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| Race report by Martin Hudy |
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| The 2011 European Indoor Championships was held in Czech Republic on February 24-27. Team XRAY was represented at this event by Alex Hagberg, Teemu Leino, Martin and Juraj Hudy, Adrian Berntsen, Francesco Martini, Zdeno Kunak, Zdeno Hamak, David Ehrbar and of course by other drivers from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, and of course Czech Republic. |
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| The race started on Thursday with free practice and continued on Friday with controlled practice and two rounds of qualifiers. On Saturday there were another three rounds of qualifiers and on Sunday there were three rounds of finals with one final practice in the morning. The 2 best results out of 5 qualifiers were counted. |
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| Team XRAY was fast already from the first practice with Alex Hagberg, Teemu and Adrian setting the fastest lap times. The man to beat was Ronald Volker who has been unbeatable on carpet for more than one year. The performance of XRAY cars from early practices gave us a good feeling that maybe this race was going to be one to overturn things. |
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| The car was working very well from the first round of practice and therefore we did not need many set-up changes. The only difference that we made during the practice was that we put a gear diff into the front but instead of using oil inside we put in a small amount of cleaning gum which made the diff very stiff but still able to move. This set up change helped to increase traction and on-power steering. Not all drivers liked it but Alex, Teemu, and Martin kept it in the car for the rest of the race. Because traction was very low, the team decided to use softer springs than usual to increase traction. We were using 2.6 springs in the front and 2.4 in the rear. By these two changes, the car was getting very good traction and steering. |
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| Qualifiers went very well for us even though we were not able to set TQ. We were very close in many rounds, but luck was not on our side this time. The closest was Teemu in the 3rd round when he was leading the qualifier until 30 seconds to the end when he was passing a slower driver and they hit each other. So we were not able to set TQ but we were more than happy with the qualifiers, because the car was working very well and we had so many drivers who were able to make the A main. Right from the beginning it was clear that we would have the most cars in the final, the only question being how many. At the end, half of the field (5 out of 10) were XRAY cars. Zdeno Hamak, who was driving very fast and set couple of times top 10 results, was very unlucky. He still had a chance to make A-main in the last qualifiers but he made a couple of mistakes and finished 12th. The last round of qualifiers decided who would start behind Ronald. Alex, Adrian, Teemu and Yannick all had one 2nd place, so whoever finished 2nd would start from that position. Teemu was holding this spot for the whole round until last lap when Alex was able to get ahead of him and finish 2nd overall. |
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| Qualifiers: |
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1. Ronald Volker
2. Alexander Hagberg XRAY T3`11
3. Yannick Pruemper
4. Adrian Bernsten XRAY T3`11
5. Teemu Leino XRAY T3`11
6. Freddy Suedhoff
7. Martin Hudy XRAY T3`11
8. Viljami Kutvonen
9. Dominik Fleischmann
10. Zdeno Kunak XRAY T3`11
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XRAY was not only the most used car in the final, but it was also the most used car of the event with almost half of the field being XRAY cars.
XRAY - 28 cars
Yokomo - 12
Tamiya - 11
Kyosho - 3
Hot Bodies - 2
Top Racing - 1
Asso - 1
Awesomatic - 1 |
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The first final was a close battle between Ronald and Alex. Alex was able to keep minimum distance between him and Ronald and was waiting for a mistake. Unfortunately Ronald stayed calm during the whole final and did not make any mistake and won by only 0.8sec ahead of Alex. Teemu finished 3rd. Zdeno Kunak was able to move from 10th to 5th position in front of Martin who was crashed from the rear and had the body bend up under the rear wheel. However, his car was working very well and he was able to move back to 6th position. Adrian finished 9th after having made a mistake.
The second final was again very similar to the first final with Alex closely following Ronald, but he did not make a mistake and won also the second final and so became European Champion. Alex finished 2nd.
The third final would decide who was going to be 2nd and 3rd. Since Ronald was already the overall winner, he did not start this final. After the start, everything went well for us when Alex kept the lead position followed by Yannick. Teemu went too much inside in the first corner after the start and unfortunately crashed into Adrian so both would not have a chance to finish the final in a good position. Because of this accident, Freddy was able to move on 4th position, closely followed by Martin. Alex was leading the final after the half-way point when his rear gear diff broke and his car started to spin; he had to stop racing. By this time Yannick got into the lead ahead of Freddy, followed by Martin, Viljami and Teemu. Nobody made any mistakes and so the order did not change. It was a very close race with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place drivers finishing within 1 second. |
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Finals:
1. Ronald Volker
2. Yannick Pruemper
3. Alexander Hagberg XRAY T3`11
4. Freddy Suedhoff
5. Teemu Leino XRAY T3`11
6. Martin Hudy XRAY T3`11
7. Viljami Kutvonen
8. Adrian Bernsten XRAY T3`11
9. Zdeno Kunak XRAY T3`11
10. Dominik Fleischmann
We were a little disappointed that we lost 2nd place, but on the other hand we were more than happy with the race because we had the most cars in the final and also at the race. We split the team packages, made a team picture, and were able to help with set-up for all XRAY drivers. When we asked the drivers how the car worked, every XRAY driver was happy with their carâ™s performance and that was the most important thing.
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