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| Race report by Alexander Hagberg |
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The European Championships in 1/12 was held in the city of Oulu, in northern Finland. A very small turn out of only 50 drivers, divded on two classes, joined the race. Some of the best 1/12 drivers in Europe were still present, making the race rather competitive.
Practice started already on Thursday, with a few rounds of heat practice. I tried two different cars in practice, where I settled for the less aggressive chassis as the track was really low grip around here. The carpet is not the usual CRC one but a completely different type which never really developed high traction. Instead, we saw a similar situation to that from the World Championships last year, where a wide, black groove formed at the track, but traction actually decreased as the days went on, due to all the oil from the additives making the track slippery. This is a strange phenomenon seen at 1/12 races lately, which probably has to do with the oil based tire additives which are used when the rule is "open" for additives. |
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As practice went on I soon got comfortable with the car, and was able to drive some very competitive laptimes. As always, and due to the rather low grip, tires would be the most critical factor, and key to quick lap times. I tried some different compounds, and some minor changes to my set-up. I knew already that I had found a good base for qualifying. As the first two rounds went on, all was going well as I was able to TQ those rounds with a big margin. Quite frankly I was a bit surprised that I was so fast compared to the local "favourites"
who were struggling at this point.
One big change in the EFRA rules for 2013 was that a round by round qualifying system was used in the 1/12 class for the first time. 3 out of 6 points were counted to determine the final starting positions. In my opinion this is only fair and a big step forward in the process of "modernizing" 1/12 scale. As 4 more rounds were to be run on Saturday, I was hoping to continue my strong pace. On Saturday I was having problems with strange glitches on the throttle. This ruined most of my runs on Saturday as I was having trouble to control the car. I changed all my electronics, speedo, motor, sensor wire, receiver and so on without any change. The problems continued and I had to retire early in Q6 as the car was simply undrivable. I had come to the conclusion that it was my transmitter that was causing me problems. So I had to borrow a different transmitter from my Norwegian friend Lars Haugen.
Thank you Lars! I was going to use this transmitter on the Sunday's finals. As I still had claimed the 3rd overall position in qualifying, I knew that I had a good chance to fight for the win against the Finnish drivers. |
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On Sunday, one practice final was run in the morning. I immediately had a good feeling for the car as the glitching was now gone. I felt confident again like I had did in the first two qualifiers. I did not change anything on the car as I could go on and win A1 with a big gap to the other drivers, as the made a few mistakes and dropped down the order. My car felt really good as I could cruise to victory. A2 was a different story as I had problems to get past Juho Levänen for most of the race. Even after some very aggressive moves in order to overtake him, he would still re gain the first position as I dropped back to third on the very last lap after a small mistake. I knew that my car was fast enough to win so it was very frustrating not being able to get past Juho. In A3 I had to use a full new set of tires, as opposed to the new fronts/re-run rears that I had used in the previous finals.
I was simply out of re-run tires, which seemed to work better under these conditions. My car did not have as good overall traction in the A3 final so I struggled to keep up with the others. In the end, I finished just 1 second short of Juho, and narrowly missed out on the possibility to win the EC title. Had I not made a mistake on the last lap in A2, the situation would also have been different.
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Of course, I am disappointed with the outcome of the race, but still feel happy that I had a really good shot for the win, and that the car worked so well. The glitching problems in qualifying kind of messed up my game plan already, but I was almost able to go home with a win.
Anyway, let's look forward to other big races in the 1/12 class.
The EFRA held a special drivers meeting on Friday night to discuss the future of the class as it finds itself in a small crisis at the moment due to the decreased interest in the class itself and the very small entry count at this year's Euros. There were plenty of ideas to come from the meeting and some of them can be really helpful in order to get more drivers to compete in the class in the future. I hope that there are positive things to come. I personally really enjoy racing this class, but I also think that the rules needs some revising as the cars have become too difficult to drive after the introduction of LiPo batteries a couple of years ago. The weight balance of the cars is not correct, as the motor now weighs more than the battery does. Certainly something needs to be done in order to make the class appealing again.
There is also the problem with the big tire war and that every race and carpet is different. Perhaps the time has come to introduce a controlled tire? It works in other classes... |
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| Top 10 Modified: |
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1. Simo Ahoniemi
2. Juho Levänen
3. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY X12
4. Markus Mobers
5. Mark Stiles
6. Vesa Yli
7. Panu Vehniäinen
8. Daniel Sieber
9. Teemu Saarinen
10. Helge Johannesen
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