Life is fragile. Mostly we feel invincible, and put a lot of trust in our future. One day I will do this, one day I will do that, one day my life will be enjoyable, and just how I want it to be.
It’s important to realise that we live life every day, and that we should enjoy the journey, not begin enjoying ourselves once we reach our self determined destination. Live life right now, and figure out how to make it enjoyable.
We often think that we can’t afford to do something. However, the more important question should be, can we afford not to do it?
We all get reminded of this time to time, and it is with sadness that I report of two deaths within the last days, close to home.
Mikael Yrjänäinen started running the JQ car last year, and just got a new BLACK Edition, and was looking forward to the season. He passed away at home at 23 years old from a sudden medical emergency.
Jaisaac Sloan is the 21 year old son of Jimmy Sloan who was the man behind our ARMA Energy deal. Jaisaac died as a victim of an armed robbery in Arizona a few days ago.
My condolences goes out to both families and everyone affected by these tragedies. I can’t even imagine what they must be going through. Stay strong…
Spy photo of the new Pro-Concept Diamond Suburb, Hole Bars, Diamond Fighter, Crime Bars.
Just in case no one reads the whole thing, let’s just put this out there:
Ty Tessmann is ProLine’s poster child, and he ran JConcepts Diamond Bars in the NeoBuggy nitro main. Why is this big news? For a few reasons, but if you want to know them, you have to read on.
After transitioning from racer to designer and owner, well sort of, I do all those things at the same time, I have had the opportunity to look at things wearing all those hats. At the end of the day, we go racing to win. I have written a lot about the mental approach to racing, how to practice, and test, and just about racing in general. I realise that all the drivers at the top, go to the race looking to win, and anything else is a failure. The question everyone has to answer for themselves, is where to draw the line, do you cheat, or do you put personal relationships, and your integrity on the line in order to do so, or do you play by the book, and simply do your best with what you have?
This post isn’t really about cheating, but rather about this mentality that drivers have:
I am getting beat, my equipment is holding me back, I need to have different car/tyres/engine/other, or else I can’t win.
I am getting beat, obviously these other guys beating me are cheating.
The number one reason for team drivers to leave JQRacing has been, “It doesn’t suit my style”, which is code speak for, “I think your car isn’t very good, it’s holding me back, I will do much better with another car”. Without exception, these situations have resulted in no noticeable improvement in results, and in the best cases, worse results. The reason for this is, that after a certain level of product quality, the difference isn’t the product, it’s what you do with it. Let me make this absolutely clear:
Almost without exception, the difference between winning and not winning is how well you can maximise the performance of the products you have. Everything works together, and changing one thing throws off the balance. Looking for shortcuts is not the way to move forward.
So now we have a high profile case of mental meltdown, in the form of Ty Tessmann resorting to running a different brand tyre, because he was convinced that ProLine tyres were holding him back. This is an understandable reaction, but one that should be thwarted by the surrounding team, not encouraged. Let’s look at some facts:
It didn’t help that he ran JC. 20-20 vision I know, but these things don’t work out. Really.
On the other hand, what if he won? How do you hide that?
Boots finished 2nd with ProLine tyres.
If you are going to run something else, why would you not run AKA’s that were arguably the best tyres at the event?
If you are going to run something different, why on earth would you sneak new tyres on after the race, at least go all the way and have a set of used PLs ready.
I had no idea of this until I went to check the tyre wear after the main, and Ty’s tyres looked brand new. I know Ty is a smooth driver, but this was ridiculous. I immediately put my CSI hat on, and began investigating. I found out that Maifield handed Gord the JC tyres in the pits. They were glued up in the DXR tent, before the main. Photos were avoided before the main, and they were immediately switched out after the main. This is obviously not an awesome look for the righteous Tessmann family. However, the pressure to win can corrupt the best of us, specially if the pressure is coming from you chassis manufacturer (pure speculation, based on past events). My point is, the Tessmann family are good people, this isn’t a personal attack on them, rather a highlighting of a way of thinking that racers employ, regardless of level, that is in my opinion flawed.
What makes it worse is the fact that ProLine has cracked down on team drivers using other brand tyres at other than control tyre events, actually going as far as posting about this on their Facebook group, and cutting a driver(s) off the team that have been caught doing so.
Will Tessmann be cut? I highly doubt it.
Will he ever do this again? I highly doubt it.
Not with this blog around.
Leaked footage of Gord at ProLine post NEO de-brief.
Our team of investigators uncovered this final piece of ‘telling’ evidence in the Try Traction Scandal.
On this day of celebration, I have outsourced my blog to Fat Jesus, as I have to focus for tomorrows mains. There will surely be more juicy blogs next week. For now, enjoy being told what to do.
Fat Jesus’ 10 Commandments:
1. Thou shalt all go BLACK Edition.
2. Thou shalt not covet your neighbours car.
3. Thou shalt not marshal like Spaniards or Italians.
4. Thou shalt run eTruggy. Tis brilliant.
5. Thou shalt only drink hot chocolate with coffee.
Today I raced at Thunder Alley. Last race for me in America. I finished 2nd behind Cody King.
I also built a brand new BLACK Edition! This car is staying here in SoCal and will be available for people to try. April is already fully booked, but if anyone is interested, please let me know!
JQRacing is offering ONE driver who does not already drive a JQ chassis the chance to drive a Black Edition for the whole event.
ITS THAT SIMPLE.
Please contact JQ Racing Team manager Liam Galvin justliam@jq-products.com to register your interest.
PLEASE NOTE :
– Driver applicants must already have a confirmed and paid entry to The Neo Race 2017.
– The successful driver applicant will be informed no later than evening Tuesday 11th April.
– A race ready chassis will be provided as well as any spare parts required.
– The driver will have to put up with JQ’s verbal abuse throughout the event.
– ONLY the chassis (+body shell and wing) are provided NOT the engine, tyres, wheels, servos, Tx, Rx, Rx battery or fuel or any other items necessary to race the vehicle.
– If a NON JQR driver does not enter or accept this offer, then a current JQ drivers who does not yet own a BLACK Edition will be eligible to use the chassis at the event.
Today I did something a little different. I headed to Perris MX track and we shot a video with me racing my car against dirt bikes on the motocross track. We had Renaud Margry originally from France, riding over here now, and THE Mike Craig, Supercross race winner back in the 90s I believe, and father of Christian Craig. They thought they got my silly RC Car covered but they were ready to do battle regardless.
Well, to be honest, they did have me covered, but I still think I got more corner speed! I hope we got some good shots, and it will be a fun edit. We were almost done, and were filming a nice berm section on the track, and the roost of the bike kept flipping my car over, so I went first into the corner. It worked great the first time. 2nd time I hit a soft spot, lost speed, and got steamrolled by a 450 dirtbike. It blew the body off and tore it up, smashed my pipe, and bent my chassis and front shock! Damn it! But we still filmed another section after that too. JQRacing – Built to survive being run over.
Thanks to Jimmy from Freethepeeps for setting it all up, it was a lot of fun! Below you can watch Craig Jr battle Webb, in one of the best races I have seen. And that move at 3:25…..If I’m having a bad day, I can just watch those 3 seconds, and I’ll be all ok again. And below that, you can see that it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for him. MX is a tough sport.
How sad does your life have to be, in order for you to truly be happy at someone else’s misfortune? There are people I don’t like, and sure, I’ll snicker at their failures, and I’ll secretly hope they aren’t successful, but do I really care? No I don’t. It doesn’t make me happy to see someone struggle, or fail, I won’t post about it or write something shitty to them. You know what I do to people I don’t like? I ignore them, because I don’t want to waste my time.
I honestly don’t get it. Look at the comments section on youtube, look at comments on fb, what is wrong with people? I really don’t understand where all this energy and motivation to actually post hate comes from. Some of you may think, but JQ, you hate on your blog all the time. No I don’t, I write humorous blog posts about all kinds of stuff, and a lot of different people, but I don’t celebrate people’s short comings or failures to put them down, because that isn’t funny. I take a grain of truth, and make it funny by blowing it up, I write about a real issue, I take a person or situation and attempt to reel them back to reality. I have never written something to the effect of: “It was awesome to see this person fail because he is a fucking idiot. It made my day. I hope his mum gets cancer too.”. That’s not funny.
My point is:
If your happiness is dependent on others, or dependent on other people’s misfortune, then you my friend have a problem!
In the BLACK Edition release information I wrote about “Invisible Speed”. I call faster acceleration, and corner speed invisible speed because as a driver you are doing the same thing, and the car may actually feel the same, or very close to the same, yet it is faster. It’s faster because the car and the tyres are working better, and producing faster lap times with the same input. I haven’t been too concerned with “invisible speed” until this year, because of the obvious and evident issues needing to be solved with THECar.
Up to a year or so ago, the objective was to solve issues, unbalanced handling, aggressive initial steering, not enough after that, landing, on power handling, response and how forgiving the car was, etc. Then I felt like we reached a point where THECar was bloody good! It was not a question of geometry anymore, it was other stuff.
One was the order of priority of setup options, what is more important to have a lot of caster, and work around that, to have a short rear arm for speed, and work around that, or make the car turn with a long rear arm, etc. I needed to figure out the right order to prioritise my setup.
The second thing is all the small stuff. Sway bar location, diff height and driveshaft angles, the small things, which are hard to quantify in actual effect and to understand. Those are the things I have been focusing on, and putting all that together makes a big difference. This is the reason the BLACK Edition doesn’t look very different, from it’s predecessor. It’s many of the right small changes that add up, and make a huge improvement in handling.
I will start off with a quote from Jeff Bowland, whom I do not know. Basically he wrote everything you really need to know, but I will give you my version too:
“JQ didn’t do anything intentional, it was a borrowed truck and the tank swelled. Degani used ice water to shrink the tank back down….. Go look in half of the coolers in the pits, Drakes included (who got the bump because of the DQ) and you are sure to find a a bottle of fuel in more than one. JQ has a target on his back because he goes against the grain and does/says things his way. We should encourage that, not target it.”
-Jeff Bowland
After rather amazingly making the main in Truck, beating many established truck racers, my tank was then found to be 1cc too big. Eventually I was DQ:ed. Let’s begin by establishing a few facts:
There was no intentional cheating regarding tank size, I borrowed a truck, raced it at DNC, returned it, borrowed it again, and raced it at SS. I took the body off once at SS, to change my clutch before the main, I never checked the tank.
There was ”no advantage”, 1cc is about 3-4 seconds of runtime. Oh huge, specially since I stopped at 7:30 and my runtime was more than enough. It’s not like I cared enough to ever check it.
I really didn’t care, I enjoyed the B main, because I was actually competitive, and because I beat good drivers that actually care about truck. I didn’t even want to do the truck main after I made the main in Buggy, I just wanted to prepare and focus on that. So if you are one of those people that are so happy because I got screwed, this is not a great opportunity to do that.
For the entire debacle of #tankgate, I was actually sitting in the pits, gluing tyres, and preparing my buggy for my B main, as it was coming up. Degani went to tech to see what was going on. 1st attempt, failed 1cc over, 2nd attempt after a cool down period, failed. Then, for whatever reason a 3rd attempt was offered. Before the 3rd attempt Degani got the fuel bottle to the pits and filled it with ice cold water from the cooler. The cold water would cool down the hot tank making it smaller. Now thinking back, had he in his rush realised to mix in 10% blue sidewinder, no one would have been the wiser, but he didn’t, it was probably 98% water. 2% fuel. The tank is checked for a 3rd time, and low and behold, it passes! Terminator Tech guy called it, it’s a pass. Degani picks up the truck and walks back to the pits, it’s all good. The beaker is still on the table, and Maifield and Tim Long are feeling it, looking at it, tasting it, and figure out its ice water, and they say it’s not legal. So I get called back to tech. The tech guy picks up the truck again to be tested. It never get’s tested and I get DQ:ed. Had Degani emptied the beaker, again I would have been fine.
So what’s wrong with this situation? Everything.
In America there are ”no rules”. Where is the rule book for Silver State again? What Roar rules are enforced, what rules aren’t? No one knows, it’s just do whatever, and you may or may not be illegal or legal, jump the start, cut the track, run a different car, take someone out, get extra practice tickets, whatever you want. Rules, procedures and penalties are all made up as they occur.
At least there is this rule, 150cc for a truck tank, that’s simple, but then you have to have a procedure you follow to then determine that a tank is definitely legal or illegal.
Have the right beaker, so you can tell a 0.5cc difference easily, it needs to have a thin spout.
Have a horisontal surface.
Actually follow a procedure, how many times to try it, how long and how to let the tank cool down, and don’t let people interfere. Don’t let Degani put ice water in the fuel bottle, don’t let someone drop something in the tank, and don’t let the people who would benefit from a disqualification mess with the results either.
If you did that you wouldn’t pass a car, and then 5 minutes later DQ it anyway because someone complained.
Why was I OK with Degani doing what he did, if I’m so honest and I don’t cheat? Because tech in America is a complete joke. Jason Ashton won the ROAR Nationals, the biggest race in America with a fueltank that was 3-5cc’s over the limit. Why wasn’t he disqualified? Because he was fast and deserved the win, he was a nice guy, he was a local guy, I don’t know, because it was a cool story or because he pitted at 5 minutes? I was OK with what Degani did because there are no written rules at these races and the rules they make up as they go along aren’t enforced fairly or equally. Show me the Silver State rule that states that you have to tech fuel, we are checking for capacity, the liquid doesn’t matter. I have seen 2 minute calls be ignored, and I have seen 2 minute calls turn into, let me change this servo. After you tech your car before a race, not that there is a reason to, but you could actually switch to a completely different car. Same after a race, you could hand tech a different car. No one would know, there is no system. I don’t even know why they bother with tech.
Do you think the ice water idea was just invented? Even your hero Adam Drake mentioned that he had employed the ice fuel trick before. When in Rome, do as the Romans.
THEQuagraine 