Last national (Round 5 in Gouda)
Last weekend (15th and 16th of September 2007) was the last national at the (Technical) Gouda track. This is my report about the racen and a small review back at the season with the new NT1.
Saterday, training day
Normaly the Gouda track is always a bit bad in respect to the weather, it’s always windy and i’ve never had two full dry days like we had this weekend. The dry weather was great. The track really is amazing and i’m starting to like it more and more. It has every aspect of a good track, tight technical sections and some very fast corners, to finish things off some bumps in places that can really upset your car.
The saterday training was nice, had some trouble with the engine which was (as most of the times) way to rich. After Koen helped me out with that i went on setting up the car. The car was nice but i had a hard time driving it. It entered corners nicely but exiting was hard (rear end stepping out). I knew i couldn’t race very long with it without having trouble concentrating. I’ve talked to Koen about it and he gave me some tips on the dampening of the shocks, 2 holes open in front and 4 holes open in the back, with 600cst oil. That totally changed the car in respect to ease of driving. The car was great! I tried some minor tweaks with the shock positions but went back to what i had in the first place (which was stock for the NT1).
Coming home that evening and cleaning the car was easy, the NT1 is easy to clean, and at the end i’ve only spend 2 hours at it to get the thing ready for the Sunday. I forgot to change the airfilter but that was easily done on the next day.
Sunday, raceday!
The Sunday started good, because I early in bed on Saterday i got up nice and was one of the first at the track. I think it’s important to be rested well and it really makes a better race day. I changed airfilter at the track and made some tires at the right size for qualifications. I only use one set for all three qualifications. The first qualification went ok, but i forgot to change the 2-speed with the larger tires and so the car shifted extremely late. Koen pointed that i needed to lift on the main to save the engine. I put in some nice laps and was second-to-last after the first qualification. I also made some mistakes. Putting a time down is important because then you are qualified for the semi-finals.
In the second qualification i only fixed the 2-speed which was perfect and i did improve my time. I did go of track quite hard resulting in a rear wing being bunched up and not legal anymore. Technical inspection agreed that it was because of the crash and did not disqualify me (phfew!). I fixed the wing and took (also to try) another body which was the Parma M-type. The body gave loads more steering and Ruud Schuitmaker actually asked my what kind of body it was. So the last qualification was great. I made a lot of mistakes but still improved on my time. The car was fast in the corners but a little hard to control out of the corners. I think the car was actually to good for me :)
Semi-final
It was hard to go back to the old body or stay with the new one and change something on the car. I did the last but that resulted in loads of understeer after 10 minutes in the semi-final. Because we only had 11 drivers the only thing that was important was to not be last in the semi. Jack van Leeuwen ended his semi early so i didn’t mind the understeer and focussed on driving the car round and round. It resulted in a 8th position on the starting grid for the final. But i still needed to change something to get more steering for the hole final.
Final
Maarten van Lierop’s dad pointed out that i needed to have 37shore front tires, i had 40 shore in the semi-final with 42’s in the rear. For the final i went with 42 shore on the right rear tire, 40 on the left and 37 shore in front. After the final the wear on the tires was perfect, thanks John!
The final itself was great, the car was so good to drive and it kept it’s steering for the better part of the 30 minutes final. The last part of the final (last 7 min or so) the car was harder to control but still good to drive. I eventually ended up 6th which is really nice to close of the season with.
Ruud Schuitmaker won the race, with a close finish of Remy Muller who had some very close moments with Maarten van Lierop who had nothing to lose because he was already dutch champion!
Hobby > R/C Racing, Hobby > XRay NT1 | Ruben | 
September 19, 2007 9:02 pm
