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Turkey On-Road Championship completed, at weekend there were 4 categories, Team Dark group is organizing this series and series has 4 categories, 1/10Ep Modified, 1/10Ep Stock, 1/8 Gp and 1/10 Gp.
1/10 GP race results, this season Turkey will host EFRA- Euro A-B races, so local races had more interest than before. Organization had 2 Greek racers as visitor and total 18 people registered for the race. Here is the result of top 5: |
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| 1/10 GP race results: |
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1. Nikos Karabelas
2. Mustafa Alp - XRAY NT1
3. Spiros Piknis
4. Halit Körge - XRAY NT1
5. Sertaç Palaz
1/10 EP Modified, 11 people registered for the first round, XRAY drivers Erol Ucar finished 2nd and Fatih Kaya 3rd place at race. Here is the top 5: |
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1. Kağan Aydın
2. Erol Uçar - XRAY T4
3. Fatih Kaya - XRAY T4
4. Kayhan Ketenci - XRAY T4
5. Deyvi Levitas - XRAY T4
1/10 EP Stock, 20 people registration exist at race, 13 racer used XRAY cars at race and competition level was very high. Here is the top 5: |
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1. Arman Maralan - XRAY T4
2. Kayhan Ketenci - XRAY T4
3. Ali Kaya - XRAY T4
4. Onur Karaçuhalılıar - XRAY T4
5. Çağlar Akmeşe
We are glad to inform all XRAY drivers supported at race with spare and setup support by TEAM NCRC.
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| Race Report of 1/10 EP STOCK CATEGORY WINNER ARMAN MARALAN; |
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âśT4 2015 is my first Team XRAY car. After a trouble-free build, I was impressed with the quality of T4. I opted to use ARS with recommended asphalt setup.
I arrived at EFMOD track on friday. It was dusty with very low grip. I needed lots of time to get used to my new car. I decided to use Team-NCRC MKT racing 5400 stock racing battery to achieve a good weight balance and lower CG. Standard setup was stable with some corner-exit over steer. I checked my car after a few runs and noticed a loose (not enough thread- lock) driveshaft pin. My car was ready for controlled practice.
Saturday started with cloudy weather. Track was sprayed with coke to get some more grip. My first controlled practice run was OK. 36 shore tires did not get warm enough to provide some grip. My car started to over steer after 3 minutes. My car lacked rear-end grip. For second controlled practice I decided to use 2.5 degrees rear camber instead of 2 after Umut Turkay recommended it. The car did better with some more rear-end grip but 4:30 minutes mark the car snap over steered after main straight sweeper. In the pits I saw middle belt slipped. Luckily it was undamaged and I increased belt tension. Result was promising, 3 seconds faster than Kayhan Ketenci (T4 2015) in three consecutive laps.
I did not change my setup for qualification 1. The grip increased and my car was good. Kayhan finished the race 1.5 second after me so it was close. I decided to lower rear roll center to try to get some more rear-end grip. In qualification 2 I did a mistake and finished in second place. Kayhan finished 4 seconds ahead me but I was 6 tenths faster than him. I thought Kayhan would be my main opponent and it would not be an easy win. So I decided to do some major changes. I changed ARS to standard rear suspension with 3 degrees toe-in.
Tire wear was extremely good but I cycled all the tires. Kayhan did better than me in qualification 3 but I was happy with the change since I gained some more corner-exit steering. I checked my lap times and noticed my fast laps came late. 36 shore tires struggled with low ambient temperature and I decided to change my tire-prep. Umut Turkay gave me a great advice about using 2 different additives. Qualification 4 was absolutely perfect. My car was on the rails. I had an extra 5 tenths in my pocket but did not even needed to use it. It was the best 5 minutes run in the entire weekend. I did not change anything for qualification 5 but it was getting darker and I struggled to see my car even with strong lights. Kayhan was the same so I TQ'ed the event.
On sunday I did not change anything on my car and tire-prep. A-main 1 started nice. I pushed very hard to make some gap and did it with a 31.348 best time on lap 2. I did not face any pressure so it was an easy win, 5 seconds ahead of Kayhan.
Again no change for A-main 2 since I knew I had some extra pace to use. Well it was the time to use it for A-main 2. Start was not good and I could not increase the gap. Kayhan passed me after a few corners and Ali Kaya (T4 2015) hit me slightly corner-entry. 38.661 was my first lap time. I knew I had to push hard to close the gap so I used my extra pace. I did 30.864 on lap 4, fastest lap of the weekend. I missed an apex on lap 5 and thought I would need A-main 3 but I continued to push. Kayhan was racing with Onur Karacuhalilar (T4 2015). A-main 2 finished and I walked down. Somebody said I won the race and I did not think so. I went to refrees room and noticed I somehow passed both Kayhan and Onur. Refrees checked my lap times and nothing was wrong. Later I talked with Kayhan and Onur and they said they crashed into each other in last lap and I passed them. So it was a lucky A-main 2 for me and I won the race.
I thank Halit Korpe (Team Dark) for his efforts to give us a good race, Umut Turkay (Team-NCRC) for his support and EFMOD for the great track. T4 2015 was all great, very responsive to changes and reliable. It was a pleasure to race with it. See you on race ;)âť
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| Race Report of 1/10 GP RUNNER-UP MUSTAFA ALP; |
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âśAs I had an exam on saturday morning, I had no other chance but to go to İzmir after my exam. On Thursday, I received my new NT1'15 that I immediately built that day, and Friday passed with final preparations along with studying to the exam. Luckily car build was with zero problems, and I did not lose any precious time.
Saturday afternoon, when I arrived to the track, I had already missed free practise, 2 controlled practise and 2 qualifications. I immediately set my working place and mounted on a bodyshell, started the engine and did some quick tuning. Now I needed to take place in 3rd qualifier.
Efmod Track is the facility that is going to host Efra European Championships this year. For this manner, they decided to completely rebuild and redesign the track, and make the track area even larger. Combined with a very technical layout, Laptimes for 1-10 Nitro were no less than 30 seconds!!! Very long and hard to drive track indeed.
2 Greek Drivers Spiros Piknis and Nikos Karabelas were also present at the race, to meet Turkish racers and get to know the track better for European Championship.
After first ever laps with the car, getting used to the track and taking it easy, qualification started and I made 3rd place in that round, without having a changing 2 speed. For the next round, now I had some time to actually prepare for the 4th qualification. I readjusted my 2 speed and engine, along with some small setup changes. Car was now working better, but still not perfect.
4th round was an OK run without any mistakes, and I had a TQ run, while other fast drivers had some problems in their heats.
Day ended like this, but I was not satisfied with the feel of the car.
Sunday Morning we had another qual round, but in my round track was still very slippery because of overnight rain, I used that round for engine tuning.
Now between other heats, every tiny 3-5 minutes of practice, I tried small things, which seemed to not help, I was not on a pace I would like. Before final race, I took the risk and made a lot of major changes to the car, as I had nothing to lose.
From 3rd in the starting grid, I found out in the first minute of the 45 minute final that I went to wrong direction with the setup and my car was very very hard to drive, which led me to do numerous mistakes. Nikos was 1st and I was 2nd before first pitstops but he slowly increased the gap to 1 lap throughout the race, as I struggled.
Engine tuning also went a little off at the closing part of the race, causing me to run out fuel once because of running too rich at 4:50 mark when I could go 5:30 easily at the start of the race. This costed me another 2 laps and I finished 2nd.
Spiros Piknis and XRAY driver Halit Korpe had a nice battle for 3rd place, and at the end Halit was short of time to catch Spiros, and finished 4th.
In general it was a busy and "not so relaxed" weekend for me, and Im sure I will do much better in the following races. I already know what to do on my car for the next races, and I will be better prepared.
Thanks to my sponsors for supporting me, and providing me the best equipment to race with:
EFMOD
Team XRAY
Team Ncrc
Muchmore
MKT Batteries
Hipex
Hiro Seiko
Next race will be Efra Warmup at again EFMOD track. See you there!âť
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