Online Coverage Of The 1st Off-Road Carpet Classic [VIDEO]

12 April, 2018

Last weekend I headed down to Island Speedway to attend their 1st Annual Off-Road Carpet Classic. This indoor track is located in Muscatine, IA and has been running for about two years now.

This special two day event started on Friday with practice from 8am to 10pm. I arrived around 10:30am and looked to secure my spit space before I scoped things out.

There are pit spaces located next to and above the track so I setup shop in the “Des Moines” room and then went down to look at the track.

The track surface is blanketed with black CRC carpet and is a maximum size of 45’x70’.

Due to the special carpet the hot ticket for tires are foam, and many, if not all of the drivers were running custom made foam tires from Gone Bananas Racing Skin’z that weekend. This meant that cars were extremely hooked and fast the entire event.

And along the back side of the track was a special wall filled with signatures. If it was your first time at the track it was strongly encouraged to leave your signature here.

Island Speedway is connected to Star Collectibles Hobby Center which sits right next to the track.

Online Coverage Of The 1st Off-Road Carpet Classic

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This family ran hobby shop not only caters to the RC crowd, but also comic book collectors, modelers, train enthusiasts, toy collectors, and more.

They are even preparing to add a rock crawler area upstairs for 1/10 and micro crawlers too.

On Saturday the doors opened up again and practice ran from 7-9:30am. Then we held a brief driver’s meeting followed by the playing of the national anthem.

During the anthem we were even treated a flag ceremony courtesy of a flag bearing monster truck which was a nice touch.

At around 10am the first of three rounds of qualifying began. The race program called for rocket round scoring so the fastest TQ run of the weekend in any round for each class would lock up the overall TQ. There were 9 classes to compete in with nearly 100 entries for this 1st year event. The top five qualifiers in each class were locked into the single A Mains, and in the lower mains the top two finishers bumped up into the next higher main. So when the tone sounded for the A Mains a total of seven drivers would compete for the awards.

Around 11am the track made walking tacos available for purchase so that the racers didn’t have to leave for lunch during qualifying.

And that night the hobby shop again helped out the competitors by taking everyone’s orders for dinner from the local Pizza Ranch and then phoned it in so it was at the track just in time for supper which was very cool of them!

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Also around lunch time we raffled off the door prizes that were generously donated by the race sponsors!

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There was also a 50-50 raffle plus a special drawing for a Team Associated B6.1 kit too. Those were held after qualifying had completed and then it was onto the mains.

The lower mains ran for six minutes, while the single A Mains ran for seven minutes each. The racing was intense but by the time the carpet fuzz had settled all the top qualifiers in each class would end up with the win.

After the mains were complete all the awards were handed out. This special race was also the last series date for their winter points series too so the series awards were also presented as well.

So that wraps up the first ever Off-Road Carpet Classic at Island Speedway. I had a great time and hope to visit this track and race for many years to come! Below you can view the podium pictures and videos I shot for this event too. Till next time!