After a long journey from Évora to Vilar de Luz, in Maia, we were faced with a day without rain, with some sun, cool and very windy with a temperature that fluctuated constantly. With only 25 pilots entered it was a fairly quiet afternoon to find a good tuning of our XRAY NT1s.
Starting with the 2008 set-up they were developing the set up, until we reached the car that would make the race. In late afternoon we had a car that needed cleaning and new belts, transmission and gearbox. We also discovered that something was happening with the transponder, as the LED light was not working correctly. After removal, we found a reversed polarity, the mechanical work⦠well well well!
Sunday morning sun foreshadowed a good day to practice our sport despite the wind. The set started off without problems and we got a 2nd which was more than enough to go directly into the semifinal which was our main objective.
The semifinal seemed to run fairly well until we ran in 1st with two laps to go; the ensuing incident almost caused us to lose everything. In the chicane⦠for us the most difficult part of all National tracks⦠the car stopped. We did not know what had happened and listen to enter the pits fearing the worst. It was the left rear wheel, and so we breathed a sigh of relief. We replaced the wheel and returned to the track where we were in 3rd place with 1st and 2nd right there ahead of us. The rest of the semifinal took place without problems and we ended up finishing in 1st place.
The car park closed in preparation of the final. We were very nervous and foresaw a very serious final. After some confusion at the beginning, Bruno Coelho took the lead and after passing some cars and getting into 2nd place we started to have a great race. We ran with Bruno a long time (20 min) with some really scary situations and others that were simply amazing⦠and many a good time fixing the car. Too bad there is no video of this part.
But being the fantastic driver that he is, Bruno came out ahead when the two came together in the evil chicane. Jaime lost 8 seconds after that incident. Bruno prevailed, justifiably so, and took off in the lead. Jaime spent the rest of the race in 2nd place.
