As always after the long national series it is time to get back to indoor tracks. And that means it is time for the Rebellion Race! The race was organized by the small MMR club in Mäntsälä.
This time again the event had multinational flavors. Racers from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia were our fellow guests. Race classes were 1/12 Mod Pan Cars, Touring Mod, Touring ProStock, Touring Stock and Mini. The Mini class is a spec class with strict rules to keep it simple using the Tamiya Mini platform.
On Friday it was time for some practise on the new carpet. On the week of the race, the shipment of CRCâ™s new carpet arrived. There were some speculations on how it would work, but it turned out very well! The traction increased logically and there wasnâ™t even any fuzz on cars after a pack. The layout was something totally new. There wasnâ™t a main straight but a âśmain sweeperâť.
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Saturday
Saturday morning started with one round of timed practise followed by four qualification rounds. It was going to be a total of five rounds with the best time counting. Some racers were expecting very high grip conditions, but the grip was quite stable all day long.
Best round results were done in the first round in modified with new tires. It was AE driver Christer Andersson who had the overnight pole. Pekka and I were a bit out of setup on this track as it needed so much on-power steering. As always we were tuning the cars to get it right as a team. Also we had a bonus team manager on Saturday, semi-retired ex-XRAY team driver Teppo Kauppinen. Who would be better for that job than a skilled driver while not driving in this race?
Miko and Pekka still were in quite good pace through the day. I was bit off, wrenching on other team memberâ™s cars better than my own and making mistakes on the track.
The Prostock class had slightly different drivers this time. Some of the national series best drivers were driving Modified and XRAY Modified driver Pauli Helin opted again to race in ProStock in this race. The Russians had basic cars so no clear advantage for them as last yearâ™s race. Pauli drove wise and fast and TQâ™d every round. Some were also as fast as him but solid error free runs were Pauliâ™s advantage.
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Sunday
Everyone was hoping that the Sunday morning early qualification round would be a rocket as usual. A bit odd though was that many top drivers didnâ™t improve. I was going to, but again some errors on track due to different car setup held me back. I would have done better if I had some practise with the quite different setup from Saturday but that wasnâ™t an option.
Maybe the most surprising thing for all were the Miko Teponojaâ™s result in the last round, he TQâ™d Modified with style using his 008! You can only imagine how tight the racing was when I tell you this: Top 5 Modified drivers had their results in 0.5sec time window! And the 6th was only one second short of Mikoâ™s TQ time.
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In Prostock Pauli was where he should, on TQ after all rounds. Lindvall, Koskinen and Karpov took 6-8-9 positions with their XRAYâ™s. Stock TQ was taken by Eetu Luukkonen followed by August Poutiainen with his 007.
Finals
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All finals were run three times with the best two counting. In Mod it was Mikoâ™s dominance by winning the first and second final. To make it solid also the 3rd final was won by him. Pekka tuned the car for the finals using something from Mikoâ™s setup and was flying with luck from 8th to strong 3rd!
ProStock was taken by Pauli leading every lap on the first two finals. He didnâ™t race the 3rd final in ProStock but instead in the last Modifiedâ™s C-Final with racers and race organizers permission just for fun.
While in Stock the battle between Eetu and August went to Augustâ™s favor. So another win for XRAY in this race! In 1/12 pan cars, Simo Ahoniemi took the win.
All the best of luck to all XRAY winners for future races! Many thanks to organizers and XRAY for support! We will see again on 21 â“ 23th November Nordic Indoor Championships race at Kuusankoski! Welcome all Nordic racers!
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Results of the TOP 10
Modified:
1 Teponoja Miko XRAY T2'008
2 Levänen Juho 3 Koivula Pekka XRAY T2'008
4 Ahoniemi Simo
5 Trzaska Sebastian
6 Rytsy Teemu
7 Kutvonen Viljami
8 Minkkinen Joni
9 Kuusinen Matias
10 Andersson Christer
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Prostock:
1 Helin Pauli XRAY T2'008
2 Heinonen Arto
3 Hölttä Matti
4 Korvenmaa Matti 5 Koskinen Risto XRAY T2'007 6 Karpov Vitaly XRAY T2'008
7 Kerola Jukka
8 Salmela Sami
9 Valtanen Janne 10 Lindvall Niko XRAY T2'008
