Tyler Hooks Wins 13.5 4wd ROAR Nationals!

“Alright, I guess it is time to recap this amazing adventure that was the ROAR nationals. Big thanks to everyone at Tekno RC for all the support and help throughout the past year as we just passed my 1 year anniversary with the team.

In this I have included my starting and finishing setup so you guys can kind of see what the thought process was throughout the weekend. We showed up Wednesday with no chance of getting the control tire until over half way through open practice so Mason Eppley took the time to drill me some 8×1.1 pistons as he swore they were better than the two hole setup I was running. Have to say he was right, my car was solid from the first pack late on Wednesday all the way through the mains. I was using the new Tekno shock guides so shock rebuilds were few and far between when compared to the original stuff

Thursday was seeding and let me preface by saying that I am horrid at seeding. I’m normally pretty consistent with subpar speed so all seeding does for me is add anxiety and make me feel off pace. To my surprise I top seeded the 1st round and ended up 2nd going into qualifying. Tater was top seed but his car looked hard to drive when watching so I felt pretty confident. Though I knew Pannone, Marasco, and Council specifically looked really solid.

Friday and Saturday were qualifying, personally I get really nervous, events like this are kind of impossible for me if I’m not having a good time so if I look like I’m cracking jokes or not taking it seriously it’s because I’m trying not to lose my mind. I had a solid chance at TQing every round but decided in Q1 and Q3 to fly off the track at least twice in the last two minutes, and decided to change it up in Q4 and fly off the track in the first two minutes. In Q3 I was able to only fly off the track once and that was enough to take TQ. Through the 4 rounds my best finishes were a TQ and a 2 with the worst being a 4 so we were pretty consistent taking the second place starting spot. The only change made during qualifying was to go from 50k to 30k in the center diff to try to get a little bit more diff action under acceleration to give me more comfort as well as lowering my rear pills for grip. It helped but Joe noticed that I was still missing something

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Before the mains we thew a last minute hail mary trying sweep which I have never tried before. Joe also swore it would work so it was going to be all his fault if I lost. We tried half degree out half degree in and the car was much easier to drive in A1 allowing me to be patient to get around Tater and take the win. Joe thought I still needed more so I guess with sweep if a little works, a lot works better. We went full dot out dot in for A2 and I was able to again take the win to take the overall in two mains.