Tollard and Ayden Horne Win at Chitown Shootout

This weekend was the Chi-Town Shootout hosted by Leisure Hours Raceway in Joliet, IL. This year’s event started on Thursday with open practice, followed by two rounds of qualifying on Friday, two rounds on Saturday, and then single mains on Sunday. I, Chad Due, arrived on Wednesday evening to watch some of the locals running their normal weekly race program. The track, which incorporated a massive back straight and large jumps, looked to be quite fun.

After watching some racing Wednesday evening I arrived at the track Thursday morning eager to get some laps on the track. The track flowed well but it was apparent very quickly that any mistakes during qualifying would mean huge losses in overall time. The speed of the track was really like nothing I have run on. The theme for the day was more motor as the back straight felt like it went forever. Luckily with some small changes in speed control timing from the Reedy Blackbox 410R speed control it meant more speed was not an issue. I was also very eager to get on track with the new RC10T5M Team Kit. As I had not driven a stadium truck since the 2012 R.O.A.R. Nationals, I was quite excited to see what the new generation truck had to offer. Let’s just say the T5M is really like no stadium truck I have driven to date. In the past, the rear-motor Factory Team RC10T4.2 was always a challenge to control on high-speed, high-grip surfaces. However, the new T5M has none of these characteristics. In fact I would describe it to drive very similar to the RC10B5M Team Kit, but much more forgiving all around.

With practice wrapped up and feeling good overall with my cars, I got to the track Friday looking forward to what I was hoping would be a nice smooth opening couple of rounds of qualifying. However, Friday proved to be a very challenging day. With all of my runs being riddled with radio glitches, I struggled to put together good runs. I was able to pull off a third-place run in 2WD Buggy, a fourth-place run in 4WD and a couple top-three runs in Stadium Truck. By the end of the day on Friday I was really looking to figure out the radio issues and move on to Saturday. After trying many things during qualifying Friday to figure out my radio issues -- and with some great help from Hobbico -- I was able to replace my defective radio and test the system before qualifying began again on Saturday.

Now that the radio issues were behind me, I was looking forward to just going out and putting in some good runs. In Stadium Truck I was able to clean my runs up a bit and pick up a second and third for the rounds. Cole Tollard took the overall TQ in Stadium Truck with Aydian Horne second and me starting third. 4WD Buggy continued to be a struggle for me. Mistakes continued to plague me with the 4WD and I was never able to really get comfortable with my buggy. I started ninth for the main. However, Cole Tollard and his B44.3 continued to have great success, and got the TQ honors in 4WD as well. 2WD again was not too bad, with runs that continued to show promise but due to small bobbles I finished third and fourth in each round. This meant I would start the main from fourth overall.

With main day arriving I felt fairly good about my cars. My T5M was very fast and I knew that if I could get through the first few laps, I could battle for the win. As we rolled off the line, Cole and Horne led the way until a small bobble by Cole meant Horne and I could move past. I pushed Horne for about seven laps very hard until I made a small bobble, letting Austin Horne by for second. Unfortunately, I would not be able to make the ground back up and ended up finishing in third. I would like to congratulate Aydian on an excellent drive.

The 4WD main was next. A first-lap pileup on the triple resulted in a few broken cars, including mine. I was able to limp my car around for the next 5 minutes but in the end I finished where I started, in ninth. Cole, on the other hand, had a very nice race between him and Travis Amezcua. Cole drove a great race, matching anything Travis could throw at him. Cole led tone-to-tone, taking a well-deserved win. Way to go, Cole!

Lastly was the 2WD main. I was really looking forward to this race because I felt all through qualifying my B5M was good enough to be in the top stop. On the start, Cole made a small mistake from second, which saw Austin Horne and myself squeak through. About halfway through the race, Travis, Austin, and I were separated by about 3 seconds, but it seemed that even though we all were pulling away from the field, none of us were giving an inch to each other. We ended up driving most of the rest of the race this way to finish Travis first, Austin second and myself third.