| Race report by Clark Wohlert |
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| The weekend of March 25th saw the western German nitro season opening race at the Dormagen racetrack, located in the north of Cologne. The weather was fine and approximately 30 drivers entered the 1/10 class. Supported by German XRAY distributor, SMI, I was excited to experience the new XRAY NT1 and race 1/10 for the first time in my life. |
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We started practicing on Saturday afternoon and the car felt extremely easy to handle right from the first laps. Step-by-step we modified our basic setup to make the car quicker even though we dominated free practise easily. At the end of the day the gap to our competitors was quite big, and so my mechanic Betram Kessler and I went home with a good feeling for Sunday.
On Sunday morning the XRAY NT1 set TQ with a 9-seconds advantage over the 2nd place driver, giving us the possibility to play with engines and tyres for the other qualification rounds. In the last heat we bettered the first round result, but other teams had closed the gap to only 0.35sec. Having no knowledge about 1/10 nitro cars, with the NT1 in combination with Bertrams' long years of experience, I was able to claim TQ. In the direct qualifier training, we again tinkered with the setup to make the car ready for the 30 minute race. |
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| In the first lap, the 2nd place driver (Sebastian BĂĽrge) and I were able to pull away from the pack and he started pressing on me, so I decided to let him go and follow easily. Before the first refuelling stop he had made the mistake I was waiting for and retook the lead. I then pulled away little-by-little until the gap nearly was a whole lap. For the rest of the race I just cruised to save my tyres and bring home the NT1 safely. |
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The other teams did not make it to easy for us to win, but the NT1 put me in a position to withstand all the pressure. In two days we had not even one spin-out, one flip over, nor even 1 part broken. The car, even with new tyres, does not have any problems with traction rolling and even without any toe-in at the rear it is simply not possible to make any mistakes with it. While the others had to concentrate on fighting with their own cars, I was able to control the NT1 easily. I felt that I was more watching it the than driving it.
As an added bonus, XRAY also won the Rally Game Race with a brand new, slightly-modified XB8R. So the weekend ended as best as it could from our point of view. Unfortunately we were not able to win the 1/8 scale class. :)
Best regards
Clark Wohlert |
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