Eric Anderson

IIC - Las Vegas

Race report by Alexander Hagberg

The 10th annual International Indoor Championships was held at the Riviera Hotel & Casino located on the Las Vegas strip. More than 400 entries (it’s biggest entry count in a while) split in many different classes joined the race. The temporary carpet track laid out was a bit bigger than the previous years as well. Grip levels rose quickly and got very high, with a nice black groove.

Many drivers, myself included, had travelled directly from the World Championship events in Florida that previous week, which made things a bit hectic. However, as I arrived in Vegas on the Monday before the race, I managed to get my T4 and X12 cars ready for racing.

Practice and qualifying went very well in the 1/12 Modified category as my car worked very well right away, and I was the pace setter throughout the event. In qualifying I had a close battle for the overall TQ with Josh Cyrul. However, in the end I managed to take the pole position in Q4 after a flawless drive. I went on to win the main final in a controlled fashion where the others got into problems early on. The X12 was working perfectly without any major changes, which was really good to see. Paul Lemieux drove his X12 to a spot in the A-final as well but finished down the order.

The X12 of the RC America ace Craig Xavier won the 1/12 17.5T stock class as well – in front of a pretty tough field. Craig took the win from 2nd on the grid with a perfect drive in the 8 minute long final. Well done Craig!

In TC modified, I struggled early on, to find a good feeling for the car. I was using a setup very close to my ETS setup from last year’s season, however, with the new ARS system installed in rear. The limited track time on carpet prior to this event, made it difficult for us to find the right setting for the ARS – hence why we settled for the standard rear suspension, to be sure that we wouldn’t get lost with the setup. We need some more testing to find the right setting for the ARS on carpet. This is just the beginning of the carpet season, and we are looking forward to the upcoming events, hopefully being more prepared.

Qualifying was an extremely close affair as Ronald took TQ just 3 tenths of a second in front of myself, and Paul Lemieux in 3rd, a few more tenths back. Both myself and Paul were happy with the handling of our cars as we felt very competitive going into the main final. Traction rolling was an issue at this event, as a result of the high bite surface, and a soft controlled tire. Everyone was basically fighting with the car having too much roll. For the main final, I overdid the sidewall gluing of my front tires a bit, as the car started out very fast but then picked up a bit of understeer as the race went on. I was really challenging Ronald closely throughout the final, as I managed to set the quickest lap of the entire event as well, but in the end it wasn’t enough as he made no mistakes for those 5 minutes and I had to settle for 2nd place, with Paul on 3rd. Francesco Martini also made the A-final with his XRAY T4 2015 chassis after a good performance in qualifying.

In the TC super stock class, qualifying saw a very fast run by XRAY driver Art Scrimo, to 2nd place on the grid, just behind the pre event favourite Keven Hebert. Art managed to hold on to the podium to take the 3rd place in the main final.

Eric Anderson took the runner up spot in the TC stock class, chasing down the winner Kyle Klingforth at the late moments of the race. Congratulations Eric on another fine result! Craig Xavier rounded out the podium for XRAY in 3rd.

I want to say, many thanks to RC America, and to all XRAY drivers that joined the IIC. Thanks for working closely together on and off the track. We did have a great time! I hope to see everyone soon again in the US or somewhere else in the world.

Thanks to Scotty Ernst and his crew for organizing one of the best RC events in the world, and being my personal favourite, I can definitely say that I will be back next year.

TC Modified top 10: