|
|
|
| Race report by Danni Eyde-Nielsen |
|
The sixth round of the Danish Championship was held in Tollose on March 14, hosted by the club M.M.R.C. We had practice on Saturday, and qualification and finals on Sunday. We were driving with the FTQ system so we had three qualification rounds.
After Saturday practice I was very confident for the race. It was my first time with the XRAY T3 on this track, and the car was just so easy and predictable to drive. I was very fast, and after a few changes to the set-up the car was absolutely perfect so I didnâ™t make any changes after that.
1st Qualifier: I set the pace from the first lap, and the other guys were fighting to keep up with me. The car was very easy to drive. I didnâ™t push the car very hard, since the other guys were struggling to find the right pace. I was fastest after 5 minutes by 7 seconds over Soren Boy Holst.
2nd Qualifier: I had a very comfortable lead so I chose to push very hard in this heat. On the first lap I came to close to going off the straightaway. It didnâ™t cost me more than 0.2sec, but my car was very tweaked after! I still managed to hold the lead, and improved the best lap by 0.1sec from last qualifier. Soren and Mike still hadnâ™t found the right pace, which really confused me because both of them were much faster during Saturday practice. I ended winning this run and even improved my total time by 1 second. Soren came in 2nd and Mike was 3rd.
3rd Qualifier: I knew my TQ was pretty much secured, and I would be very amazed if Soren or Mike could improve 7 seconds. However, I still wanted to improve my own TQ time so I pushed the car hard again. I was very fast this time â” by estimate 3 seconds faster than my TQ time â”but in the middle of the heat I came to close to a curb and rolled the car around. I lost 1 second, but the lap after I had to overtake Mike and a misunderstanding resulted in a crash which cost me 3 seconds. So I didnâ™t improve my time, but I was still the fastest this round.
Top 3 Modified after Qualification:
1. Danni Eyde-Nielsen â“ XRAY T3
2. Mike Gosvig
3. Soren Boy Holst
1st Final: I got off pretty well with the rest of the guys following closely. After 3 laps I had opened a gap from the other guys and was increasing the gap. Mike and Soren had a very nice fight for 2nd place. After 2 minutes I could feel the diff was broken, and the car became very difficult to drive. I had to be very gentle on the throttle, since the car was very loose out of corners. I managed to hold my lead through the 5 minutes and took the win in the first final, Mike and Soren had been close since the first lap, and Mike was really doing a good job to defend 2nd place, but Soren was pushing very hard. Soren overtook Mike on the last lap because Mike came to close to the curb and flipped on the roof.
2nd Final: This time I had rebuild my diff so I knew my car would be very good. I came off very nice again, and already had a gap to the others after 2 laps. I was making the gap bigger and bigger for each lap, while Mike and Soren had their own fight. I could just cruise my XRAY to victory in the second final and the overall win of this round of the Danish Championship. Soren ended up 2nd in this final ahead of Mike Gosvig.
3rd Final: I already had the overall victory, so I used the last final to test bump steer. I added 1.5mm under the steering block. I chose to use that big a shim to really feel the difference. Already on the first lap I felt the difference, the car was actually better than before, it had more steering and was easier to drive. Since I knew the car was a lot better I tried to improve my final time of the second final. And this time I didnâ™t have to drive carefully since I had already won the race. I simply kept pulling away from the other guys. After 4 minutes I had overtaken Soren in 3rd place by a lap, and was only 2sec away from overtaking Mike in 2nd place when the buzzer went off. I didnâ™t have enough time to overtake Mike by a lap, but I ended up improving my time by 5 seconds!
|
|
|
|
| Final Top 3 modified: |
|
1. Danni Eyde-Nielsen XRAY T3
2. Soren Boy Holst
3. Mike Gosvig
With four victories out of 7 races and 1 race to go, I feel very confident for the overall win!
I would like to thank North TQ, XRAY for making a super-good car, Nosram for the super power, and all my other sponsors. |
|
