This weekend was held the 3rd round of the nationals in north of Portugal at a very old track. The track is located close Oporto town and has been closed for about ten years and now local club decided re-open this place called Sao Joao da Madeira. It is an amazing track but the tarmac is very aggressive to the tires, due to do no racing at this track for such a long time, the main problem is tire consumption.
On Saturday we started with practice and tried to help all teammates with NT1 and RX8 ,this time we had some drivers in 1/10 class and more in 1/8 class with also one girl driving RX8. As this was his first experience at this track, Bruno has to quickly learn the layout of the track and find out how to save tires.
Sunday started amazing because local people prepared ceremony for Bruno, a very nice appreciation of our work we have been doing for all these years. Thank you!
During qualification Bruno went for nothing less than TQ in both classes with one lap over the second place driver. NT1 worked perfectly and so was the RX8 prototype. Bruno qualified directly to the finals. Unfortunately in 1/8 class Nuno had a crash in his semis and Solangeâ™s receiver stopped working so she had to retire from her semis with only 5 minutes to go. She improved her driving skills a lot but some bad luck hold her from better results.
Finals:
1/10 final
Bruno took the lead right after the star and build the lead of one lap, but at end of 10th minute a loose screw forced him to go to pits. He lost a lot of time and 3 laps so from that moment he pushed hard breaking the best lap time lap after lap, and with one tire change in the middle of the race he was able to recover his lead and finish in the first position one lap ahead the first runner up.
(click to enlarge)
1/10 results
1. Bruno Coelho TQ - XRAY NT1
2. Carlos Rodrigues 3. Pedro Grandao - XRAY NT1
4. Rolando Caseiro 5. Pedro Diniz - XRAY NT1
6. Paulo Mota - XRAY NT1
7. Tiago Afonso
8. Carlos Ferreira 9. Abilio Ganilho - XRAY NT1
10. Nuno Silva
1/8 final
Brunoâ™s biggest rival broke his engine after ten laps of the race and so made it much easier for Bruno and let us to test the prototype even more. Even with 3 tire changes Bruno won the race with 7 lap gap over Hugo Exposto in second place.
(click to enlarge)
1/8 results
1. Bruno Coelho TQ - XRAY RX8
2. Hugo Exposto
3. Jorge Azinheira
4. Paulo Rodrigues
5. Raul Prata
6. Joaquim Rego
7. Jose Felix
8. Andre Goncalves
9. Claudio Souto
10. Andres Diz Montez
