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!

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!

For me, the EC was nice, i had a great week and thing my performance was ok. i ended up 97th which i think is ok for me. I wanted to end higher but i screwed up on my final and then you don’t bump up, simple as that.

The qualifications where hard. You don’t get a lot of track time and the track changes a lot, which was hard for me! Great experience though!

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!

So here’s the first response to me driving and building the NT1. I’m not writing a full building report about it. But i will list some tips and likes/dislikes…

I got the kit on friday, while i say kit, it was basically a bag of parts. This is because i received it earlier and there’s not real kit yet. This also meant i didn’t have a manual but only exploded views. That proved to be an exiting thing to use when building :)

I started off with the differentials. The differentials are very small in size so they can be fitted lower on the chassis which makes the center of grafity lower. This has a result to the diff viscocity being used, since the gears are smaller. The front diff has a insert so you can make it a solid axle. There are no bearings to fit the outdrivers, at first (being a 720 driver) i was sceptical about it. But the fitting of the outdrives is good and they seal up very well, no leaking at the outdrives. This also is because there’s a rubber ring on the inside of the diff that’s covered by a big washer that closes things off.

I did have some difficulties with closing the diff, as you can see on the pictures there’s a very thin rubber ring to seal the diff. I didn’t pay attention the first time and damaged the rubber ring, can’t use that anymore. Another thing is the small screws to thighten the pulley, i received a american size so i got lucky with my hex drivers from the CRC 1/12th car.

The front diff is (as i understand) the same as the Kyosho diff, you first close the diff and then screw on the pulley. The rear diff just consists of two parts that fit together.

So, to conclude the diff building:

• The diffs are very small, but still very easy to build (not too small!)
• I dislike the rubber seal
• I like the way the outdrives fit into case, love the big washer that closes up the diff from the inside