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| Race report by Bastian Hennig |
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The first International Speed Weekend was held on October 12â“14 in Kastellaun near Cologne, Germany. This is the same race as âśTOSWâť but with a change of main sponsor from âśTeam Orion.âť
Timed practice started at 8:00AM on Friday, with the Stock class putting down a lot of traction on the all-new carpet. After the ninth group, the Modified guys began their practice. In the 4th and 5th runs we saw the first difference between the teams. Team XRAY was very well prepared and set the pace for the rest. With the helpful hands of Martin and Juraj Hudy, all XRAY drivers were optimistic for the qualification runs on the Saturday. |
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Already in the first round of qualifying, Team XRAY dominated the Stock class, with nine cars at the front of the A main. Top qualifier Christoph Thiele (XRAY, Orcan) had a good pace ahead of Bastian Hennig (XRAY, Orcan) and Christopher Grimm (XRAY, Orcan).
Throughout the day of qualifying, Team XRAY was very strong and only Alexander Stocker could follow. In a very strong run, Alex set the best runtime of the day and took over TQ ahead of Bastian Hennig and Tony Streit. The last qualification run was on the Sunday. Unfortunately the traction was not high enough to make a counterattack for TQ. But with six T2â™007 cars in the A-main, Team XRAY dominated the starting grid. Also, teamwork was brilliant among the small German Team XRAY under the mentoring of SMI-Motorsport and Orcan. |
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| The first A-main was impressively dramatic right from the first corner. All cars had a good start and the field was very close. During the first pass of the straight line, Bastian overtook leader Alexander Stocker because Alex made a small mistake. From this point Bastian drove a safe final up until to the end. Alexander Stocker had a good run and took 2nd place. In 3rd position was the next strong XRAY driver, Christoph Thiele. |
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| The second final was very close again. Alex and Bastian had a brilliant start and set the pace from the first corner. Both built up a gap between them and the rest of the field. In the middle of the final, very strong driving by Meik Niemann (XRAY, Orcan) allowed him to close the gap between himself and the leading duo. At this point the order of the final was very interesting, because Meik was a great team player. He gave Bastian space to take it easy so he could concentrate on Alex. But Alex didnâ™t make any mistake so he finished this final in the lead ahead of Bastian and Mike. |
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The last final would be the decider of the winner and title in Stock. Once again the whole field had a great start without any crashes. The first 4 cars were within 2m after the first lap. In every corner we had fantastic situations with non-stop overtaking manoeuvres. Alex, Bastian, Tony and the strong Mike were going an impossible speed. Scotty got his best time and the spectators were screaming! Bastian made a little mistake in the lead, allowing Alex to pass him. After that the positions started changing even more! Meik overtook Tony and Bastian, so he was in the second position near Alex but he doesnâ™t have enough time to put pressure on him. So the finishing order was Alex ahead of Mike, Tony and Bastian.
The result after three runs of A main was:
1. Alexander Stocker
2. Bastian Hennig XRAY T2'007
3. Meik Niemann XRAY T2'007
4. Streit Tony
5. Thiele Christoph XRAY T2'007
6. Ring Florian XRAY T2'007
7. Grimm Christopher XRAY T2'007
8. Kalinowski Heinz Jurgen
9. Maurus Kai
10. Reich Patrick XRAY T2'007
B final results:
1. Schmidt Martin XRAY T2'007
2. Scharf Niels
3. Lang Matthias XRAY T2'007
4. Reschke Dominik
5. Bohlen Jan
6. Klaes Sascha
7. Schumacher Kevin XRAY T2R
8. Lanwert Thomas XRAY T2'007
9. Koch Michael XRAY T2'007
10. Pasch Patrick |
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| Race report by Martin Hudy |
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Team XRAY was strong not only in Stock but also in Modified class, being represented by fresh International Championship winner Teemu Leino, German top guns Dirk Wischnewski and Steven Weiss, Alexander Hagberg from Sweden, Cyril N`Diaye from France, Bart Wuben from Netherlands, and of course Juraj and Martin Hudy.
Teemu showcased perfect car performance in the early practice rounds on Friday and looked almost unbeatable, being 0.2sec faster than anybody else at the track. However, the situation in the last rounds of practice changed when almost all top drivers had problems with traction rolling. Only Steven, Dirk, and Cyril had no problems and they were looking very good for Saturdayâ™s qualifiers. |
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| The first round was held on not super-high traction, though many drivers already had problems with traction rolling. After the first round only Teemu and Martin made an A-main time but only one best qualifier was counted so all drivers knew that later qualifiers would be important. Traction was increasing from heat to heat and traction rolling was increasing rapidly. Teemu and Martin had the biggest problems from Team XRAY as they were traction rolling in every corner. The team was working very hard to solve this problem⦠lower ride height, harder anti-roll bars and stiffer shock oils seemed to work well. The last round of qualifiers was held on Sunday morning and saw Teemu, Cyril, Steven, and Alexander making it into the A-main. |
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| Three additional drivers could join the team and they were Dirk, Martin, and Bart. Martin set his steering angles from 26 degree to 16 and steering exponential on -30. The car was understeering but looked good because it did not traction roll. Martin was on a very good A-main pace when his car suddenly traction rolled 2 laps before the end. Dirk was unlucky as well⦠he missed the A-main by only few 10ths of the second. |
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The A-main finals were full of hard crashes and positions changed very rapidly. Cyril was definitely the fastest guy in the A-main and he managed 3rd place overall from his 8th qualifying position. However, the rest of our team was unlucky when Steven crashed in the first lap in the first final, and in the last final he was following Steen closely but he crashed into him and he decided to wait for him (being a gentleman driver) and therefore he lost his chance to finish in a good place. Alexander was unlucky as well when he was crashed in two finals and was not able to finish at the front. Teemu was only XRAY driver who did not solve his traction rolling problem in the finals and therefore he was not able to fight for top spots although his car looked super fast.
A final resutls:
1. Levanen Juho
2. Graversen Steen
3. N'Diaye Cyril XRAY T2'008
4. Moore Andy
5. Weiss Steven XRAY T2'008
6. Fischer Marc
7. Volker Ronald
8. Hagberg Alexander XRAY T2'008
9. Leino Teemu XRAY T2'008
10. Sieber Daniel
B final results:
1. Wubben Bart XRAY T2'007
2. Wischnewski Dirk XRAY T2'008
3. Ahoniemi Simo
4. Hudy Martin XRAY T2'008
5. Fleischmann Dominik
6. Leinburger Steffen
7. Andersson Christer
8. Schaefer Bastian
9. Jasmin Loic
10. Rheinard Marc |
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| Although the team was unlucky, the drivers really showed the performance of the brand new T2â™008 machine and all drivers were happy because the car worked awesome on the low traction; 95% of European races are held on low-traction tracks and this was the first race where we had this problem. |
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