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11-20-2011, 09:46 AM
| #1 |
| Basher Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 56
|  The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report! (Part 1/2) * Team Holland goes USA * The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report In the spring of 2011, 5 of us Dutch racers came up with the plan to race at the Nationals in November 2011. A couple of months later and we're already back home – but boy it was GREAT! From left to right: Jeff – Egbert – Ruud – Dick – Nick  My journey started on November 7th, in the train to sleep over at Dick's house since that was a lot closer to Amsterdam Airport. It turned out to be a long trip; 3,5 hours since -according to the train machinist- the train conductor was late for work so the train had to wait for him to arrive.... go figure... Tuesday November 8th I thought my train travel was long... boy was I wrong! From the moment we woke up in The Netherlands, untill finally arriving at our hotel in Riverside, CA we were up for more then 26 hours without any sleep. The flight took us 15 hours, excl. a 1.5 hour transit in Houston. A lot of the preparation for this trip had to do with the matter of transporting our Baja's over there. Eventually we ended up buying/loaning engines, exhausts, carbs and gastanks in the USA and taking the rest of our Baja's, tools and parts in our luggage. No hassle at all with customs and airport security (except for Egbert who tried to sneak in a homemade Dutch sandwich LOL). At LAX we quickly picked up our rental car  Nope unfortunately that wasn't it ;-) We then headed out to my cousin who lives in LA to pick up some packages that we had delivered to her.... a couple more then we realized:  Ate some good pizza and drove off to Riverside:  So when we arrived at the hotel in Riverside we had some trouble getting it all in the elevator:  Wednesday November 9th Today it was wrenching time:  After putting together the Baja's we headed out to the track to check it out:    Some breakin in and tuning at Challen Park, a trip to Walmart and the day was almost over ;-) We decided to have dinner in Hollywood and do some sightseeing. However traffic was terrible and it took us 2,5 hours to get there. After dinner and some small Margherita's we called it a night and went back to the hotel.  Thursday November 10th Practice day! John Schulz got us a pit area. Offcourse, Ruud and Nick first need a smoke ;-)  Prepped and ready... Jeff's car:  Ruud's car:  Nick's car:  Egbert's car:  Dick's car:  Practice went well and we all got our car's dialed in the way we liked. Dang I wish we had more tracks like this over in The Netherlands! Big, wide and sand/dirt! One of the cool thing about our trip was meeting everybody out there and finally putting faces to names:  Team Holland ready for the Q's!  Thanks to Jim we got some addresses to cool places to hang out/have dinner and Lake Alice in downtown Riverside turned out to be one of our favourite spots:  We also went clubbin in some local clubs – it really amazed us that people (especially women) get drunk so early. And it sucks that all clubs and bars close at 2. Back home we party all night long! |
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11-20-2011, 09:47 AM
| #2 |
| Basher Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 56
|  The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report (Part 2/2) Friday November 11th Round 1 and 2 of the qualifiers! Since we all race from time to time over here, we decided it would only be fair to all register for Expert Buggy. Everybody's getting ready:    Nick and Larry acting cool ;-):  Interesting sneak shot:  Duffy finally arrived after a 40 hour drive and his truck breaking down:   Everybody's checking out Ted's ass:  One of the Q's:  A couple of addicts:  John Tripp from RCP is really talented:  The first Q I finished 3rd, the second Q I finished 2nd. After all that hard work our Baja's deserved some good rest:  Saturday November 12th Overnight I changed my air filter and messed with the needle settings.... should've done some re-tuning cause the 4th Q my car was running slow. Still, I finished 3rd. Luckily the oval track was open so that gave me plenty of room to retune the engine: The 4th Q the car was flying on the track again but unfortunately I stripped my spur gear in the last 2 minutes of the heat. Not completely sure, but I finished either 3rd or 5th in that Q. After some dinner I went to Lake Alice again to meet up with my cousin to catch up, we hadn't seen eachother for a couple of year. Luv ya cuzn! Sunday November 13th Race day! It turned out that unfortunately only 1 Q would count for the overall Q-standings. In the overall standings Dick placed 8th and I placed 10th. Only the top 8 instantly went through to the A-main, so I started on #2 in the B-main with the possibility to bump up to the A-main if I would finish either1st or 2nd in the B-main. Egbert and Nick placed somewhere in the B-main (the printouts weren't complete) and Ruud placed in the C-main. C-main: Ruud was doing great until he had some crashes and got out of his zone :-( B-main: I had a really good start (first car on the left) but while trying to steer around a collision my car got caught up on the track boarding which took just enough time to fall back to the back of the grid. I fought my way back to the front and from what I've been told by my crew I got back in 2nd position again.... but then I flipped my car in a corner and I lost a couple of positions again.... Again I fought my way back to the front but a 10 minute B-main is just too short for making up for my mistakes... So by now only Dick could defend the Dutch honour in the A-main. Short slowmo clip of the start of the A-main: The 30 minute vid of the A-main was taped on a Hi8 camera and we haven't digitized it yet, so sorry – no vid yet for you guys to show. It was a very exciting A-main... It took some time for Dick to get into his groove, but once he got there, he was flying! Unfortunately he also made some mistakes and by the end of the race it turned out he JUST missed the podium by 2.8 seconds on #3!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some action shots of Dick's car:    After the mains it was time to say goodbye to everybody: Team Holland and Italy representing Europe!  Saying goodbye to Nick and Larry in the Milestone RC track store:    Christian aka Duffy from Baja Modifiers:  Rodney aka Shreadhead:  John from RCP:  Ed from TeamFastEddy:  Mark from tgn:  Jim aka Animal:  Ted from darksoul Racing:  John Schultz from HPI:  And having dinner at Farmer Boys:  We found out all of us ran more the 2 gallons of fuel each through our new engines! That evening we spent most of our time disassembling our Baja's, putting together the packages to ship them back and putting everything back in our suitcases. Offcourse we ended the night in downtown Riverside ;-) Monday November 14th Early next morning we dropped off the packages at USPS and drove to Las Vegas. Ruud is a master-belcher:  Mark Hull insisted we'd stop in Baker at the Mad Greek to see all the cute girls in skimpy dresses so we did......   Dude - Mark, it was like walking into a senior citizen's home!!!!! LOL Guess we should've gone there on a Friday night ;-) Onto Vegas!   Las Vegas sure changed since the last time I visited a couple of years back. Luckily some good things stayed the same.    What's the matter Nick, you don't like Holly?!         We drove back to Riverside at night and almost got carjacked coming into LA/Riverside – luckily we were sharp enough to get out of that situation safely.....phew.... Tuesday November 15th Dropped off the rental car at LAX and found out we drove 1400 miles (2200 km) in 7 days LOL. And got on our flight back to Amsterdam.... Luckily we were all so tired we slept most of our flights back home ;-) Last words We've met some really great people (unfortunately we don't have pics of all of them, nor do we remember all your names – sorry about that) and can't thank you all enough for your warm welcome and generousity! It was fantastic meeting you all, getting to hang out with you and race with you on the track! Compliments to John Schultz and HPI-USA for designing this track and having this event! Mad props to Ted and John aka Badger from RCLargeScale.com for covering this event LIVE on the web!!!! Our friends and family back home followed us all the way! Thanks cuzn for letting us ship our parts to you in LA! BIG THANKS to Doug from ESP for loaning me his ESP TS reed engine and Dominator pipes!!!! I could've leaned out his engine a lot more (plug was still dark) and he encouraged me to do that over the phone, but I chickened out and stopped leaning her out at +18000rpm (got a Tinytach on there) cause the pitch on the exhaust note was already so high that I feared lean-seizing it and I didn't wanna do that to Doug ;-) Thanks again Doug for your support in the last few years and also for this event!!! Still not done..... Special thanks to Ted from darksoul Racing, Gabe from GBE, Ed from TeamFastEddy, Jim from Baja Addicts, Chris from hemistorm, John from RCP – you all know what you've done for me/us and I'm/we're very thankfull for that!!! THANKS AGAIN EVERYBODY – Team Holland OUT! |
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11-20-2011, 10:44 AM
| #3 |
| Addict  Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Norway
Posts: 454
|  Excellent write up Jeff, seems like you guys had one hell of a good trip! |
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11-20-2011, 03:43 PM
| #4 |
| Basher Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 58
| I was great meeting you guys...glad the trip was successful. Thanks for the report. |
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11-20-2011, 10:27 PM
| #5 |
| Addict  Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Visalia
Posts: 1,027
| Great report Jeff, thanks for posting that all up. Glad to see you guys really enjoyed yourself and you ended up not getting car jacked (its pretty common in LA, haha) Sorry about Mad Greek, hope you enjoyed the food though? Did you hit up Alien Jerky? You guys are always welcome here in central california if you ever come back to the states again and want to check out tgn. Great post! Mark Hull |
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11-21-2011, 06:46 AM
| #6 |
| Addict Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Macon, GA
Posts: 229
| Great right up Jeff. I was really surprised the C and B mains where only 10 minutes. All the race I have been they where at least 15 C and 20 minutes B and A mains as much as 40 minutes. |
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11-24-2011, 02:08 PM
| #7 |
| Basher Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 56
| Thnx guys! Yeah we were surprised and a bit disappointed ourselves that the mains were as short as the q's. |
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12-01-2011, 07:06 PM
| #8 |
| I break shit   | Awesome trip report Jeff! Thanks for posting it here. |
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12-02-2011, 10:02 AM
| #9 |
| Addict Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Hagerstown MD
Posts: 772
| Looks like a great trip....thanks for sharing... |
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03-09-2012, 02:59 PM
| #10 |
| Basher Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 56
| Re: The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report! (Part 1/2) Thanks guys! Every time I read it I relive it, and it makes me wanna go back! |
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03-30-2012, 05:19 PM
| #11 |
| Basher Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: San bernardino
Posts: 61
| Re: The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report! (Part 1/2) This is my first opportunity to see this. Great report. Speaking for the Milestone RC park staff we really enjoyed your company. Jeff1974 likes this. |
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05-14-2012, 10:45 AM
| #12 |
| Newbie Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: England
Posts: 5
| Re: The HPI Baja West Coast Nationals 2011 Dutch Trip Report! (Part 1/2) No ENVY here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I'd love to race in the US but I don't have any way of getting my gear over there. |
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