Adam Drake - The Early Years

uh [Music] talk to us about what you were doing on the east coast and you're racing and then coming over here and uh being here full time yeah so i started racing in the early 90s primarily just electric uh just you know mainly doing just kind of regional national stuff that was close to home not really flying or traveling to a ton of stuff but i was really fortunate in savannah georgia there they were hosting able to host a few nationals and then i was able to attend some of the nationals in florida and then after i graduated high school i moved to michigan to go to college and to work full-time i was still kind of doing the same thing just racing because i loved it i was passionate about it and i was given the opportunity in towards the end of 99 early 2000 where i was given the opportunity to come move to california and like you said it's if you wanted to kind of take your racing to the next level or be serious that was kind of the thing everyone did was you had to be here on the west coast and yeah pretty much the rest is history coming here uh the difference was more tracks more opportunity and the ability to run multiple times per week so and talk to us about that a little bit and how you kind of picked a schedule and where you wanted to start uh racing at that could kind of improve your skills yeah it's totally true so on the east coast we were dealing with weather all the time so there would be local races scheduled every week but a lot of times it would rain or the tracks would get kind of hammered so you weren't always able to race every week where once i moved to california you were racing multiple times a week i mean we would be at socal on wednesdays fridays and then i don't remember which day but saturday or sunday so for the most part we were racing three times a week and there was also a lot more events to be able to attend so yeah you were able to pretty much progress your racing at a much faster pace living in california talk to us about the gas truck experience and everyone talks about gas trucks still like it's the greatest class ever maybe you know give us a little bit of your input on that class you know you've had trucks named after you and a lot of success so talk to us about gastro yeah so the gas truck it was kind of like i think the class that no one at least as far as the guys racing for low c and working there none of them wanted it to really be their project like everyone was in the 10th scale mainly 10 scale off-road also some electric touring car and i had a little bit of success with gastruk but i kind of fell into it and kind of i guess got lucky a little bit and it again it was a class other people didn't want to like work on or have to develop the class so for me i was young eager i was like i'll do whatever it takes yeah and it just so happened that gas truck ended up like booming it became very very popular for low c and then eventually you know the eight scale stuff started rolling and that's still going strong today yeah i mean you were really in a really kind of instrumental position at the time you were running gas truck you didn't you didn't run as much electric although you know you did run some um you know in the early 2000s still but you know you got into eighth scale uh low c didn't have an eighth scale you ran the jamming car you were a big part of that team a lot of success with that and then you're really involved in this big project getting uh the new low c8 scale the eight going and keeping that going for a while but what was it like uh kind of in that period of time kind of starting to run this this new car yeah for me it was just in super exciting learning curve because again it was i had a little bit of nitro experience but it was all still kind of new to me like learning all the engine tuning the clutch the geometry and setting up the vehicles that you know i was just like a kid in a candy store it was just wanting to go the track all the time run as much as possible learn as much as possible and it was again in a segment that was booming so it it made it that much more exciting because there was you know such a strong following for the eighth scale market and you guys got that you know that a skill rolling you know and then the gas truck thing started to um disappear a little bit it became more about eight scale and uh and then you know the really you're you kind of shifted towards being more of an eight scale racer so maybe talk about that transition from having to go from a little electric some gas truck to eight scale to kind of moving to more strictly eighth scale yeah so in the beginning i was trying to do a little bit of everything i was trying to still run 10 scale electric because that was like the popular class i was trying to take the reins with the gas truck program and and make that the best that it could be and then we're also then introduced to uh starting to dabble a little bit with eight scale like you said i was originally racing and working with jay halsey at jamming and then eventually that transitioned into the eight but yeah it was kind of like i got to a point where i was trying to jump between all the different classes which i think is like a racer only that would be okay but not when you're also trying to develop the platforms for all of those those different classes so i kind of fizzled out of the 10th scale and then just did gas truck and eighth scale and then as gastro kind of started to die and the tracks were changing and stuff like that it's pretty much just been you know full uh full eight scale for quite a number of years then you got into um you know really being known for being an engine guy you know you had many relationships with different types of engines and you would stay consistent with that engine program for quite a while people that come to the races they ask you to tune engines and how did you become known as the as the engine guy i guess i think a lot of that was mainly because trinity switched engines it seemed like every other year or so so i raced for trinity and i would run and promote whichever engine they were the distributor for at the time and it seemed like that was kind of always changing it was kiko or novorossi or top or all these different companies so i was constantly having to figure out and learn from my own race program what each of the engines needed to be able to be consistent and have good power and run time and things like that so it was it was pretty frustrating at the time because you wanted to just you would get something really good and you would want to stick with it and continue to run that and then ernie would let me know hey by the way you know we're we're no longer going to use pico now we're going to use something else so in hindsight it ended up teaching me a lot i was able to learn a lot about tuning and nitro engines and yeah i don't know it wasn't something that i was necessarily like working towards or wanting to be it just kind of worked out that way to where i got to where i had a pretty consistent engine program and my stuff was always super reliable and i think like especially in the early days with the low c8 like we had a vehicle that was quite a bit better than the other vehicles on the market and then i pretty much always had an opportunity to run an engine program that worked really good and that that helped a lot with my success is just running products that were good running products that i knew and i was able to kind of tune and tinker with to have consistent results you know we're still racing the same guys today cavalieri mayfield tebow all these guys but i felt like in my early days of nitro like i was running better products like so those guys you know today they're still the guys you're battling with trying to beat but now today everyone's running better products we're all running pretty much os based uh engines fuels are a little bit better and then the vehicles are pretty similar where in my early days you know i'm racing against rape mayfield with a reedy engine which it was capable of winning but three out of five times it was gonna overheat and flame out or kill a plug or something like that so that's part of i think what kind of people look at me as like the engine guru because i was able to run good products and and also help develop a lot of those products along the way so yeah obviously that's one of the attractions for us is the ability to see you get out there running a lot in these different tracks different conditions you know you're not also you're known as a tire guy know you get out there and you do a lot of running you decide what you like what you don't like and that trickles into the rest of the drivers the rest of the team and you know you know we're just kind of working working our way down your t-shirt you know i mean it's you got a lot of support here and um you know kind of what we're learning is that um you never just jumped into one of these things and decided to be the expert or the guru but what ends up happening is you you end up getting there because of the the track time the experience trying to do it for yourself and then people say then they start asking you what are you doing what do you like and help me get going right yeah i think people you know they trust they know that i work super hard they know that i'm not gonna just throw a set of tires on and say oh it's good enough like if if i feel we can improve or and it doesn't necessarily always need to be like new products but let's learn and be able to optimize what we've got like the tools that we have and use them [Music] you know to to be able to get the best results so yeah it's for sure a lot of people lean on me for different things and i think again a lot of it just comes down to some guys they don't want to just go the track and hammer out laps and put the wear and tear on their vehicles but i love doing it i love practicing i love race and i love learning and yeah so it's it's going to be exciting to learn some new tires and compounds and be able to work with the guys and you know forge a really tight relationship you roll around with the jbrl series but you also do some of your own races whether it's a toys for tots or whatever's going on that weekend and um all this running that you're doing you know people sometimes they want to come and grab this information from you but it's stuff that's happened from 1999 you know to 2021 uh you know you're in a situation where it's like hey this is stuff that i've been you know picking up on for 20 plus years here and you know then you're offering that to people as a way to go faster yeah no it's exciting and i think that's why you see the following that you do um with the products that i use is again people they know that i'm out at the track they know that i'm running all the time and it makes it easy for them if if they're been super busy the last month working and they know that there's a race coming up at thunder alley and they haven't been here for a little while and they want to know what tires that they need for this event you know they'll shoot me an email or text me and i can get them up to speed pretty quick we appreciated adam and we'll see it very soon here on the track and uh thanks again thank you i appreciate it [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: JConceptsLive

Views: 5,476

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Adam Drake, RC Racing, 1/8 Nitro, Nitro Offroad, 1/8 Scale, Race, Radio Controlled Hobbies, Hobby, Nitro, Southern California, SoCal, Jason Ruona, JConcepts

Id: t-uKFXSSkmg

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021