The Estonian Championships were held on July 14 at a brand new racetrack. Since the track and clubhouse belongs to our team, it meant that we were really busy preparing and building that, leaving very really little time to prepare our cars for the actual race. I sent Jaanus âśJankoâť KeskĂĽla â” our XRAY factory driver in buggy class â” to prepare his cars for Saturday. The rest of us had only one night before the race to get our cars prepped. Somehow we managed.
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Qualifications and semis went well and everybody got through. Janko was TQ in both classes â“ buggy and truggy.
Truggy Final
First we had truggy final and XRAY had a strong fleet: 5 cars out of 10.
Janko cruised away from start with his XT8, finishing 2 laps ahead of everybody. However at 20min into final he had to refuel every second lap due to a broken fuel tank. And in last 5 minutes he lost rear drive from one of the CVD pins going away. The rest of the field pretty much stayed in their qualification places.
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I had hoped to give Janko a good fight but a childish mistake took away that possibility â“ I had chosen wrong model in my transmitterâ™s memory, ultimately causing an overheated engine. So after I got that fixed, I had to work through the whole field, finishing in 4th place. At the finish, XRAY XT8 had all the 5 top places!!!
Final results in TRUGGY:
1 Jaanus KeskĂĽla XRAY XT8
2 Marek Männing XRAY XT8
3 Allar Rebane XRAY XT8
4 Andres Käver XRAY XT8
5 Eerik Karlov XRAY XT8
6 Marius Mängel
7 Tarmo Tammearu
8 Martti Siimsen
9 Anti Anton
10 Antero Haljand
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Buggy Final
Next was the 1:8 Buggy final. There were 3 XRAY nicely placed on the starting grid. Janko had TQ as always. The track wasnâ™t holding up; we had huge holes and stones popping up everywhere. So it was to be a race of attrition... a â survivalâ™ race. Janko and Rando cruised away from start, with the rest of the field following. Then something weird starting happening to me from lap 3 â“ my receiver went into failsafe every few seconds. Dismantling the car I discovered that battery wire was worn out. I went back on the racetrack with new battery. Then on lap 25 my car went up in flames! There was an actual fire around the fuel tank lid, so the marshals had to bury the car under sand to extinguish it! Janko cruised almost until the end, having already lapped everybody twice. Then one of his shocks broke, but since 2nd place had the same problem, nothing changed.
Final results in Buggy: 1 Jaanus KeskĂĽla XB8 EC
2 Rando Mere
3 Siim Sildver
4 Kuldar Ilus
5 Taivo Murumäe
6 Innar Mihhailov
7 Ahti Järvet 8 Andres Käver XB8 EC
9 Rainer P?hjala XB8
10 Tanel Torger
So XRAY and Jaanus KeskĂĽla went home with two Estonian titles!
