The North Harbour Radio Control Car Club (NHRCCC) hosted the 2011 EP On-road New Zealand Nationals on the 12th and 13th February. Their purpose built track is situated on the outskirts of Auckland in the suburb of Albany.
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The track is very flowing with a great mix of high speed and low speed sections. There is a large 50m straight with a 270 degree sweeper immediately after. The left front tyre really takes a beating as its under serious load for a good 2-3 seconds. Its then a quick change of direction for another 180 degree sweeper in the opposite direction continuing on towards the rest of the track. Grip levels were ever increasing thanks to the extremely large entry list of 167 cars. One of the largest events in NZ for quite some time.
I had travelled up from my local town of Hamilton, about a 90min drive, on Thursday to work on my setup of the new T3â™2011 in both the Modified and Super-Stock (13.5) classes. The Super-Stock class features boost/turbo electronic speed controllers making them extra fun to drive while sounding fantastic at full boost too.
Both the Modified and Super Stock classes ran the same control tyre for the event which meant a reduced tyre bill as you could move a test set of the control tyre from one car to the other. The Much-More Absolute 32deg tyres were working surprising well and seemed to be lasting for a long time before losing their adhesion. Tire allocation was restricted to two sets for modified and one set for Super Stock. If a driver made the A-Final, they were given the option to purchase a second set.
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The meeting featured Thursday and Friday as controlled practice, Saturday would see three rounds of qualifying and the rocket round system used. Then on Sunday, 3 finals would run with a points system for your best two results counting towards your final points tally.
I used both days of practice to try different setting on both the cars. With 167 cars running on a regular basis, grip levels were getting better and better and by Saturday morning I was fairly confident with both my cars setups.
SUPER STOCK:
Saturday saw a change to weather conditions with much cooler air and track temperatures. A quick warm-up in the morning to make sure the car was running correctly showed some small issues in setup. In particular rear end traction on power. The 13.5 class relies on quite a bit of corner speed and I was struggling to get the temperature into the rear tyres for the first 2-3mins of a run. I changed the rear spring, shock mount position and rear diff fluid to try and compensate for this. The changes werenâ™t perfect but based on my lap times in warm-up I decided to leave the car as it was.
Qualifying
The first round of qualifying couldnâ™t have gone better. I was the only driver to set 15 laps and took TQ for the round. The car was actually very good and I was able to drive around a couple of small handling issues. It was quick (actually quicker than some of the modified cars) but inconsistent. However gut instinct was to leave it as it was.
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Round 2 was slower by 3 seconds as a result of traffic issues but I was still in TQ for the class thanks to my round 1 time being quicker. There were however other drivers now reaching 15 lap pace. Round 3 needed to be quicker if I wanted to make sure of TQ and it was. I managed to improve on my Round 1 qualifier by 3 seconds giving me Pole Position for the 3 finals on Sunday. My quickest time was 15laps in 5min 09secs, a 7.1 second advantage of Jeremy MacMahon in second place.
Finals
An early start on Sunday and with fresh tyres on the car I was ready for finals day.
Race 1 was a fantastic race between me and Ivan Ho, a local club member of NHRCCC. I managed maintain the lead from start to finish but Ivan kept me honest through the entire run and only one mistake could have cost me the win. By the sounds of the buzzer, I finished 4 seconds ahead of Ivan and collected 10 points.
In race 2, I managed to get a very good start and opened up a good gap on second place. I settled down and concentrated on making sure I made no mistakes. A mistake by Ivan on lap 12 handed Jeremy 2nd place and with those guys battling for second and third position I managed to cross the line taking the win and the only 15 lapper of the round. With two wins I had secured a maximum of 20points and the New Zealand Super Stock National title.
Final positions:
1. Andrew Webber â“ T3â™2011
2. Ivan Ho
3. Jeremy MacMahon
4. Russell Cloughley
5. Jonathon Thompson
Qualifying
The result in round 1 of qualifying was a real surprise for me. The car just didnâ™t feel right and I was finding it difficult to drive on power. It wasnâ™t a handling problem but an ESC setting issue as the car was simply lighting up all 4 tyres at certain points of the track under acceleration. I had been playing with the boost function of my ESC in an attempt to sneak a little bit more top end out of the car. The idea was not to touch the bottom end but for some odd reason it had done the reverse. Even though the car was difficult to drive, I actually TQâ™d the round by 2.3secs.
For Round 2 of qualifying Iâ™d made some adjustments to the ESC and immediately noticed a huge improvement to driveability of the car. Simply an amazing the difference. Some errors within the qualifier meant that although I was quicker by 2.5secs I was currently in second place overall. I had lost TQ by 0.425 of a second. I had some setup changes in mind for the final qualifier. I changed the front shock oil from 350cst to 400cst and went back to the kit 1.2mm rear bar.
In round 3 of qualifying the car was dialled! It was simply impossible to fault the cars setup and it showed in the results. I set the only 16 lap run of the meeting, setting a new track record of 16laps in 5min 18secs and new lap record of 19.609sec for a modified car on control rubber. With a consistency of 0.157 it just shows how well the car was handling.
So after 3 rounds of qualifying, I had achieved Top Qualifier and Pole Position for tomorrows finals.
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Finals
Sunday would see slightly hotter days and lap times were a little off the low 19â™s of Saturday. I carried on with the same setup as Saturday and prepared my card for Final 1.
It was a very disappointing start to Final 1. All of the hard work getting pole position on the grid disappeared almost immediately. As soon as a I pulled the trigger the car did a complete 360deg spin and was then collected by a car coming through the pack. This sent me off the track and into no-mans land. I corrected the car and immediately set after trying to claw back as many positions as I could. The setup from Q3 was still working well and the car was super easy to drive fast. With 3 minutes to go I had clawed my way up to 4th position. I made a pass for 3rd but 2nd and 3rd were battling for position and I collected by one of them as they accidently came together. I was now back down to 6th. With 2 minutes of the race to go, I figured a podium position was possible. I picked off 5th and 4th quickly. I then made my way up to 2nd after the 2nd placed car made a mistake and rolled. With 30 seconds to go I made a pass under brakes and then made sure I made no mistakes while out in front. It was a win by 2.6 seconds. An incredible result considering the start.
Final 2 and my bad luck at starting continued. I attempted to get the car off the line without grabbing a whole lot of throttle. Unfortunately this put me on a different line and different entry speed to the first corner than what I was used to. I collected the curb on corner one, the car rolled and landed on a dirty part of the track. I tried to accelerate but a stone had got stuck in the wheel and I was out of the race! The highs and lows of R/C racing in only a few hours. I was extremely disappointed at the result but knew I had one more chance at picking up the NZ Modified title.
Race 3 and as they say, things happen in threeâ™s, I accidently touched the trigger of my transmitter before the sound of starting hooter. I had got away well in the race and had about a 2-3 second lead over second place. I was then called into the pits for a stop-go for what the race director considered a jump start. I completed the stop-go and managed to my surprise to be in second place behind fellow Team Xray driver Michael Jones. Michael called me through on the stand to pass and I took the lead, and from there and never let it go. A win by 7.6 seconds and the 2011 New Zealand Modified Title!
Final positions:
1. Andrew Webber T3â™2011
2. Karl Meyer
3. Pearce Stephens 4. Michael Jones T3â™2011
5. Sam Cooney
The New Zealand EP Onroad champs for 2011 was a fantastic meeting not only for me but also for Xray. The new 2011 T3 is by far the best car I have ever driven and I would to say a huge thanks to Xray for supporting me. A big thanks also to Zoom Resources in Christchurch for their support and making it all happen. Thanks to Graham Barthow, Kevin Davey and my family for their support also.
