The 1/10 Nitro Touring Car 2010 European Championship took place at the MC Ettlingen track close to Karlsruhe, Germany. The facility was perfectly prepared by the MC Ettlingen stuff around Herbert Dose. Weather was fine for the whole week with temperatures around 30°C, with only a short shower on Friday morning washing out the third round of qualifying. Team XRAY was very well represented at the race, and the XRAY NT1 was the most used car amongst the field of 121 drivers.
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The race started with practice on Monday morning. Traction improved quickly and the lap times were at the same level as pre-race practice. From the beginning, Robert Pietsch and Team XRAYâ™s Dirk Wischnewski set the pace and ran the fastest lap times.
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The battle between these two drivers continued in qualifying. At the end, Robert take the TQ spot with a lead of 1.2sec over Dirk. In 3rd place it was XRAYâ™s Eric Dankel only 4sec behind Dirk. A total of 12 XRAY drivers qualified in the Top 20.
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Top 10 after Qualifying:
1. Robert Pietsch 2. Dirk Wischnewski â“ XRAY NT1'11
3. Eric Dankel â“ XRAY NT1'11
4. Patrick Schäfer 5. Teemu Leino ⓠXRAY NT1'11
6. Simon Balk â“ XRAY NT1'11
7. Ronald Völker
8. Dario Balestri 9. Adrian Berntsen â“ XRAY NT1'11
10.Biagio Spataro â“ XRAY NT1'11
Because of the new EFRA rules everybody had to go through the semi-final. After some exciting racing in the Semis the following drivers bumped up to the main Finale:
1. Robert Pietsch 2. Dirk Wischnewski XRAY
3. Eric Dankel XRAY
4. Manuel Huber XRAY
5. Teemu Leino XRAY
6. Adrian Berntsen XRAY
7. Michael Derderian XRAY
8. Rico Kröber XRAY
9. Biagio Spataro XRAY
10.Dario Balestri
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The Main Finale was all about tire strategy. After the start, both Robert and Dirk pulled away from the field, but because of some small mistakes by Dirk the gap between these two drivers was only about 4sec after 20min. Both Dirk and Robert run the same strategy, they changed four tires at the 25min mark. Unfortunately, Dirkâ™s engine flamed out at this tire change, so he was exactly one lap behind Robert. Dirk tried to push as hard as possible but was not able to close the gap, and after 191 laps he finished only 7.5sec behind Robert. Teemu Leino run a completely different tire strategy, he only changed the rear right tire on this XRAY NT1. He finished in a very good 3rd place, 4 laps behind the leading pair.
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Final Results:
1. Pietsch Robert 2. Wischnewski Dirk XRAY NT1â™11
3. Leino Teemu XRAY NT1â™11
4. Kröber Rico XRAY NT1â™11
5. Huber Manuel XRAY NT1â™11
6. Derderian Michael XRAY NT1â™11
7. Balestri Dario 8. Dankel Eric XRAY NT1â™11
9. Spataro Biagio XRAY NT1â™11
10. Berntsen Adrian XRAY NT1â™11
