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| Race report by Martin Hudy |
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| The 6th International Friendship race was held on January 4-6, 2008 in Vienna, the capital city of Austria. The race had three classes 1:10 Modified, 1:10 Stock, and 1:12th scale. Juraj and I represented Team XRAY. Moreover, there were some super-fast XRAY drivers from Austria (Mario Sowka and Manuel Singer) and also from Slovakia (Tomas Liptak and Zdeno Kunak). |
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| Practice |
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| The race started on Friday with free practice. The race was held on new carpet with LRP VTEC 27 tires. I decided to start the practice with my basic setup. After the first practice I felt mostly comfortable with the setup but I needed a bit more steering into and out of corners. The carpet was very strange because it was very rough. I was concerned that the carpet would overheat the tires very easy but surprisingly I had no problem with tires overheating for the whole race. Traction increased after a few practice runs and the car started to understeer even more. So then I decided to tighten the diff in order to get better cornering speed and decrease the understeering; however, it was not the best change because although the car got better cornering speed, it was very unstable in the chicane. Because of that I made the diff free again and was searched for other setup changes. In order to increase the steering, I changed the front roll center from the high to middle position, and the car felt much better into and out of the corners. I still felt that I have not enough steering and because I had no problem with tires overheating I decided to change the droops from basic 6.4mm front and 5.4 rear to 6.0mm front and 5.0mm rear. The carâ™s performance increased again and this time, I was already 0.3sec faster per lap than my competitors. Mario Sowka was working very hard on his setup as well and at the end of the practice was the second fastest, only 0.1sec per lap down from me. |
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| Qualifiers |
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| There were 4 rounds of qualifiers on the schedule with the two best results counted together. I started the qualifiers with the setup from the practice and won the first round by 3 seconds ahead of young Austrian driver Patrick Gollner. I felt that the car could perform much better and I decided to change the C-hubs from 4° to 2° in order to get even more steering into and out of the corners. As a result I improved my result from the first round by 3 seconds and dominated the second round. The car ┠thanks to 2° C-hubs ┠was much easier to drive in the chicanes. I felt that the 4° C-hubs were better in the long sweepers but the track had more chicanes so overall the 2° C-hubs performed better. At this time I felt comfortable with the setup, but I decided to move the rear shocks one position down because I wanted to improve cornering speed as well; and thanks to the high traction I was not afraid of losing rear traction. The car performed even better and I won also the last two rounds of qualifiers. |
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Mario Sowka was super-fast the whole day but he made small mistakes in each round which caused him to lose 2nd place and so he finished 3rd overall. Team XRAY was very strong in these races when Singer Manuel finished 7th and three Slovak drivers (Zdeno Kunak, Tomas Liptak, and Juraj) finished behind him. Juraj was driving very well without any mistakes but was simply not as fast. Because of that he decided to change the setup to the same as mine for the finals.
Qualifying results:
1. Martin Hudy XRAY T2â™008
2. Patrick Gollner
3. Mario Sowka XRAY T2â™008
4. Balint Rajki
5. Markus Eder
6. Peter Miko
7. Manuel Singer XRAY T2â™008
8. Zdeno Kunak XRAY T2â™008
9. Tomas Liptak XRAY T2â™008
10. Juraj Hudy XRAY T2â™008 |
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| Finals |
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My car was performing well in the qualifiers and because of that I decided to stay with the same setup for the finals. The car was very easy to drive and thanks to that I won all three finals without any mistakes. Mario was doing well in the finals and finished 2nd overall. Zdeno Kunak from Slovakia was driving very well in the finals and finished 4th overall. After his setup change, Juraj improved as well and finished 5th overall. He almost finished 3rd but was crashed in the last final from the third position. Tomas Liptak could have finished in the top three as well but he was crashed in the last final in the first lap and lost the chance to battle for better position. Manuel was unlucky in the finals and with his results (7th and 7th) finished 10th overall.
Final results:
1. Martin Hudy XRAY T2â™008
2. Mario Sowka XRAY T2â™008
3. Markus Eder
4. Zdeno Kunak XRAY T2â™008
5. Juraj Hudy XRAY T2â™008
6. Tomas Liptak XRAY T2â™008
7. Peter Miko
8. Patrick Gollner
9. Balint Rajki
10. Manuel Singer XRAY T2â™008 |
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