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In early September, I received an e-mail from a German guy living in Beijing with an invitation to an International Race, hosted and funded by the government in the district of Fengtai in Beijing, China. I did not have much info about the race, I just knew that I would race both EP and GP classes, and that some other European and Japanese top drivers would be joining. I immediately accepted the invitation as I was both flattered and excited. XRAY encouraged me to join the race for promotional reasons as the entry count was expected to be quite high.
We arrived in Bejiing on Tuesday before the race. We had a look around and even ran a couple of tanks on the track, which looked super nice by the way. Unfortunately the surface was very dusty and had no traction. The track was built in connection to the Fengtai Sports Center, which in its surroundings also had a big Softball Arena which was used for the 2008 Olypmics. The organization did a great job the entire week when taking care of us Europeans, driving us to the track and back, arranging dinners, daily supplies, touristing information and much more. Their hospitality was truly great. Some of the actual race organization was far from perfect, probably as a result of little or no previous race directing experience. It was a bit frustrating as we in Europe are very spoiled with well-organized international events. |
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Practice started on Thursday. The organizer had sprayed the track with sugar water and thus the traction levels became very decent. It was even possible to traction roll with the electric cars! As the electric class had a open tire rule, most guys settled for the Ride 28 or 32 tire. Other popular choices were Sorex, Muchmore and Rush variations. The open tire rule is in my opinion not a very good idea and I hope that the organizer will change this for next year.
Anyway, as practice went on it soon became clear that the very big track would prove demanding for speed controllers and motors as they got very hot due to the high speeds and long straights. For odd reasons I could not solve my speedo problems throughout the entire weekend and thus would finish in the last main for electric. I tried really hard but just couldn't make it run for 5 minutes; it was really frustrating.
As I was re-seeded into the lowest heat on Saturday, I was driving with some really slow drivers. In my last qualifier, one of the other drivers flew over the track right onto the racing line in front of my car and destroyed the entire front end. At his point I felt that I had enough and put my electric car in the box, where it would stay for the rest of the weekend. It did not help that the car was handling really well. In the heat practice I managed to finish one run, and was by that point seeded 3rd overall behind Ronald and Marc. The car handled great and had plenty of traction. It was a shame that I couldn't get my stuff together.
In the nitro touring car class I had a better, but far from great race. The car ran really well all weekend, only with a few small set-up changes to cope with the high-traction conditions, and thus the risk of traction roll. The car handled well, the engines had good power. We only struggled with runtime as we were forced to make 2 pit stops in the 10-min qualifiers. But even so, I had the pace to TQ in front of Takaaki Shimo, Masao Tanaka, Ronald Völker, Teemu Leino, Daniele Ielasi among others. In my best qualfier I had a flame out which cost me over 20 seconds and I would still finish in the Top 10. |
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The car was that fast, but I was just terribly unlucky. In the 3rd qualfier, Ronalds car had a radio glitch as a result of a faulty RX battery and went full power into the side of my car, completely destroying my muffler. In the 2nd qualifier, the left steering link came off for an unknown reason. The list goes on. In the end I managed to qualfy 6th overall, without a clean run.
For the finals, the track was wet from the rain and it was apparent that a rubber rain tire would be the best choice. Unfortunately the organizer had decided that those would not be allowed. Chinese racer JJ Wang who was the only one with soft foam rain tires, and he dominated the race and won with a 20-lap margin. It was disappointing with the weather conditions as I felt that I could run a very good race in this class. But such is racing. In the end, Teemu finished 5th overall and I finished 6th.
Zdenko Kunak drove well and won the B-final in the electric class, but he struggled with speedo problems throughout qualifying.
Apart from the race itself, we went to some great sightseeing spots such as the Tianamen Square, The Forbidden City and the Great Wall.
All spots were rather impressive, with The Great Wall being my favourite. Zdenko even brought his T3, which was probably the first ever electric touring car to visit the Wall! |
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GP Touring Car A-Main:
1. JJ Wang
2. Ronald Völker
3. Takaaki Shimo
4. Li Jia Wei - XRAY NT1
5. Teemu Leino - XRAY NT1
6. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY NT1
7. Samuel Chiu - XRAY NT1
8. Masao Tanaka
9. Poon Chiu Him - XRAY NT1
10. Daniele Ielasi
EP Touring Car A-Main:
1. Andy Moore
2. Ben Cosgrove
3. Stefan Chodzynski
4. Ronald Völker
5. Wang Hai Feng
6. Chan Chau Man - XRAY T3'2011
7. Marc Fischer
8. Shinnosuke Adachi
9. Viktor Wilck
10. Marc Rheinard |
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