After a long, wet winter, we were lucky and got a perfect day to kick off the 2023 JConcepts Points Series at Rescue Community Center RC Track. The season got kicked off with the Novice Class getting the first racing action on the modified St. Louis-style track. The randomly-seeded bracket saw racers take advantage of the extra laps with a pair of new-comers meeting in the finals as Marc Detka took the win over Jordan Jensen.
2.2 Mini Monster Results
Jeremy Bunting took the top two qualifying spots with “Bad Company” and “Crash Test Dummy” setting the pace and going undefeated into the finals with Bunting electing to have the one-seeded “Bad Company” take the racing win.
In freestyle, Georgia Smallwood went out first with her all new “Lucas Stabilizer” and filled the clock without rolling over setting the early high mark at 22 points. Brian Romo’s “Hater Maker” would make a valiant effort, but a rollover deduction would have him come up one point short and early rollovers and breakage would plague the rest of the field and Smallwood would get her first ever freestyle victory! Bunting took home the overall event championship for the first event with Romo in second.
Bee Line Trucking 2.6 Monster Truck Results
David Heimbigner got off to a great start by setting the fastest qualifying pass of the day with his “Flyin’ Hawaiian” clocking in at 10.73. Last season’s champion Zac Soares was right behind with a 11.11 from “Excaliber” and Sam Elliott’s “Fenrir” and “Shaker” rounded out the top spots in qualifying and would make it to the final four. Heimbigner and Elliott would meet consecutive races with “Flyin’ Hawaiian” eliminating “Shaker” and “Fenrir” taking out Soares’ other entry “Prospector” in the semis. In the finals, both trucks were even after the first jump, but coming out of the turn, “Fenrir” clipped a lane barrier and rolled over sealing the win for “Flyin’ Hawaiian”.
For freestyle, Jensen set the high mark early with an impressive run filling the clock and even completing a front flip scoring 23. The score would hold until Bunting would fill the clock without rolling over and score a 26 for “Bad Company”. Soares would follow the run taking the lead with a full run that included two wild backflip corkscrews putting “Excaliber” on top with a 27 with 8 trucks still to go. The score would hold and carnage would ensue with some valiant attempts to overtake the top score giving Soares the freestyle win. Heimbigner would take home the overall event championship for the day and goes into Round 2 with a 14 point lead. Things get interesting from there as 4 points separate second through fifth place with Elliott in 2nd and 3rd and Soares in 4th and 5th.
Blackmarket RC Retro Results
Soares would set the fast time of the day in the Retro class getting the only sub-14 second pass with “Excaliber” followed by Bunting’s “Shotgun”, Heimbigner’s “Bigfoot”, Jacob Smallwood’s “King Krunch” and the all-new “Flyin’ Hawaiian”. It was not the debut Heimbigner was hoping for as he lost a driveshaft right off the line to Smallwood in the first round. The semi-finals would see Soares beat Smallwood and Bunting take out “Bigfoot” setting up a rematch of the top two in the class last season. The first round would go to Soares after Bunting took a wild bounce off of the crush cars and collided with the lane barricade rolling over. Soares heads to Chico with the 6 point lead.
Round 2 is just a few short weeks away in Chico at the AMain Silver Dollar RC Raceway. Thank you to our sponsors JConcepts, AMain Hobbies, Protek RC, EcoPower, Blackmarket RC, Bee Line Trucking, Insano Industries, and Brass Ring Fab as well as Rescue Community Center RC for the hospitality.
