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| Race Report by Alexander Hagberg |
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| The first round of the Swedish Cup with 1:10 and 1:8 GP cars was held in Växjö, southern Sweden, on a flowing yet fast asphalt course. In attendance were myself, current Swedish champion Magnus Vässmar, former Swedish champions and Euros finalists Mikael Fransson and Per-Ola Hard amongst others. The race was run in dry conditions even though the temperature was surprisingly low. |
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| This was my first race with the NT1, and after only 2 days of practice back home I felt confident that I could do well at this race. I brought Niclas Nilsson as a mechanic. Even though I am lacking experience in nitro racing I had no problem finding the right setup for the car. I received some valuable help to setup my engine, clutch and 2-speed from some other helpful racers, Klas Runesson, the mechanic of Magnus Vässmar, proved to be extremely helpful and made sure that my equipment was in perfect condition for racing. |
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| The qualifiers went reasonably well for me as I in the 3rd round out of 4 could secure overall TQ with a 2 second gap ahead of 2nd place Kyosho driver Magnus Vässmar. I also set a new lap record of 15.14s in this heat. The car was very quick and easy to drive for 5-minute racing. I was a bit worried though what to do for the 45 minute main with the use of bigger tires and so on. Since I had not received my new Max Power engines in time for the race I ran one of my old LRP 0.12 engines which still gave good power for this medium-sized track. |
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| For the final I prepared new tires of a harder compound and calculated the correct size to make sure that I would have tires left at the end of the main. As the tone went off I made a spin coming from the line as my tires had accidentally collected some fuel from the refueling before the start. I found myself in 8th place. But after only about 4 minutes I was already up to 2nd place behind the leader, Magnus. Just in time before the 2nd refueling I passed him and took over the lead as I clearly had a quicker pace than him. I started to build a gap which was about 2 seconds and stayed like this for a while. |
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| At the 4th refueling my engine stalled and I lost 5 valuable seconds and the lead. After this I tried to catch Vässmar but the pace was the same and I didn't get close enough. By the 25-minute mark my car was starting to push a bit but I was still running quick lap times. At the 40-minute mark I was still 4 or so seconds behind. With 2 minutes to go Vässmar lost his 2nd gear in the transmission and was running slowly around the track. I took back the lead and finished in 1st place with about half lap ahead of 2nd place Vässmar and another lap ahead of 3rd place driver Mikael Fransson. |
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Final results:
1. Alexander Hagberg XRAY NT1
2. Magnus Vässmar
3. Mikael Fransson
4. Per-Ola Hard
5. Alexander Andersson
6. Markus Hellquist
7. Ola Westholm
8. Edwin Suneson XRAY NT1
9. Bengt Andersson XRAY NT1
10. Johnny Karlsen
The race was a great experience and I am already looking forward to racing with the NT1 again. The car is very fast and reliable and made winning easy even for a nitro novice like myself!
I want to thank my mechanic Niclas Nilsson and Klas Runesson for technical support throughout the race.
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