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Norwegian IC 200mm Championship 2007
Spydeberg Raceway
Track and Facilities
The National Championship was hosted by Spydeberg Motorklubb at their brand new track. Spydeberg is home town of the Solberg brothers racing in WRC so the location surely has a lot of motor racing heritage. In a relatively short timeframe the local club has built very nice facilities. An indoor drivers area is used for electric racing during the wintertime. Combined with a large pitlane and drivers platform, cafeteria area etc., we will definitely come back here for more racing. The track itself is rather unique with almost no straight line areas except the long straight. Combined with rather aggressive curbing this makes for a track where you donâ™t want to make any mistakes or it will hurt you a lot time-wise.
Photo: Tom-Vegard Feltstykket, Smaalenene.no. |
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Qualifying
To be honest I had a hard time in qualifying. The track had rather high grip and my car seemed to oversteer into corners no matter what kind of setup we tested. Itâ™s not like the rear end snaps away from you unexpectedly, rather that it slowly oversteers on corner entry making it difficult to push. Harder tires or stiffer damping / anti roll bar at the front reduced the oversteer but that was basically due to reducing front end grip and going slower. I felt all weekend that the oversteer should not be solved by reducing front end grip, but rather improve rear end grip but that proved to be difficult. Anyway, I managed to hold on to 4th place and be the last direct qualifier for the main final. Helge Johannesen was comfortably in pole position with Georg Ellingsen in 2nd place. So with XRAY on pole, 2nd and 4th it was looking promising for Sunday and the main final.
Final
The start of the main final saw Helge Johannesen create a gap as he took the lead from pole. Morten Bremsrud and Georg Ellingsen had a fight for 2nd position, whereas I was struggling for pace at the start down in 5th position. Basically the car was not easy to drive on large tires (64mm rear) again oversteering into corners, so I just had to back off and drive at my own pace.
Around the 15min mark Helge was still in the lead but Iâ™d been able to advance to 3rd place looking to challenge for 2nd place. Stretching fuel stops from 5:00min to 5:40min and with car balance improving a lot with smaller tires, I was able to push a lot more. Unfortunately, Helge he ran out of fuel twice in effect ruining his chances of victory unless the other top runners would make mistakes. My car was improving even more with smaller tires so a steady pace without any mistakes meant I could build up a lead and preserve tires and engine to the end. After 45min I had 2 laps on Helge in 2nd place but my rear tires were almost gone. Georg finished in 3rd place, 8sec behind Helge. All in all it was a great result for Team XRAY taking the podium with 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions!!!
Results from the final:
1. Frank Andersen XRAY NT1
2. Helge Johannessen XRAY NT1
3. Georg Ellingsen XRAY NT1
4. Anders Theodorsen
5. Morten Bremsrud
6. Jan Erik Flat
7. Rolf Dahl
8. Christian Andresen XRAY NT1
9. Jo Brede Isaksen XRAY NT1
10. Bjorn Dahl |
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