2012 ROAR Onroad Carpet Nationals

Tony Phalen April 17, 2012 New RC Cars and Parts 8 Views

Driver’s from around the country showed up at Mike’s Hobby Shop to claim top honors at this year’s ROAR Onroad Carpet Nats, located in Carrollton Texas. Big guns like Paul Lemieux, Keven Hebert and Mike Blackstock were just a few of the heavy hitters that wanted to claim the title on the rug. After some serious racing action, the winners were crowned and the trophies were presented (and some pretty cool trophies they were). Let’s get to the details.

THE PLACE
Mike’s is a beautiful facility that houses a huge onroad carpet track as well as an equally impressive offroad track. Amenities included a monster hobby shop, yummy little diner (Pickles and Peppers, thanks Mr. Dumas!) and a few super-cool, secluded personal pit rooms that are located within the confines of Mike’s building. If that isn’t enough, a massive 1/8-scale track (large enough for 1/5-scale vehicles, too) and a flight area are just outside the back door. If you have it, you can probably run it at Mike’s. He even allows smaller, indoor heli’s and planes to putt around the inside of his building. It was a nice change of pace to see some cool in-air aerobatics between practice rounds.

THE ENTRIES
Over 230 entries were recorded at this year’s event. That’s pretty great with the economy being so bad and the amount of driver’s that had to travel. Classes that were offered at the Nats included World GT 13.5 NB (No Boost), 17.5 1/12 NB, 1/12 Modified, 17.5 Touring NB and Modified Touring. In addition, two other up-and-coming classes were offered; Vintage Trans Am (VTA) and 21.5 F1 NB. These additional classes were more of exhibition classes than anything else, but you wouldn’t have thought so from the intense racing action that went on.

THE RACE
Friday was the first day on the track, and it started off with everyone getting multiple two-minute practice rounds before the first qualifier later that day. These short practice rounds were an interesting change because you only had, well, two minutes, to see if your changes were getting your car in the right direction. Heck, it takes almost two minutes just to warm your tires up! This seemed to be quite a challenge for some, especially with the track conditions changing as more and more traction started building on the track.

Saturday saw the second qualifier start off at 8am. 23 heats of drivers funneled up and down the driver’s stand to complete the day’s events. After the final race of the day, Mike made an announcement that the track would stay open until midnight for those that wanted to get some open practice time. Pretty amazing since the man had been running around from dusk till dawn making sure this race went off without a hitch! He even had time to run a Concourse event!

On Sunday, the first of the triple A-mains got underway. Due to time constraints, only the core classes were loaded with the triple A-main format, while the VTA and F1 classes had to settle with a single A-main. Every race was amazing to watch, and the hero drivers put on a great show. It really amazes me the control these guys have at the stellar speeds those little toy cars travel. If you’ve never attended a National-level event, it is certainly something you need to put on your Bucket List.