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| Race report by Markus Feldmann |
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| On March 10/11, the RC Club in Purmerend near Amsterdam decided to make a special 1/8 off-road event by challenging Germany vs. Holland. They hosted a normal off-road race but counted the best 24 Dutch and also the best 24 German positions and calculated the points together. |
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| Practice started early Saturday and this was the only free practice day. We could get used to the track since this was the first ever warm and sunny weekend so far this year. The track was medium-sized with lap times around 24 seconds. The surface was natural carpet which was quite tricky since it was not completely dry because of all the rain in the last weeks. The surface also was quite rough and below were lot of bumps, so a good setup was needed. |
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Throughout the practice I decreased lap times down to mid-22sec which almost noone else was able to do. Qualifying went well even though I made some mistakes; I won 2 of 3 rounds and got TQ. Team XRAY driver Oliver Simon also qualified in the Top 10.
The sub-finals were quite wild and in the Semi-B Marcel Guske won easily by lapping all others. Sub-A was quite strong for me since the track changed a lot and my car was very hard to handle. Problems with an engine flame-out after refueling (due to a bad glowplug) didn´t help much. But I could hardly finish 5th and go up to the final. |
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| In the Final I had to start from 7th spot due to the bad semi result. I changed a few bits on the setup and also put different tires on and the car felt perfect within the first minute. I could do 8min between refueling which also saved a lot of time. From the start I managed to get into 2nd position very quickly and passed Marcel Guske for the lead in lap 2. From that point my car was very easy to handle and I could gain a bigger gap each lap. Oliver was doing well in 3rd position while battling with Jeffrey Halsema. After 8 minutes I had almost a lap on Marcel when he ran out of fuel. That rushed Oliver up into 2nd position and gave me a very comfortable lead. |
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Marcel came back to race and bumped up position by position. Finally he closed the gap between Oliver and himself, but some minor mistakes put him back into 3rd position overall behind Oliver and me.
Even though we had 8 Germans in the final, the Dutch drivers had better overall results and won the challenge 2007!
1. Feldmann, Markus XRAY XB8
2. Simon, Oliver XRAY XB8
3. Guske, Marcell
4. Halsema, Jeffrey
5. Derksen, Frank
6. Schaijk, van Rene
7. WĂĽller, Thomas
8. Schneider, Marco
9. Eckmann, Paul
10. Warda, Christian |
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