The seventh of nine runs for the eastern German championship took place in Leipzig.
When I started practice on Saturday morning, the track was dry and dusty. I learned the layout and tried out different tyres. After some light rain the track had lots of grip.
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I worked intensely on my setup and the biggest change occured when I changed to blue-grey springs and used thicker oil in my dampers. Another step in the right direction was using thinner oil for the diffs. I find that the XRAY has so much traction on its own that you cannot win anything with thicker oil but you will lose the softness and ease of driving, which the 808 has. When the rain became heavier, practice was canceled.
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Sunday morning, I made a mistake in my first qualifying run and had to repair my car during the 2nd and 3rd runs. In the fourth run I qualified for semi-final B, which ran smoothly and without any problems. The track was extremely dry again and I finished 3rd, which placed me in 5th position for the A final.
I made some minor setup changes and the car became even better to drive. In the final, I had the chance to take P1 after 20 mins and never gave it up again, while making only few mistakes and having very quick pitstops.
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My first win in a championship race after all those years feels really good and it shows that everything is moving into the right direction and the whole package becomes better and better. All the work we put into our own fuel development, the numerous setup improvements for the XRAY 808, Novarossi engines, and so on become visible now.
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A big thanks goes out to Max Block, who pitted for me in the final, to "the Schlautis", MRC-Leipzig, SMI Motorsport, Team-Sheperd and to all drivers from German "SK-Ost", where our hobby is great fun!
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Final results
1. Guido Backsmann XRAY XB808
2. Phillip Rosenthal
3. Mirko Morgenstern
4. Sven Schlautmann
5. Michael Schröder
