Schoettler takes NIS round 2

Tuesday, Feb 3, 2015 at 12:00am UTC

On January 24-25, the action packed Northwest Indoor Series continued its second round in Albany, OR at Northwest Hobbies and Raceway. This four-race series attracts the region's best to three different tracks between Oregon and Washington with the ultimate goal to find out who is the fastest in each respective class. There are no drops and with each race being a month apart, planning and scheduling is a must.

The doors opened for controlled practice on Saturday at 8 a.m., which proceeded until 2:30 p.m. From there, a short driver's meeting and then straight into two rounds of qualifying. On Sunday, morning practice started at 7 a.m. for an hour and then directly into the final round of qualifying. Taking only the best two of three runs to set up the triple A mains for all the classes, the event was destined to find some great racing all weekend long.

This round's track layout was harder than it looked. At first glance, the subtle jumps aren't intimidating and the features appear quite simple, but to get the dialed tenths, the risk factor grew exponentially. With the track being tacky and the fast tire of choice being slicks, edgy cars and traction rolling became an issue the harder you started to push. Some racers would play the safe card and choose to go with low treaded tires for a safer, but slower car. There was a fine line between attacking with consistency and all-out speed, and those who were able to master these conditions did very well.

2WD Modified Buggy

Round 1 winner, Team Associated/Reedy’s Michael Schoettler, made his presence felt early on as he took his B5M to the top by TQ'ing rounds 1 and 3 in qualifying. Giving a valiant effort, Tanner Day put in a terrific run in round 2 and stole the round away from Schoettler and prevented him from sweeping all rounds of qualifying. Day ended up qualifying second, with Casey Vitale in third.

At the start of A1, Schoettler slowly gapped the young 16-year-old, Tanner Day, as Day drove with a little nervousness and was not able to get in a comfortable groove. Schoettler, not holding back, slowly drove away uncontested and won A1 without a fight. Day finished strong in second ahead of Mikey Brown, who finished third in A1, coming all the way from sixth on the grid.

A2 was much the same, with Schoettler on point once again from the sound of the tone. This time, however, Tanner Day suffered a mechanical on the second lap and had to DNF the round. With his closest competitor out early in A2, Team Associated's Michael Schoettler cruised to an easy victory and won A2 and the overall for the 2WD Mod class. From sixth on the grid and taking advantage of Day's misfortune, once again Mikey Brown sneaked his way up and placed second in A2 with a fabulous drive. Improving on his unfortunate run in A1, Casey Vitale rounded out the top three.

Having won A1 and A2, Schoettler was able to skip A3 and watch his competitors battle for second and third on the podium.

2WD Modified Buggy
1st place - Michael Schoettler [TQ]
2nd place - Tanner Day
3rd place - Mikey Brown

4WD Modified was pretty much the same, with Michael Schottler and his B44.3 dominating the competition. However, this time it was teammate Harely Yoshi who joined Schoettler on the podium with his Reedy-powered B44.3 to take second overall.

4WD Modified Buggy
1st place - Michael Schoettler [TQ]
2nd place - Harley Yoshii
3rd place - Jonathan Cantrell

Thanks to 2wdMod.com for this race report.


Pictures