The 7th and last Swiss Championship race took place in the middle of the city of Morges at beautiful lake Geneva in Switzerland. It is hosted on a temporary grass track every year and attracts a lot of spectators, which is always exciting. The weather was thankfully almost perfect all weekend and there were about 120 drivers present.
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The track was a nice layout with a mix of some high speed and a lot of low-speed corners with sadly only a few small jumps and one table. It was not too hard and this led to some very close racing. I chose my setup based on past experience on grass tracks but having never driven the XB8 on grass I was wondering how it would handle. However my setup was almost spot-on from the beginning of practice and it was pure joy to drive the car. Throughout the whole weekend I only changed caster by 1mm and ride height and droop by a few mms.
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On Saturday's qualifying rounds I TQ'd two rounds out of four and only missed overall TQ to Jeremy Pittet by one point. In the last round my car caught the metal edge of a jump that was sticking out at almost full speed. There was a huge bang and my car made a front flip on the spot about 1 meter high. I thought everything was destroyed, as it had happened there to other cars, but it was only the front bumper that looked very very bad and I could continue. Marc Heim was also very quick and put his XB8 on third place on Saturday.
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On Sunday the track had lost some grip and developed some holes and ruts, but still my setup was very good. I passed the semifinal easily but had to let Jean-Marc Betticher go because my tyres were degrading a lot towards the end. I started the final on third place and chose to change to another brand of tyre which was a bit of a risk. I had a good start and after two laps I was already second so it still worked. After the leader Jeremy Pittet made his second stop I even led the race for a short while, and when I then also stopped I was close behind. However Jeremy was driving perfectly and I couldn't catch up even though I only made very few mistakes. I finished the race on second half a lap behind Jeremy and a lap infront of third placed Joachim Kallen.
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I finished the Swiss Championship Expert overall in third place. More could have been possible if not for some bad races, but all in all I am happy with this result as it is a long and hard season with lots of different tracks (Dirt, Clay, Astroturf, Grass, Concrete etc...) and I closed the distance to the top a lot compared to last season.
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My friend Romeo Grass also came second in his race and won the Amateur Championship with his XB9. He's showing a lot of promise for next year when he will drive in the Expert Category too.
I'm looking very much forward to my first World Championship now.
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Final result:
1. Jeremy Pittet 2. Robin Frischkopf - XRAY
3. Joachim Kallen
