posted Dec 18th, 2006 - The NSL News story on December 14 broke the news that Mark Kirkby left Team Fastrax and moves back to Arizona. The next story on December 15 followed up with news from the Fastrax headquarters. Thomas Hughes had already committed to fill the open slot.

The same story mentioned that Team Fastrax was on schedule with a training camp in DeLand this week. The NSL News planned to observe the first training with the new line-up. The camp did not begin exactly on time. Thick traffic on Interstate 4 delayed the arrival of John Hart, Niklas Hemlin and Steve Redinbo coming from Orlando International Airport.

Doug Park, who owns SkySystems, and Thomas Hughes are both DeLand residents and did not have to travel for the first training camp. Team Fastrax had also hired coach Gary Smith for this camp who lives in DeLand with his family, as well. The new line-up got finally in the air in the early afternoon and had just completed a set of four back-to-back jumps when the NSL News arrived to take photos of the new team at work.

The NSL News asked for the video of the very first jump with Thomas Hughes, and the team will discuss the inquiry at the end of the training day. Thomas Hughes is now filling a slot for Team Fastrax that he has never trained and competed in with another top team.

Team Fastrax decided to keep the front piece unchanged (Doug Park - Center Outside and Niklas Hemlin - Point) and let the new team member fill the open slot of the Center Inside. Thomas Hughes and John Hart (Tail) are now flying together in the rear piece.

There are other options that the team surely considered when the decision had to be made. Thomas Hughes is actually familiar with slots of both pieces and spent the last years in the front piece. He was the Tail for the British national team Sebastian XL, and he took the Center Outside position as a player coach for Arizona Blade. He also flew the same slot for Airspeed Velocity this year.

Team Fastrax' current Center Outside, Doug Park, is one of the most experienced Center Inside's in the world. He started with team FX in this position, won the World Championship in 4-way as DeLand Majik's engine in 2004 and continued with the next Majik line-up in 2005 in the same slot.

Doug Park switched to the Center Outside position for the first time in his career when he joined Team Fastrax for the 2006 season. It would have been a very reasonable option to have Doug Park take back the driver's seat and keep Thomas Hughes in one of the familiar front piece slots.

However, Team Fastrax voted for a different option. John Hart explained that the front piece is functioning very well and that Doug Park and Niklas Hemlin really enjoy working the front piece together. Fastrax prefers to continue without changes in three of the four slots, and the team trusts that Thomas Hughes will catch up quickly.

The videos of the first four training jumps proved that these considerations were based on a very good foundation. Thomas Hughes did not have much time to get ready for the new slot. However, he was well prepared. The NSL News asked how he used the little time of preparation for the new slot at the first camp.

Thomas Hughes explained that he did not even watch a lot of videos to study the new position and the technical details. He focused mostly on visualization of jumps and applied the whole dive pool for his mental preparation. The NSL News will follow up soon, hopefully with videos of new Fastrax jumps and an interview with the whole team.