| Race Report by Tim Mckay |
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| The 2008 Off Road IC Nationals were this year held at the ARCCC Club in Auckland. With this event catering for 1/8th Buggy and 1/8th Truggy entry numbers were pretty high with 67 buggys and 49 truggies entered. XRAY had a very good representation here with over ? of the buggy field XRAY Buggies(15x XB808s and 2x ECâ™s), while only 4 of the Truggy field were XRAY Truggies. |
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| The event started Friday with Open Practice for 4 hours then 2 rounds of controlled practice in your qualifying heats. Then late Friday afternoon they did 1 round of qualifying, with the remaining 5 rounds to be held Saturday, and then Sunday was to be Finals Only. |
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| During practice most cars were struggling with changing track conditions, making set up and tyre choice very challenging, however the track settled down a bit more on Saturday and it made racing a bit better. |
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| After Qualifying all I remember was I placed 8th in Buggy and 5th in Truggy, Iâ™m unsure of other XRAY cars as due to computer dramas, no real qualifying list was put up. However some of the XRAY buggies were going good somewhere inside or outside the top 20 I think, with Adrian Lorenzen and Robert Maskell doing exceptionally well as usual. |
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| Onto Finals now, with the meeting running about 3 hours behind schedule on the Sunday finals finally got underway just before lunchtime with the lower finals, quite a few XRAYs made some bump ups up to higher finals and finally about 4.30pm or so the truggy Semi Finals were up next. In my Truggy Semi final I started off grid 3 and after a lap I found myself behind Mike Stratford, so I just cruised around, and kept car clean and straight and finished only a few secs behind Mike, in the other Semi Final XRAY racer Greg Mawson has a mechanical failure and retired early. So with my 2nd placing in this Semi I started the shortened 45min A Final off Grid 3. |
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| In the Buggy Semi I made a half decent start, but in turn 3 or 4 I got tagged by someone coming back onto the track and flipped upside down and pretty much ended up at the back of the field, and after this the car felt very twitchy and nervous in the rear, then after a few more laps the drivetrain kept locking up and kept stalling the engine, so this was effectively my race meeting ended. In my Semi XRAY driver Adrian Lorenzen ended up 5th and got a bump up into A final. |
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| In the other Semi final there were 3 XRAYs in it and Robert Maskell ended up 7th and got the lucky final bump up spot into the A final. |
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| Onto Truggy Final now and with the day dragging on these got shortened from 1 hour to 45mins as many of us had to catch flights home. |
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| I made a good start in truggy, was 2nd for about 13 laps until I got hit by a slower backmarker after passing him, this letting 3rd place pass me and dropping me back to 3rd. For remainder of race I kept circulating and putting down consistent laps, until about 17 minutes from the end when my Rear wing just popped off when I got the 6 pack jumps wrong, although this didnâ™t affect performance at slow speed, it made car very hard to control at high speed, most notably at turn 1, and turn 3 and 4, plus a few infield sections too. Luckily by this time I had a lap up on 4th, so I just drove car as quickly and safely as I could and managed to bring it home in 3rd, still about ? of a lap ahead of 4th place. |
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Truggy Final Placings:
1st Jason Dyckhoff
2nd Mike Stratford
3rd Tim Mckay XRAY XT8
4th Scott McCreanor
5th Alan Looi |
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Unfortunately, due to computer issues and meeting running about 3 or 4 hours behind schedule, Straight after Truggy Final we had to load our gear into our suitcases and head to the Airport to fly home, so never got to see the buggy Final, However Robert Maskell Ended up 7th and Adrian Lorenzen ended up 8th, so great effort by both guys!
Overall not a bad weekend, To Get 3rd in truggy for the 2nd year in a row was very pleasing, especially against all the latest and greatest truggies that have been released lately.
It was disappointing to not make Buggy Final, however even if I had made it, I would have had to have left before it started anyway due to meeting running that far behind schedule and having to catch a plane to fly home.
Would also like to thanks XRAY for the great cars, VP Pro and finally Zoom Resources. |
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