This past weekend I headed down to Blue Springs, MO to attend this year’s Off-Road JAM! at Fastlane Raceway. This annual event usually runs around the last weekend of January and over the years it has featured different title sponsors. But one thing this race has always had was a fun atmosphere, great prizes, and great competition out on the track and this year was no exception.
I arrived on Friday to beautiful January weather in the upper 40s (we call that shorts weather around these parts). The doors to the track opened at 10am with practice revving up at 11am. That allowed for out of town guests like myself to arrive at the track, get setup, and then prep your rigs for semi-controlled practice.
In order to practice drivers had to check in & wear one of these wrist bands on the driver’s stand.
Practice would run until 9pm that night which gave drivers plenty of time to work on their setups and make sure they were entered into the computer.
This year’s layout was very technical and used every square inch of dirt for the design.
The hardest section of the track was a small jump onto to a small table top in front of the driver’s stand. Then that dropped down to a “pit of doom” and then coming out of that was a triple section. So drivers had to decide if they wanted to go wide and try to triple it, or possibly take a tighter line and make either a double-single or single-double jump of out of it. Needless to say this was the busiest section of the track that weekend for marshals!
On Saturday the doors opened again at 7:30am and a last chance practice ran from 8-9am. Only drivers who were just arriving to the track that morning were allowed to practice. There was a good handful that did just arrive on Saturday so it was a great option for them.
Once practice was complete the track crew did some quick maintenance and then we held a brief driver’s meeting at 9:30am with race director Mike Garrison.
He and the entire Fastlane team did a great job keeping the race program moving along quickly and smoothly.
If any drivers yelled at a marshal their reward was to wear these bunny ears while marshaling plus the next time they had to race.
The event offered 10 different classes to compete in, and the most popular class was stock (17.5) 2wd buggy with nearly 50 entries!
Overall we had 230 entries and they were spread out over 28 heats. For qualifying each class would compete in three IFMAR style five minute qualifiers. To determine the top qualifier qual points were used. So if you TQed a round you got a 0 points for that round.
So it is kind of like golf where the lowest score wins after all three qualifiers are ran, but only your best two rounds are counted so drivers did have one throw out.
Before any car hit the track they had to pass through tech.
During qualifying when the racers had some down time they could get registered for some awesome giveaways. Each racer was automatically entered into the prize raffle courtesy of the event sponsors. But if they wanted to increase their chances of winning they could purchase additional raffle tickets at the counter.
Each racer received a FREE event t-shirt courtesy of JConcepts.
Racers could also participate in a special B6D raffle too. This newly built buggy included a laydown transmission and custom painted JConcepts body by AJRC Designs.
And Castle Creations also provided a new Mamba X Sensored ESC/Motor Combo to power this new whip. Each raffle ticket cost only $10 or you could purchase 6 tickets for $50.
As qualifying continued throughout the day some local racers took advantage of the great Spring like weather to get some track time on Fastlane’s large outdoor nitro track.
And on the North side of the parking lot there was plenty of food available at the Pit Stop Concession stand.
But if a driver wanted to order in food there was plenty of local eateries too that delivered.
The last qualifier of the night wrapped up around 8:30pm so drivers still had time to grab a late dinner and catch the Supercoss 450 Main Event.
Sunday morning the doors opened again at 8am with the lower mains starting at 9am.
Sponsor sheets were available to all drivers who made the A Mains.
Each main ran for 6 minutes each, and the top two finishers bumped up into the next highest main. But the top 8 qualifiers were already locked into the A Mains.
The TQ and top 5 in each class would receive hardware that weekend, so when the tone sounded a total of 10 cars would fight over the top five spots.
About halfway through the mains we stopped down the race program to raffle out the numerous door prizes.
Drivers were treated to some great gear courtesy of the race sponsors!
Then the name was drawn for the B6D combo and local racer Steve Spears was the lucky winner! Not bad for a $50 investment!! 
Once this was complete we went right back to racing, and with the single A Mains this meant plenty of action out on the track! The final results are towards the end of this story.
So that wraps up this year’s Off-Road JAM! Thanks to the racers that made it out to the race, all of Mike and Britani Garrison’s hard work, and to the entire Fastlane team for making this event happen!! Till next time!!!
Novice
1. Ryker Brown
2. Shane Alberico (TQ)
3. Gage Hettich
4. Evan Stansbury
5. Shawn Ross
17.5 2wd Buggy
In 17.5 2wd buggy the highest finishing driver without any sponsorships won a FREE motor courtesy of Schuur Speed. Riley Filbert finished 2nd & picked himself up a new motor in the process!
1. Chris Baumgartner (TQ)
2. Riley Filbert
3. Connor Light
4. Jamie Barker
5. Wesley Gifford
Mod Stadium Truck
1. Brad Dean (TQ)
2. David Alberico
3. David Burlingame
4. Alex Richards
5. Shelby Parker
17.5 Stadium Truck
1. Damon Teel
2. Wes Hicks
3. Richard Witkowski
4. Joe Schnoes
5. Keith Workman
TQ was Cesar Keller
13.5 2wd Buggy
1. Jaylen Wettengel
2. Jared Nidiffer
3. Chris Puller
4. Jamie Barker
5. Michael Keinz
TQ was Riley Filbert
Mod 2wd Buggy
1. Brad Dean
2. Trevor Nault
3. David Alberico
4. Chad Parks
5. Rico Karstens
TQ was Jonathan Burkhalter
Mod 2wd Short Course Truck
1. Josh Wiechens (TQ)
2. Tim Davis
3. Jason Hertel
4. Andy Lachance
5. Nathan Brown
13.5 4wd Buggy
1. Matthew Pyle
2. Eric Fletcher (TQ)
3. Jimmy Mason
4. Bradley Peterson
5. Chris Puller
Mod 4wd Buggy
1. Brad Dean (TQ)
2. Jonathan Burkhalter
3. Chad Parks
4. Rico Karstens
5. Jeremy Cathlina
Mod 4wd Short Course Truck
1. Eric Fletcher (TQ)
2. Tim Wiechens
3. Adam Wietrick
4. Jamie Barker
5. Jared Nidiffer
The post Online Coverage Of The 2018 Off-Road JAM! [VIDEO] appeared first on RC Car Action.
