Round 1 of the Turkish National Championship was held on the May 30/ June 1 weekend at the wonderful BUMOD Track in Bursa. There were over 50 competitors and the weather was hot.
Friday:
Practice was held on Friday, and the track did not have enough grip. At first I used a soft spring setup which gives me good grip at the beginning. At the end of the day , I found a good setup for seeding.
(click to enlarge)
Saturday (Qualification):
After seeding I was in 2nd place and during the qualifications my XRAY NT1 performed well. I won all three qualifications and was top qualifier for the main race. During the morning I had some understeer problems and so I made some changes to the front toe and also changed the rear roll bar to 2.4mm. The car was nearly ready, only corner entry was not enough because of the solid setup. I decided to change the caster setting and the car was 100% ready for the race. I had a lot of steering and very good power with my RB engine.
Sunday (Main final - 60 min.)
Based on tire wear rates from the 10-min qualifiers, I decided to run the main final without a tire change. I chose harder tires on the left side of the car; This helped with the excessive tire wear. The main final started without a crash but I lost 3 places in the first corner. After some laps I took back 1st place ran the entire race in that position. My pitman (Ă–zgĂĽr) was unbelievably fast in refuelling and he managed me very good. After 30 minutes I lost some of my brake. But this helped me to slow down and smoothen out my driving so I could protect my tires. In the last 10 minutes I was not sure with my tires; they looked very small and Ă–zgĂĽr told me I have to protect the tires. He was complexly right, because after the 60-min final I had 56 mm tires. Next time I'll cut my tires bigger.... It was very good race with a very good car.
