| Race report by Magnus Vässmar |
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| The third race of the Middle Swedish Cup Series was held this weekend in Eskilstuna, Sweden, with 1:10 Mod, 17.5T Boost, 1:12 13.5T Boost, and 1:10 2WD Buggy classes being run. The track was pretty tight but with medium-to-high traction. I ran the Mod class amongst some pretty fast drivers such as fellow XRAY drivers Niclas Nilsson and Niklas Johansson. |
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My car worked very well during the day and I only made minor tweaks to adapt to the grip level. I was a few seconds in front of Nilsson in every round and thereby took the overall TQ. The finals went smoothly and I got away cleanly and built up a good gap on Nilsson. By winning all three finals I took the win ahead of Nilsson and Johansson.
Overall the XRAY cars worked very well and took the wins in Mod, Stock, and 1/12th.
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| Race report by Mickael Brandt |
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Because of that and the fact that I hadnâ™t tested my new XRAY X12 car, I decided to go there on Friday evening for some installation runs and test different speed controller settings on my Novak Kinetic with 13.5 motor which is the 1:12 class in MSEC.
The track is not that big and did not look particularly difficult to drive, but it was quite bumpy which could make it challenging.
The starting set-up I used was: 2.5°reactive caster with 1mm shim behind the A-arm, 0.020❠front springs, in damper I used 700cst oil and gold spring, in side tubes I used 6000cst oil and silver side springs. For tires I started with double-pink in the front and magenta in the rear. The car felt really good but I needed more steering in the hairpin-like corners, so I switched the side springs to 0.020❠(softer) and that gave the car some more turn in.
The main thing I wanted to test was the settings in the speed controller so I played around with the timing on the motor and in the ESC. When I looked at my lap times they were dropping but after 3 packs I was still 0.5sec from the best lap times which was a bit worrying since I thought the car was excellent and the speed felt okay, but I didnâ™t know what the grip level would be so I decided to pack up and wait for race day and see what the competition could do. |
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After the first practice I noticed that I could more or less keep up with the rest but I was a bit behind so I got some inputs on ESC settings from my friend Staffan Karlsson who had been testing a lot at the track. I made some small changes and also since the grip level had come up quite a lot since my last run on Friday I changed tires to yellow in the rear but kept the double-pinks in the front.
The second practice went really well and I could now compare the lap times which were in the same 0.10sec as the top four, around 8.1seconds. This showed two things: the grip was better on Saturday and my car was good so I was a bit more relaxed when the qualification started!
Since the grip was picking up more and more I decided to try a different front tire so I went for lilac instead of double-pinks. At the warm up I felt that I was missing front grip⦠wrong tire choice! The start went and I immediately lost some places but after a minute or two I noticed that I was gaining on the cars in front of me again and in the end I was 3rd. It was not a completely wrong tire choice but the high-grip line was too narrow so I decided to go back to double-pink in the front with no other change to the car, I also went up on the gearing from 63mm to 64mm. This was good enough to make the fastest round of the day by half a lap!
The car was excellent and the speed was excellent and my driving was actually very good!
It was really close on lap times though, the top 5 were within the same 0.1sec beside Mackan Göransson (also driving an XRAY X12) who had the fastest laptime of 7.9⦠more than a tenth quicker than the rest of us. However, some small mistakes kept him from TQâ™ing. Since my car was really good the only things I changed for the last qualification was making new tires so that I could break them in for the finals, and gearing up another 1.5mm.
At the start I immediately put down a gap to the rest of the field and the car was so easy to drive! At the 4 minute mark the speaker said that the best lap was 8.3 which was disappointing since it felt like it was going so wellâ¦. I was leading the round the whole time so I was satisfied with not losing my TQ spot.
When the heat was over I looked at the timesheet and was surprised⦠I was still TQ but now a lap better than everyone else and I also had the fastest lap of 7.8sec !! This felt really great! The car was super easy to drive but also super-fast and the speed were really good!
Going into the finals it was decided that there would be only 8 cars in them, this was a good decision because the racing would be better with less cars on the smallish track.
I felt that only one thing could mess it up in the finals for me and that was myselfâ¦.and I did in the first final.
After the first minute I went on a curb and slammed into the outside barrier. This lost me time so that Max Rosén could get close, unfortunately he tried to make a pass that took us both out so we had to start from the back. We did catch the rest but then it was my turn to take Max out when I was too bold trying to pass, so we each lost a place and I ended up 5th. The good thing though was that Mackan with the other XRAY won the final quite comfortably from a 3rd starting position.
Going into the second final I tried to relax and just enjoy the fact that the car was so fun to drive. I got a gap and fell into a good rhythm and kept making the gap bigger. In the end I didnâ™t want to mess things up so I backed off a bit and kept my lead to the finish by half a lap from the steadily-improving Magnus Hedlund, who always seems to find something extra for the finals. Mackan was less fortunate this time and had a big accident after only a couple of laps which sent him back to last place by 3 laps. He drove really fast but was too far behind to catch up to anyone.
The third final was about the same as the second. I got a good start and found a good rhythm, and again, the car and speed was super! Despite losing some time getting hit when I was lapping a car, I made the fastest final of the day and won by more than half a lap and I never felt any pressure from behind. Mackan was doing really well until the last minute when he got hit lapping a backmarker which dropped him down, but fortunately it was enough for him to still end up on the podium in 3rd place making it 2 XRAYs in the top 3!
In the end I noticed that I hadnâ™t change anything on the car during the day, I just tried different tires and made small adjustments on my ESC/motor settings that in the end was close to what Charlie Suangka from Novak had tipped me to do. Since I didnâ™t need to make any big changes during the day it was relaxing and I could really enjoy driving the car which in the end helped me win the race. |
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Final results
Top 10 Mod:
1. Magnus Vässmar - XRAY T3 '12
2. Niclas Nilsson - XRAY T3 '12
3. Niklas Johansson - XRAY T3 '12
4. Thomas Ek - XRAY T3 '12
5. Marcus Söberg
6. Fredrik Svärd - XRAY T3 '12
7. Göran Persson
8. Tomas Wigren - XRAY T3 '12
Top 10 Stock:
1. Niko Lindvall - XRAY T3 '12
2. Jonathan Ohlson
3. Mikael Hedin
4. Eddie Nordenwall - XRAY T3 '12
5. Mattias Daniels
6. Torgny Holgersson - XRAY T3 '12
7. David Tjort
8. Hans Carlsson |
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Top 10 1/12:
1. Mikael Brandt - XRAY X12
2. Magnus Hedlund
3. Mackan Göransson - XRAY X12
4. Maxx Rosen
5. Staffan Karlsson
6. Jonas Eriksson
7. Ronnie Piispanen
8. Andreas Böök |
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