Last week we had the 1st running of a EC for B license drivers in the 200mm cateogory.
We travelled most of Sunday to be at the track in Belgium for the beginning of free practice on Monday. Arriving at the track we were greeted with great sunshine and a beautiful facility.
Practicing from Monday to Thursday, most drivers had 3 runs per day to perfect setups and tyre combinations.
I used most of the runs available testing different settings with roll bars and diff oils.
All the Xray cars looked very fast in free practice and looked the least likely to grip roll, which was causing major problems for most competitors.
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
We had a balanced setup that would hopefully be quick enough to secure a top 4 position.
The fourth round proved to be the quickest of them all, unfortunately I had a coming together with another car close to the end of the 5 minutes, losing 2 seconds which was enough to split 3-10. The top ten managed the magic 20 laps. An excellent result putting 3 Xray cars in the top ten, with Walti Beat directly qualifying in 4th place.
Unfortunately we had 4 cars in the one semi-final so the best we could hope for was 3 cars to bump up from this semi. We nearly had our wish as we were holding the top 3 positions right to the last corner when Adam was overtaken.
With 3 cars in the main final anything could happen over the 45 minutes. With tyre strategies key to performance we had big decisions to make before the final. Tyre change or no tyre change? I decided to go for bigger tyres and no change. Walti and Traugott decided to change the RHS only. Unfortunately all of us ran into problems and we could only manage 5th, 7th & 9th. It was a shame as the cars performed faultlessly all week and again proved to be super competitive.
