Track conditions are changing every race, but I never experienced such a huge change in weather and track conditions in one weekend as at Round 3 of the Swiss Nationals held in Langenthal. The track is very difficult to drive because of the high speed and bad corrugations. Nevertheless, XRAY drivers Philipp Hagnauer (ProStock) and Martin Strittmatter (Modified) succeeded in their classes â“ third wins in the third race!
For nearly the whole Saturday, drivers had to patiently await the start of practice. Because of the huge amount of water on the track, only the last 2 rounds of practice (of 6 scheduled) were held. Then the weather changed to sunny and warm, almost hot. Round 5 and half of round 6 of practice could be held normally until there was a thunder shower which soaked the track again. Even though there was not much time to find a good set-up, fortunately the T3â™2011 works very well under most conditions.
The first round of qualifying in ProStock was under fully wet conditions and Philipp Hagnauer dominated this qualifier. In Modified there were very difficult conditions because the track was not wet and not dry, but rather something in between which was very slippery. Martin Strittmatter struggled a little bit under those conditions and made a mistake. But that was just one quarter of the qualifying.
On Sunday morning, Martin and Philipp secured the fastest times under dry conditions. But every hour there were some little drops of rain⦠not enough to get the track wet, but enough make it a bit slippery. There was a strong wind for the whole day and it destroyed one or two tents. In qualifying round 3 and 4, Philipp Hagi Hagnauer got his untouchable TQ. Martin had to struggle with the lack of practice and the weather conditions and did some little mistakes which strongly punished him by the sheer velocity of the cars on this track. But he got a safe 3rd spot for the finals.
Hagi secured his win with a start-to-finish performance just a few thousands of a second ahead of 2nd place. With some set-up changes, Martin was highly motivated for the finals. Using older tires, the car worked better compared to the cars of the opponents. With that (and a bit of race luck) he pushed the whole 5min from 3rd position to win in the first two finals.
Both Philipp Hagnauer and Martin Strittmatter want to say âśthank youâť to Team XRAY for this great car and support!
Overall ranking â“ ProStock:
1. Hagnauer Philipp XRAY T3'11
2. Streuli Markus
3. Tschupp Philipp
4. Stutz Beni
5. Kuriger Sandro
Overall ranking â“ Modified:
1. Martin Strittmatter XRAY T3'11
2. Bösiger Marc
3. Philipp Huber
4. Weisskopf Lars
5. Marocca Renato
