This past weekend I attended my first Canadian Off Road Championship Series (C.O.R.C.S) held by the Red Deer “Clutch Nutz” race club. There were over 100 racers in attendance for the two day event. This event held many different race classes such as monster truck, buggy and electric.
When I first saw the race race I said, “Wow, it really looks like a parts breaker! Should be super fun to drive”. As the course was a similar size to the Winter Nationals, only hosted outside. It held a number of different jumps, straights, s-turns, off kilter turns and a massive table top right in front of the pit area!
The event was run very well, with three qualifying rounds on Saturday and all main events held on Sunday. This style of race layout made for a reasonable race day length on both days. Also, your place in the finals was determined by how many laps and speed you did through out qualifying.
Since this was my first C.O.R.C.S race I decided to only compete in the Monster Truck event, even though I had brought my buggy along. There were about 30 drivers in this class competing to make the A-Main.
Unfortunately I did not place as high as I would have liked to, since each time the announcer called “Loop Is Live” I ended up experiencing a break down. During my first qualifier, my receiver battery died and therefor shut off my truck. During the second qualifier I broke a turnbuckle linkage, and during the final qualifier I broke a shock arm. Due to this bad luck I made about five laps all day that were timed. Therefor placing me in the C-Main.
When I arrived back at the track on Sunday, I was not thinking I was going to be able to race in the C-Main, because I still didn’t have a solution for the broken shock arm ( I did not a spare in my pit bag). Then my buddy Jeff mentioned using my buggy shock as a replacement even though it is about 1/4 the size and quite a bit shorter travel. Turned out that I was able to install it and even though the suspension of the MT was all off because of this shock.. I could run in the main event!
Six minutes into the race I was in second place with my hacked up suspension monster truck. I was even a lap up on the third place competitor! However, that’s when disaster struck. My battery decided to turn off again, causing me to drop out of the race…
What I learned.. My battery is toast and has now cause me this issue in a total of three races. It’s going back to the store and I may go Lipo. Also, I missed not seeing my wife for the weekend. 