Mile High Indoor Champs - 5280 Raceway

We spent last weekend in warm & sunny and then very snowy & icy Denver Colorado, attending the Mile High Indoor Champs put on by 5280 Raceway.

This would be Josh Cyrul's 1st race running SpeedMerchant cars, and it went very well.

We arrived Thursday to beautiful Denver weather. The track is only about 1/2 hour from the airport, and is located in a strip mall with many stores and restaurants all around.

We spent most of Thursday finishing up the cars and starting to get some tires trued for practice. The 5280 crew have a really great thing going. Nice track and a top notch bunch of guys to help run it. It's been a long time since I've been at a "big" race that had virtually zero drama. Just a lot of really talented racers having fun.

On Friday morning we ran the Mod car a couple of times to shake it down and make sure the electronics and everything else were working properly. After that we spent almost the entire day running pack after pack in the 13.5 car and dialing in our set-up. While I worked on the cars, Josh trued tires, practiced, trued tires, practiced, rinse & repeat. For the most part, he was at the truer from 9:30am thru 2:30pm. By the end of the weekend, I think we had used them all!

By Friday evening, we had just an awesome set-up on the 13.5 car. Very aggressive getting into a turn, really smooth in transition with crazy good corner speed through and out, yet still easy for Josh to drive. We took that set-up, copied it over to the Mod car, and went out. The Modified car was dialed. Everything from the 13.5 car translated perfectly to the Mod car. We stayed late for practice and made sure all the cars were ready to go for 3 qualifiers on Saturday.

Saturday morning... we knew it would be a busy day. Not only was Josh driving three 12th scale classes, he was also piloting his WorldGT car and factory Awesomatix sedan. 5 classes...15 qualifiers in one day!

Saturday's qualifiers went pretty much perfect. Josh TQ'd EVERY round of EVERY 12th scale class... 17.5, 13.5 and Modified. He was getting very accustomed to his Rev.8 and because he wasn't busy wrenching on stuff, I think it really let him focus on his driving. Every time he hit the track, his comfort level and driving line got better and better. TQ for 12th Modified came in the 3rd round with the only 59-lap run posted all week, and Josh also set fast lap of the week with a 7.9 second lap in round two! After qualifying was over on Saturday, we decided to stay at the track and keep working on getting quicker. The work paid off with a blistering 12th Mod practice run.... (in practice traffic), at the end of the day. We were pretty confident it would have been a 60-lapper in qualifying trim!

Sunday Morning arrived, and we still had a 4th round of qualifying to go, followed by the mains. Josh was TQ in 4 classes with only Sedan Modified eluding him so far. He had shown the pace for TQ in the 3rd round, but wasn't able to put a full 5-minute run together. Well, that changed in round 4. Josh put in a masterful TQ run. His Trinity powered Awesomatix was silky smooth, carried terrific corner speed and was 'warp drive' fast on the back straight. Whenever you have Paul Lemieux in your rear view mirror after qualifying, you know you did something right. Josh again carried TQ in 17.5 12th, 13.5 12th and his WorldGT car. Going into our final 12th Modified run, we were really looking at bumping up our 59-lap TQ run from the day before. Unfortunately, on lap 2 (I think), with Josh's Rev.8 at full song, another car hit the very end of the back striaght, Josh just a split second behind tried to avoid the incident and ended up tagging the inside corner at the end of the straight. Not good. Josh's car flipped and went backwards into the outside retaining wall... really hard and really fast. No 60-lap run for us today. Even though it was a brutal crash, the destruction was pretty minimal. Broken left rear rim, shattered left rear axle bearing, and an overly compressed center shock. That's it. No broken links, all of the carbon fiber checked out straight as a board, and the front suspension was fine. As a Mfg., that actually made me pretty happy. If a side link was ever going to break, it would have been in that accident.

Even though he had a lot of clear real estate in front of him, Kevin Hebert couldn't match Josh's 59-lapper from the previous day and our Modified 12th TQ was safe. 5 Classes, 5 TQ's. Pretty amazing. The three 12th scale TQ's with Rev.8's he had never driven until two days before.

The A-mains all went great, with barely a hiccup. 12th 17.5, 12th 13.5 and WorldGT were all wire to wire wins. Josh's sedan run was nearly flawless. Paul made a charge at Josh at the beginning of the race, but as the tires came in Josh drove away to a comfortable lead. The only issue we had at all was in the 12th Modified A-Main. The car had a bad crash in the 4th qualifier that morning, and because of time constraints, there was no practice after the qualifiers and before the Mains. So, we were going into the A-Main with a car that we weren't 100% sure about. It tweaked flat, everything was free and smooth, but you just never know until it hits the track. As it turned out, the chassis was fine, but the shock must have taken a little internal damage. In hand, after the crash it felt fine, but on the car, it didn't want to rebound like pre-accident. Although the car was still good, it was dragging quite a bit on the carpet. That lead to a little push that Josh had to adapt to. Kevin grabbed the lead from Josh after a tap, but Josh was able to reel him in, pass him and drive away after that, for another A-Main victory! Taking the A-Main of 12th Modified against arguably the best American 12th driver for the past few years with a car that was only running at about 90% capability was a nice way to cap off the weekend.

5 TQ's and 5 A-Main victories, ridiculous.

Big thanks and lots of respect go out to Josh Cyrul. I've known Josh since the early 90's, but this was the first time we've really worked together. He was nothing but hard working and very professional. We both have years and years of set-up, testing and designing information floating in our heads. Some of it coinciding quite nicely and some of it on very opposite ends of the spectrum. To take that knowledge, mash it up, and come out of it with a happy racer and a happy designer in just a few short days speaks volumes.

Josh and I are very much looking forward to the upcoming season.

As always, thank you to all of the sponsors that support Josh and SpeedMerchant...

• Team Trinity Motors and Batteries

• KO PROPO

• LRP Speed Controls

• Protoform Racing Bodies

• ULTI Racing Tires

• Xenon Gears and Racing Accessories

• Team Tamale

• RC Trim racing graphics

Finally, thank you one more time to the 5280 crew. Great track, great people. We'll be back.