmore needed to regain and take the win with myself finishing 2^nd, again making it a 1 – 2 finish for Pro-Line.   

Jason – Buggy – M3 Revolvers, Low pro air filter, closed cell foams
                Truck – M3 Calibers, Low pro air filter, Bull Dog  truck body
 
Kyle – M2 Revolvers
 
Derek Guidry – Buggy – M3 Calibers
                               Truck – M3 Calibers, Bull Dog AE Body

Hi everyone, it’s 2010 and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am super excited for a new year of racing. I realize it has been way to long since my last blog, so I am going to take this time to fill you all in on what I have been up to.

It’s my senior year of High School and I have been working extremely hard on my schoolwork. I am taking some advanced classes that I am hoping will prepare me for college next year, so those are definitely taking their toll on me. On top of all the schoolwork, my friends at school all talked me into playing basketball this year. I played basketball from 5^th grade all the way up to my freshman year. I stopped playing after that because I hated missing practices and games for racing. Well the season is now over. We went an impressive 15-12 to finish out the season in the Semi-Finals of the Class 1A Regional. Our team struggled quite a bit throughout the year with finding each other out on the court, but we started to bring it together at the end. I had a great time playing with all my friends again and forgot how nice it was to get back into shape. Now I’m not going to lie, I was the bench warmer for most of the season, but I had a blast.

I believe in my last blog I wrote about my drag racing. Well my dad and I have been working on the car since then and we have made it run a best of 11.83 at 112 mph. We also finished 2^nd in the High School point series at Gateway. But it is a new year for drag racing and what do we have in store? Well we bought a new 455 Buick that a friend of my dad’s built. The motor has ran as fast as 9.90s in a 3600 pound car, so we are looking to run at least 10.50s when we put the motor in at the end of the year.

So enough of all this talk about not RC racing, I am ready to go. I have been running a lot of 1:10 scale electric this winter at SMAC Track in St. Charles, MO. 2wd Mod, 4wd Mod, and 4×4 Short Course has been a blast to run. My new Jammin’ SCRT10 Short Course truck is flippin amazing. I have been running that as much as possible since it is the closest thing to gas I can race indoors without driving 4 hours. I can’t wait to get outdoors though; the weather here sucks right now. It is always so cold and rainy, so it will be nice to see some sunshine and wear shorts for a change.

Well, that’s it for this blog. I will update you all in about a month and let you know how everything is going.

See you later!

Matt Gosch

Well after a few days of recuperating from the past week in Arizona, I thought I would let you all know how my week went at the Nitro Pit for the 11th annual Dirt Nitro Challenge! After doing 1 lap on the track I think everyone knew we were in for a looonnggg week! The track layout was one of the most difficult tracks any of us had ever raced on. And if you were watching the first round of practice I bet you could tell. Even the best of the best were crashing 2-3 times a lap.

By the time they got to the truck main Saturday night the track had about a 2-foot lane that was decent, anything outside of that wasn’t pretty. But it was the same for all of us. I was up to 4th in the first 5 minutes of the race before getting hammered by another driver, (won’t say any names), but it knocked me wayyy down the standings to 8th, I battled back to the top 5 and then my steering servo started going out, ran about 20 mins with very little steering, eventually pulling off at the 36 minute mark and ending up 12th overall. =/ But I was still very happy about even making the big show with all the tough competition. In truck, I ran M3 Hole Shot VTR’s in qualifying and for the main event.

Sunday rolled around and yet again, we arrived to the track and it was a total mud pit, they even changed the layout a little to avoid some of the muddy sections. But we still raced in it and by the time the Buggy A came around the 2-foot groove was back and the show went on. I worked my way up to 5th again was in a good battle with 3 other drivers for the 5th spot until I made a mistake and got pushed back to the battle for 8th. I ended up finishing 13th after the 45 minute final. Not exactly how I hoped my mains would have gone but all in all, it was a very good weekend.

For buggy, I ran M3 Hole Shots in the first 2 rounds of qualifying, for the 3rd round I ran M4 Hole Shots because it was at night and all the moisture came back to the surface. In the main event I ran M3 Bow-Ties because the length of the main and the track conditions were a little different with all the rain.

Pro-Line tires were by far the fastest tires on the track all week long. My cars were hooked up from day 1 and I felt I had the edge in tires over other competitors all weekend long and it showed on the track!

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all my sponsor’s who support me with what I need to be competitive at these races. I could not do it without you! I can’t wait to see how the rest of 2010 turns out.

Thank you for your support,

Levi Jackson

Just wanted to let everyone know that Pro-Line had a good weekend at the Motorama race in the expert classes.

 I Tq’d Expert Nitro buggy but finished 6th in the final due to many varying things.

I qualified 2nd in Electric buggy and Won the main.

I qualified 4th in Expert truck and Won the main in that class also.

Electric buggy….

TQ…..Phillip Atondo

1st……Myself (Odonnell/Pro-line) Using M3 Calibers

2nd….Phillip Atondo (Losi/AKA)

3rd….JR Mitch (AE/JConcepts)

Expert Nitro buggy….

TQ……Myself Using M3 Calibers

1st…Phillip Atondo (Losi/AKA)

2nd….Jason Ashton (Mugen/AKA)

3rd…Taylor Peterson (Mugen/AKA)

Expert truck….

TQ…Jason Ashton

1st…Myself (Odonnell/Pro-line) using VTR Hole Shot M3

2nd…Phillip Atondo (Losi/AKA)

3rd…JR Mitch (AE/JConcepts)

Thank you,

Barry Baker

Hey, hey what’s going on Pro-Liners?! So we are officially 54 days into 2010 and my question is, where you at? What has been good so far?

For myself it’s been a pretty packed last two months. It started off in January with some racing in sub 20-degree temperatures. It was absolutely the most miserable I have ever been at an R/C track in the last 14 years. I know, I know, I live in Florida how cold could it be but I am telling you that it was 22 degrees out with 10+ mph winds in Miami of all places. I ended up finishing 3^rd so it wasn’t too terrible

However, it has been away from the track where all the action has been happening lately. If you have read some of my other blogs you probably know this already but I started back at the University of South Florida here in the beginning of February. I am going back for my master’s degree in entrepreneurship. Although I am only 3 weeks in, it has already been an awesome experience. It is really neat to be in a class with people who actually want to be there and want to be better. I am learning a ton and working on some awesome projects. In my New Product Development class we have to redesign a Dental Prop for pediatric dentistry and if the design is good enough the school is actually going to patent and license the design. In my Strategic Market Assessments class we are working on a marketing plan for a LIDAR system that detects audio sources below ground like electronic mines and stuff like that. So all really neat stuff and if you cant tell I’m pretty excited.

Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations to Pro-Line’s Ty Tessmann who qualified 1st at the IFMAR Worlds warm up race in Thailand! Ty used the Pro-Line Hole-Shot M3 and V2 wheels! Great work Ty!

Well, its that time again when the holidays are long gone, the wife’s and girlfriends who begged you to stay home from racing are now begging you to get out of their hair and resolutions are being carried out or are already forgotten and are waiting for 2011…. lol.  Now that I have managed my way through that, it’s time to get the RC cars out to clean and prepare for the new race season, which is already underway.

The winter season seems to still be lingering here in Texas so it’s given me some extra time to go through my equipment to make sure it’s primed and ready for when the action begins. I have spent the last few weekends wrenching away in the man cave rebuilding cars, gluing my Pro-Line tires, preparing motors and checking my parts inventory to insure I have all my ends covered before I head to the track.

For me, success on the track begins in the garage before I even get to the track. I do my best to make sure my equipment is track ready so as soon as I arrive at a race I’m ready to throw my cars down on the track so I get the maximum out of my practice time. This preparation allows me to spend my practice time tuning the motor, trying different Pro-Line tires, and getting some quality practice laps in that way when qualifying begins, I’m ready to pull the trigger and go!  When I can get all these steps taken care of ahead of time it makes for a more enjoyable, relaxing, and successful race day. 

Well anyways, I hope all of you are as excited about 2010 as I am, so get your cars ready to go, race schedules penciled in and of course your Pro-Line rubber ready to rip!

 Good luck in 2010,

 Jason Branham