The first race of the 2005 XRAY Challenge for Electric Touring was held in Greece on a beautiful day. A were a lot of participants (by our standards) and a good atmosphere in the pits as everyone was anxious to start racing.
The XRAY team consisted of:
⢠John Takas
⢠Nick Nikolakopoulos
⢠John Doucakis
⢠Tasos Papadopoulos
There were two qualifying rounds and three finals for each heat.
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In first qualifying the track was quite cool and the tyres I used did not heat up enough to produce the traction that I had experienced the previous days while practicing. This resulted in my qualifying in 3rd place with many mistakes in my driving. Pole position went to George Amaxas with his Tamiya TRF 415 and 2nd place on the grid went to Harris Katikas (current Greek National Champion) with his Losi XXXS. The 2nd XRAY of Nick Nikolakopoulos qualified in 6th position.
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For the first final I made some set-up changes which included laying down both front and rear shocks by one hole, and also adding the front anti-roll bar. I was using the XRC chassis but on the upper deck, on the holes for rear bulkhead I had opened them up and installed an O-ring to each screw.
This was done to add a little bit of flex and increase traction. I chose this way instead of using the normal thinner FT chassis because the XRC places the batteries a little bit upfront and the steering servo is closer to the center of the car. In addition the XRC is so thick that the car is never tweaked, no matter how hard I crash.
At the start of the first final I had no traction at all as the tyre traction I used did not work well. By the end of the first lap I was dead last! Then the tyres were starting to come up to operating temperature and I started to close on the racers ahead of me. Since this was an extremely fast and flowing race track I knew I had to keep calm and not overdrive the car. Lap after lap I kept on overtaking anyone who was ahead of me. Around 2 minutes I was behind Nick, the other XRAY driver, who at that time was in 3rd position. He tried his best to defend his position but my car was simply too good and after about a lap and a half I managed to overtake him. Now I was in 3rd place and in front of me I had a very fast Tamiya driver with his TB Evo 4 in first place and Harris Katikas (current Greek Champion) in 2nd place with his Losi. In just a few corners I overtook Harris and then two laps later I overtook George. I managed to overtake them easily on the straight as I had a very obvious power advantage.
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So the first final was over and I managed to take the win even though I found myself in last position after the first lap. This time I was extremely happy with the handling of my car and the power from my motor and batteries.
In the second final Harris did not put up a fight and let me through in the first corner. From then, a few corners later, I overtook pole sitter Amaxas with his TRF 415 and cruised to victory with a one lap lead over second place racer.
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Having won both the 1st and 2nd finals I decided to stay out of the 3rd final and watch the last race. In this last final Harris was very consistent and stayed away from driving errors. In second place Nick with his XRAY was driving beautifully until he dumped with only a few meters to go. George Koritsidis took advantage of this and crossed the line in 2nd place leaving Nick in 3rd place.
So the top 3 of the A Final were as follows:
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1. John Doucakis XRAY
2. Harris Katikas
3. George Koritsids
In the B final another XRAY driver dominated the race by winning all three finals.
Winner of the B Final :
1. John Takas XRAY
A big âśThanksâť goes to XRAY for making such a great car and to NOSRAM for great ESC and amazing batteries. Finally ORION V2 motors gave me plenty of consistent power.
I am looking forward to an exciting 2005 racing season.
