“We travelled back to Kalgoorlie Western Australia (a 6 hour drive) to contest round 1 of the Western Australian Challenge Cup. This 4 round series at 4 different tracks around the state is a test of vehicle reliability, all laps of qualifying and all laps in your final add up to crown the series champion. This year E-Buggy has been included as an official class therefore just for something different we thought we would create some work for ourselves and enter all 3 classes! There is 5, 7 minute rounds of Qualifying on the Saturday with the finals played out on the Sunday.There were 76 entries across the 3 classes. Around 25 drivers turned up Friday night for a practice session with the remainder travelling up early Saturday to have a 1 hour practice before racing commenced at 12.30pm. We ran all 3 cars during practice, some holes forming early as we made some small changes. Happy with the car’s performance we headed to our motel for the night.
Saturday’s Qualifying went very well. By the 4th round we were changing car setup and tires, testing for Sundays finals. After 15 rounds of qualifying for the 3 classes we had 5/5 wins to give us TQ in E-Buggy, 4/5 wins and a 2nd in Nitro Buggy to also TQ and 3/5 wins and 2 seconds in Truggy to give us the TQ as well. A great start to the race weekend.
Sunday commenced with the first of 3 legs in E-Buggy, within 5 minutes we had a solid lead only to see it evaporate with a driveline issue. Such was the lead that we limped home 2nd. Some lower buggy finals were then run until leg 2 of the E-Buggy. An average start and a tangle with the 2nd placed car saw us drop down the 12 car field, the fightback began, nearly making it we finished 2nd.
Next up was the Nitro Buggy semi final where we started first and finished first. Unfortunately a tangle with a lapped car as the buzzer sounded at the end meant we didn’t get the extra lap in which meant we would start the main out of 2nd.
Following this we prepped for the 40 minute Truggy main, the race started and Kyle pushed hard trying to establish a quick lead, the ploy worked as at the end he had won by 3 laps! Next up the 3rd leg of the EP8 we needed the win to get the overall, with this on the line Kyle drove superbly getting an extra lap in at the buzzer to take the win and overall combined win.
Finally with 2 main wins under his belt could he make a clean sweep in the Nitro buggy main. The 40 minute main started and the first 3 positions were swapped continually for the first 10 minutes until one driver flamed out. Steve Smith and Kyle battled for the lead until the second round of fuel stops at which point Kyle got the ascendency and held on to win by 4 seconds! The weekend by the numbers;
Nitro Buggy: TQ, Amain 1st
Nitro Truggy: TQ, Amain 1st
E-Buggy: TQ, Amain 1st
Kyle would like to thank Tekno for making such reliable, well engineered race cars, with a lot of people commenting on how stable the cars were compared to other brands!”
Final Results: