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Race report by Martin Hudy
The International Friendship Race was held in Enskilstunda, approximately 130km from Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden. The race was held at a permanent carpet track that is well known to 1:12 scale drivers because it is the same track used this year for the 1:12th European Championship. Drivers from North European countries (Finland, Norway, and Denmark) attended this event. Moreover, drivers from Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, and Slovakia joined the race as well. Team XRAY was well represented by top Swedish driver Alexander Hagberg, Helge Johansen from Norway, Alistair Graham from Great Britain, and Juraj and me as well.

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The race started on Friday afternoon with 3 rounds of timed practice in the heats. Because the track is permanent, I expect very high traction and a lot of fast local drivers. Since the 1:12 scale class was also being driven, I was wondering which set-up would be best for this track. I decided to start with my Prague set-up which is very similar to the basic T2’008 set-up. The car was working surprisingly well in the first practice, even though the traction and layout were completely different from the Prague race. The Prague layout was quite technical with many chicanes and the layout of this Swedish track was more open with long sweepers. I decided to stay with the same set-up for the second round of the practice but the traction increased a lot and the car started to become very aggressive. Because of that I changed to harder swaybars (1.6 front, 1.4 rear) and the car was much easier to drive. Because I wanted to have more steering out of the corner, I decided to remove the shims from the rear shocks for the last round of practice and car was even better! After timed practice, Alexander was in the lead ahead of me. This track is kind of like Alexander’s home track and everyone could see it because he was super fast. Although we had only 3 rounds of practice, we were happy with the cars’ performances and were looking forward to the qualifiers.

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Qualifiers started on Saturday morning, and together there were 4 rounds from which the 2 best points were counted. The first qualifier was quite messy because a lot of drivers were crashing and generally making mistakes. Alexander finished 2nd and I finished 4th. Juraj was also doing very well and in this tight competition of good drivers and local heroes he was able to finish 12th. My car had very good steering into corners, but I was missing cornering speed as well as speed out of corners. Because of that I decided to move my rear shocks one position down on the rear shock tower and the car was much better. As a result I finished 2nd behind Alexander who had awesome run. I still felt that the car could be made a little easier to drive into the corner so I changed the front springs from 2.8 to 3.0. Again the car became better and I was closely following Alexander when suddenly the car traction rolled. The traction was increasing rapidly because of the 1:12 scale cars, so I expected even more traction for the last qualifier. Because of that I decided to glue the sides of the front tires but I already knew that the car would start to push more so I went back to the softest bars (1.4 front, 1.2 rear). After these changes car was much better and I finished 2nd again behind Alexander. In the fourth round, Alexander was driving amazingly and was the only driver able to get 24 laps. The two best results were counted for the finals, and Alexander TQ`d with 2 wins and I ended up qualifying 3rd with two 2nd-place finishes.

After qualifiers:
1. Alexander Hagberg (XRAY T2’008)
2. Steen Graversen
3. Martin Hudy (XRAY T2’008)
4. Magnus Wassmar
5. Simo Ahoniemi
6. Joel Myrberg
7. Marc Fischer
8. Tommy Bergfeldt
9. Christer Anderson
10. Sebastian Trzaska

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The finals started on Sunday morning with final practice. My car was working OK but I felt that the car was a bit difficult to drive with not enough traction and cornering speed. Alexander was doing well and won the final practice ahead of Steen and me. Because I wanted to improve the car’s performance I changed the droop settings. First of all I decreased the front droop by changing the downstop from 6.4 to 6.6mm. Because I needed more traction, I changed the rear droop as well from 5.4 to 5.2mm and gave the rear spring a bit of play on the shocks. Because of cornering speed, I changed the rear shock position from the 4th to the 3rd hole. These changes made the car much better and I felt the improvement already in the warm-up lap. The start of the first final was without any traffic and Alexander took off at the beginning to get an easy lead. Because of the changes on the car I started the race carefully in order to get used to set-up. After 2 minutes Alexander made a mistake and lost his lead. Steen then took the lead and I was in 2nd place. I felt more and more comfortable with the set-up so I started to put a lot of pressure on Steen. However I wanted to drive fairly so I was waiting for him to make a mistake. Steen kept up with my pressure and won the race by 0.1sec ahead of me.

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Because I felt comfortable with my set-up, I decided to stay with it for the second final. This final was very interesting to watch from the first-to-last lap because Alexander, Steen, and I were driving together for the entire 5 minutes, and everyone was waiting for the minor mistakes that would allow a lead change. Alexander calmed down after the first final and kept the pressure of Steen and me and won by 0.1sec ahead of us. The traction in the second final had increased a lot and because of that I decided to remove the extra offset in the front in order to get better steering at corner entry, mid-corner, and corner exit. This change helped a lot and car felt much easier to drive. After the start Steen braked more than usual in the corner and although I hit my brakes I still hit him because I was so close behind him that there were no other alternatives. Alexander took the lead and because of my car performance I was able to narrow the gap between us and after 2 minutes we were driving together with only a 0.1sec gap. However, Alexander was able to keep up the pace and won the final ahead of me. The final results between the three of us were very close and the driver who won the last final would be the overall winner. So, Alexander won the race ahead of Steen and me. Although I finished 3rd, I was very happy because car worked excellently and we had very nice and interesting close racing finals.

Modified final results:
1. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY T2'008
2. Steen Graversen
3. Martin Hudy - XRAY T2'008
4. Joel Myrberg
5. Simo Ahoniemi
6. Marc Fischer
7. Sebastian Trzaska
8. Tommy Bergfeldt
9. Magnus Vässmar
10. Christer Andersson

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XRAY was doing extremely well also in the Stock class when the youngster from Sweden TQ`d the event and also won overall.

Stock final results:
1. Markus Hellquist - XRAY
2. Miika Laurila
3. Peter Nilsson - XRAY
4. Markus Elmerfors - XRAY

5. Edwin Suneson
6. Toni Niinivirta
7. Jörgen Andersson
8. Oliwer Garant
9. Fredrik Cederberg
10. Robin Haugnes - XRAY

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