Futaba OS Jakarta Open is a yearly event held at the Jakarta International Twin Circuit. It is a 2-day event but many foreign drivers from Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei arrived at the track 3 days beforehand for practice. There were a total of 110 participants in this race: 60 drivers for 1/10 Nitro and 50 drivers for 1/8. The schedule for this race was 3 rounds of qualifying on Saturday, while Sunday had 1 more round of qualifying and all the Finals. This year we have about 30 XRAY cars competing in this event.
Saturday (Qualifying Rounds 1, 2 & 3)
The first qualifying round started at 9:30AM after the opening ceremony. The weather was good and all 3 rounds of qualifying were run successfully. By the end of the day there were 5 XRAY cars in the top 10. Erwin Luhur secured TQ position, Sadikin Sutrisno 2nd position, Usman Halim 8th position, Danny Iswahyudi 9th position, and Linardi got 10th position.
Sunday (Qualifying round 4 & Finals)
The last qualification was run on the second day with many drivers pushing hard to improve their qualifying positions. The changing traction on this challenging track was very well handled by the character of the NT1 but unfortunately no XRAY drivers improved on their times except for Danny Iswahyudi who bumped up from 9th to 3rd position. The XRAY NT1 had a sweep (1st, 2nd , 3rd ) in qualifying, thus putting 5 XRAY cars in the Grand Final.
Qualifying Result : 1) Erwin Luhur XRAY NT1
2) Sadikin Sutrisno XRAY NT1
3) Danny Iswahyudi XRAY NT1
4) Kris Herianna
5) Teddy Syach
6) Arya Ridho
7) Fayakhun Andriadi 8) Usman Halim XRAY NT1
9) Agung Dorojatun 10) Linardi XRAY NT1
Grand Finals
It was a good start for Erwin Luhur and he immediately took off and led the pack. Sadikin had a slight incident during the start and thus dropped back to 5th position. Sadikin chased down the pack and by lap 14 he was able to get back into 2nd position right behind his teammate Erwin Luhur. As for Danny, he ran into engine trouble with multiple flameouts, thus dropping him to the back.
By lap 17 for the first fuel stop, Erwin luhur had a slight longer fuel stop which dropped him back a few positions. Coming out from the first fuel stop it was Sadikin Sutrisno that took the lead now. For the next 11 laps Sadikin led the pack while Erwin Luhur drove immaculately to regain his position. During the 30th lap Sadikin made a slight mistake and thus allowed Erwin luhur to pass for the lead. Erwin led for the next 20 laps with Sadikin following closely behind. In the meanwhile, Usman and Linardi were driving hard to regain their positions.
An unfortunate event happened again for Sadikin and Danny. Sadikinâ™s rear belt stripped while he was in 2nd position, ending his chance of a podium finish and taking him out out of the race completely. Danny continued to have engine problems and thus never recovered throughout the race.
Erwin Luhur continued to drive with amazing speed and his leading position was never challenged. After the 45min race, Erwin Luhur crossed the finish line and won the 2008 Futaba cup with 2 laps over 2nd position. Usman Halim drove a clean race to a final 4th position, and Linardi climbed from his starting 10th position to 6th position.
