P8 versus P9: the first battle called at the SDS All Mass Finals

Kerry Schrow qualified P8. The channel's own driver qualified P9, one place behind. That puts the two of them on opposite sides of a bracket line, which is how they ended up meeting in the opening battle of the day rather than deep in the running order.

A tandem battle is two runs: one driver leads and the other chases, then they swap. The lead car drives the judged line through the layout's clipping points; the chase car is scored on how closely it matches that line, how much angle it holds while doing it, and how tight the proximity stays. A one-place qualifying gap means the judges are, in practice, separating two solo scores that were already almost identical, using two runs where each driver has to answer the other.

The SDS rulebook governs how that is actually scored at this event, and that rulebook is not in the material. Treat the format description above as how tandem is generally run, not as a quote of this series' criteria.

The description's read on the opening run is short and unambiguous: Kerry lays down a SOLID lead line in this opening run. That is the filmer's assessment of his opponent's lead, written by the person who then had to chase it.

It is worth noting what that sentence is and is not. It is a competitor's description of a run he was in, not a judging sheet. The listing does not give the result of the battle, the scores, or whether the pair went to a second run. YAW has not seen the judges' calls for this battle, so the outcome stays open here.

The practical detail in the quote is the one easiest to overlook: a few practice runs together before the event. At a venue nobody has years of laps at, shared practice is how two drivers learn each other's initiation timing and transition rhythm before the first call. Being drawn first strips away the usual luxury of watching three or four battles and seeing how the judges are treating the layout.

A season finals at a track that has only just opened moves the problem around. Nobody arrives with a filed-away setup sheet for this layout, so the gap between a local regular and a visiting driver narrows. Everyone is reading the same fresh walls and clipping points in the same practice window.

That shows up most in the small things: which clip the chase car can actually get to without washing out, where the layout rewards holding angle versus getting the car straightened and back on line, and how much gyro gain a driver wants once they know whether the surface is biting or letting go. Until the surface is confirmed, none of that can be said specifically about Tandemonium, and this piece does not pretend otherwise.

What the video does offer is a record of the first battle of a finals on a new floor, filmed by someone inside it.

RC Drift Journey Stop #43, Kerry vs. Me, SDS All Mass Finals is on the Mr Mino Media channel, uploaded 13 October 2026 as a Short, with 555 views, 6 likes and no comments on the figures returned with this listing. The channel permits embedding with credit.

For a second tandem video from the same window, Wes Handy's upload covering SDC Las Vegas Round 8 tandem battles is also embed-and-credit; its listing names a Mazda RX8 shell and a custom GR86/Supra build among the cars, and does not identify the body makers.