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| The 2009 Off-road European Championship was held July 7-11 in Wolbling, Austria. Team XRAY was well represented with their team drivers and great support crew. As usual, each XRAY driver at the Euros received a free package with spare parts and T-shirt. Plus, the XRAY service car was at the track for the whole event to provide the best customer support in the world. Off-road racing is enjoying increased popularity, with 180 participants and 17 different brands and teams. Out of the 17 teams, XRAY cars were the second most frequently used cars, with a total of 28 drivers using XRAY. |
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| The race started on Tuesday with one free practice and almost all XRAY team drivers looked very fast. Jerome, Teemu, Alex Lafranchi, Riccardo Perin, and all others were more than happy with the car. Practice continued until Thursday, enough time to find the right set-up for five rounds of qualifiers. After timed practice, Teemu, JQ, Jerome, Alex, and Riccardo looked to be the fastest from XRAY and we hoped for some good performances in the race. |
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| Alex had the fastest XB808 in qualifiers. He was extremely fast right from the first round and with fast & consistent results was able to keep the pace until the last round when he made a few mistakes. Overall he qualified in a very good 12th place. Another direct semi-finalist with XRAY was Teemu who was really fast in the last qualifier. He made three small errors but still his excellent performance was enough to set a top 10 result in that round which helped to move him into overall 13th position. Jerome was fast as well, but some bad luck (mainly in the last round when he was in a very good position) cost him the direct semi; he finished 20th which put him into the 1/4 final. Riccardo finished in 30th place which also put him into the 1/4 final. In the 1/8 final we had Ari and JQ, who were not in the warm up and did not have enough track time compared to others⦠this cost them better results. |
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| In 1/8 final, JQ was very fast and thanks to consistent error-free driving bumped up to the 1/4 final without problem. Ari â“ who started from 1st place â“ was not that lucky and after a small error after the start dropped back into the middle of the field. Although he tried to push very hard, he was not able to bump up. He attributed this mainly to a bad choice of tire compound. |
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| In 1/4 final A, Jerome had a promising chance to bump up to the semi-final. He had a great start when he was able to stay in 2nd place for the first few laps. Unfortunately, he made a mistake on the triple jump when he was trying to take the lead. In such high competition, the drop to 8th place means almost zero chance to bump up. Jerome tried pushing very hard which resulted in the fastest lap of the track by that time (44.00) but sadly it was not enough to push him into a bump-up position. |
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| In 1/4 final B, Riccardo had a very good start just like Jerome. He was in 3rd place for most of the race until the second refueling when his engine stopped. Even though the mechanics restarted the engine immediately, he lost his position and dropped to 5th place. Riccardo tried to push hard as well, but just like JQ in this final was not able to bump up to the semi-final. |
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| In 1/2 final A, we had Teemu who also had a very good start. Teemuâ™s car looked very good and extremely fast. Teemu had an awesome, error-free run and was able to finish in a very good 4th place behind Savoya, Battle, and Bloomfield. For a driver who does not drive off-road very often, it was very good result! |
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| In 1/2 final B, Alex Lafranchi was the last driver who had a solid chance to bump up into the final. His start was not as stellar as the rest of the team, as he tried to move to the front as much as possible which inevitably led to mistakes. Alex tried to get back to the top⦠but this in turn led to OTHER mistakes. In the middle of the race, Alexâ™s engine stopped and from that point it was clear that he had no chance to bump up. It was very disappointing for all of us because he was very fast for the whole week and he deserved to be in the final. Such is racing. |
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| So in the main final we had only Teemu, who started 7th on the grid. Teemu looked very fast in the warm-up laps and this gave us a chance to hope for a great result. He was very fast after the start and moved very quickly to 4th place behind Savoya, Yannick, and Battle. Teemu was able to keep his 4th place for the first quarter of the final. However, he was not able to keep up the pace for the rest of the race because he chose a soft tire compound and after 15 minutes his tires overheated which gave the car too much traction. As such he made a few mistakes and dropped to 9th place. In the end he was able to keep this position and finished in a very respectable position. |
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| XRAY could celebrate because they achieved 1st and 2nd place at the European Championships. It was the European Championship where 40+ drivers battled in the 20min final before the main final. Twelve drivers over 40 showed great racing where in the end it was Italian XRAY driver Stefano Morretti won the final in front of XRAY president and designer Juraj Hudy. So, XRAY achieved a double podium result in this category! |
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| Moreover, XRAY finished on the podium one more time when Portugese youngster Ricardo Monteiro finished in a great 3rd position in the Junior category. |
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| In total, XRAY achieved three podium results with one win and one final result in the high competition class. Plus, they were the second most used car at the event with only few team drivers. |
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