1st dutch National at REAL80 Groningen

The weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of april was the first national for the 2008 season. As a season opener, the REAL80 circuit is nice. It is very nice to drive and has technical but also fast sections. The weather forcast wasn’t very good, so it was going to be a weekend that was controlled by the weather.

Saterday practice

We got to the track at about 11:00 after picking up Koen at Arnhem and meeting up with his brother Bas who had already picked up our help for the weekend, Richard Arts.

The track was still wet and we had some rain on the way over to groningen. The track seemed to by drying and at about 12:00 people started to check out the track. Grip seems to be low and the track was still dirtly from the rain.

After that, I started of with some basic practice. My car had a different roll center at the back then the it default has. The car seems to understear a lot and at some points it just seems to swearl out of the corner, getting lots of understear. I change the rollcenter at the back by adding some spacers to the upright. After that I got a tip from Maarten on putting the shocks in a upright position. That increased the response but I didn’t get more stearing. I changed the shocks to a most flat position and the car was less responsive but had more stear and felt smoother over the bumps.

That pretty much ended the saterday and we ate at the MacDonals to get some quick food, after that it was on to the hotel to clean the car for the next day.

I even checked out the rain-engine for because the forcast was still pretty bad.

Sunday – Qualifications

The first qualiciation was wet. I was in the 6heat and the track was drying. I ran the car to put a time down, beter now then wait for the rain. Eventuallu it started to rain and altough most of the 2^nd qualification was try, I stopped because it started to rain.Eventually this was a bad decision, everybody still improved on the time and the rain didn’t go on all that hard.

3th qualification was dry to. Then, rain started and some semi finals where dry, some where wet. When the first final started, the track was early dry, but laptimes where still noticablaly down. Nevertheless, Race Control whent with a wet track which means the first 3 of both semi finals will go into the main. Unfortunalty my race ended there. The half-wet conditions are hard for me and I mad some mistakes and I ended up in 5^th.

Sunday – Finals

The second semi-final saw Koen leading and having trouble in the last 2 minutes of the race. He ended up 3th which means he was in the final.

The final was nice, I and Bas helped out Koen who came from last place and was 5^th or 4^th after 10 minutes or so. Eventually he got in first but made a mistake. Then dropped back and the race ended in a 10 minute battle for first position for the top 3 drivers. In the end, koen’s car had a bit to much tire wear and he had to drop out of the battle. Daan and Ruud continued to battle for first place. Check out the pictures at redrc.net.

Conslusion

This was a great start of the season, although it was controlled by the weather, the racing was so close and clean. I hope we can continue the season in this way, because it’s going to be great!

Dutch 1/10th 200mm nationals, Rd1

Hi Foks,

Last weekend was the first dutch national 200mm race on the REAL80 track in groningen. You might have all seen the result on redrc.net, i made the picture and provided the result :-)

Well the first alinia all sounds very good for the Xray NT1, the weekend was fun and i felt good about it, the result however, well, that’s nothing to blog about… I was last :(

Normaly this happens when you have some failure or your car brakes down, but the NT1 was fine the hole weekend. I was having a hard time getting a good setup on that (very bumpy) track. The qualifies went oke, i was on my ‘normal’ pase. Then came the half final where i stared from 4th place. Before the half final started i got on the track and my engine was fast right when it’s cold. With the R&B v12 it sometimes means you’re too lean with the main neadle, so i came in and had my pitmonkey richen it. Looking back to the final that was not a good idea. The engine stalled twice (probably just because it was flooded) and the engine wasn’t as fast as it was (acceleration was bad). I still had a car that wasn’t as easy to drive so i had to be carefull. All in all i did 44 laps in 15 minutes, that’s not too bad, but it was the slowest that day, the others simple didn’t have any failures and had a good run.

All in all i wasn’t happy about the result, but i was happy about how it all went. In the end the car did feal good and i didn’t have any weird failures. The car is very consistant and i basicly need to know how to set it up to make it more easy to drive for me.

I’m not saying i’ll be the fastest, but there’s definitly room for improvement :)

Let’s see how the EC-B in Belgium goes!