Triple Win for Blake Boggs at the Jamie Rogers Memorial Race

Wednesday, Apr 16, 2014 at 12:00am UTC

This past weekend I (Blake Boggs) attended the Jamie Rogers Memorial race in Flowood, MS. Jamie, Ty Rogers' father, passed away in January due to a heart attack while attending Flowood’s “January Jam” race. Around 150 racers from the surrounding states joined together to remember a fallen hero in the RC community. Bubba Barham, race director, did a great job for Ty and his mother Melissa. FRC had many sponsors donating product to be raffled off to raise money for Ty and his family. I believe there was around $4,000 raised.

Practice got off to a start Friday with a brand new layout from Ty Rogers himself. Greg Gatewood and the track crew did an amazing job implementing Ty’s creation into the FRC facility. The track was technical and brought out some really close racing. There was to be two rounds of 7-minute qualifiers for Saturday.

I ended up racing in four classes: 2WD Open Buggy, Pro Ebuggy, Pro Nitro Buggy, and Pro Nitro Truggy. In 2WD Open Buggy I ran my Reedy-powered Team Associated RC10B5. In the first round of qualifying I was able to set TQ pace by 12 seconds over second place. I missed the second qualifier due to lack of time with four classes. To my surprise the track only got faster throughout the day and I ended up starting in the fourth position for the triple A Mains. JConcepts team mate William Ables started at TQ. I knew it would be a tight race with him being super quick throughout qualifying. Still, I was able to put a pass on William early and check out for a win in A1. A2 was much the same -- I was able to check out early and take A2 and the overall win. During A2 I wanted to see how hard I could push the B5 and still be consistent after I checked out a bit and to everybody’s surprise the car was way faster than anyone anticipated. I was able to clock a 27.4 second lap time with the 2WD buggy. That single lap would have been a hot lap in the Pro Nitro Buggy B Main! "Wow," is all I have to say about the new B5’s speed!

In 1/8th Pro Ebuggy I ran my Reedy-powered RC8.2e. In round one of qualifying I wanted to get a safe run and was able to TQ with a 15-lap 7:09 pace. In round 2 I had to better my time as racers before me topped my time from Q1 with the ever-improving track. I was able to run the only 16-lap pace with a 16-lap 7:19 time. Starting in Q1 for the triples, I knew I had to stay smooth as Willaim Ables, Tekno’s Kevin Mccoy, and TLR’s Martin Harrison would be close in tow. I was able to have a very clean start and stay consistent to comfortably take the win in A1 with only with a bit of pressure from FRC’s local young guy Matthew Hales. In A2 I tried to stay as clean as possible but a bobble in the rhythm section cost me dearly and I dropped back to eighth place. With that bobble I got caught up in more traffic and that made it tough to fight back to first as Tekno’s Kevin Mccoy stretched his lead. I was able to drive hard and make my way up to third, with another hot lap of 25.8 (fastest of the weekend), to finish behind Kyosho’s Ty Rogers. In A3 I was worried that the guys behind me would battle hard for the lead and force me to make a mistake and end my hopes of a win, but I stayed calm and was able to stretch out a good lead and take A3 and the overall win.

In Pro Nitro Buggy I ran my RC8.2. In the first round of qualifying I was able to set a early TQ pace but round 2 provided a much faster track and once again I would have to top my previous time to claim overall TQ. In round 2, I once again was the only one to go 16 laps/7:22 time to secure the overall TQ. The main was pretty straightforward with some early pressure from Tekno’s Kevin Mccoy. In the end my RC8.2 took the win by over a lap on the field.

In Pro Nitro Truggy I ran my RC8T Championship Edition. I set an early TQ pace in round one only to be topped by one second by Derek Guidry. In round 2 I once again wanted to step up my game. I was able to set a pace to once again be on a 16-lap run until a mechanical problem sidelined me for round 2. At the start of the main I was able to get by Cody and set my sights on Derek. I caught Derek and paced myself behind him until the first round of pit stops. He was able to pit clean and I got tangled up with a back marker coming out of the pits. With what had seemed to be a flame-out as I was tangled up set me back about a half a lap. I was brought back to the pits with the engine still running and a obvious operator error. Although I had assumed the worst and thought the engine flamed, I was wrong. The engine was still running and back out I went, only to let Derek stretch his lead and keep it that way, so I finished second.


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