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News  Racing
T3 wins Indoor ACT State Titles, Australia |
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It was the 10th anniversary for the ACT indoor state titles and a while since Nathan attended having taken a break from RC for a number of years to focus on his career, but has since jumped back into it like he never left.
The Xray team got to Canberra and had no idea what to expect. 1. As the event was on Foam Tires and 2. The carpet has always been very unpredictable in Canberra. We run Rubbers 99% of the time.
We decided to run Matrix Tires throughout the event and had to spend a considerable amount of time, deciding on how low to true them etc. with each one of us finding a personal preference. I stuck to 60mm at the end and decided to change every 2 - 3 runs if I was lucky, As the car had major bite with higher tires.
Next we decided to concentrate on car setup, again we all went different ways and helped each other out as much as possible, With the carpet being extremely tricky, we opted to make do with what we got and change the car to suit our driving style.
Me personally I opted to make the car quite hard all round to counteract the grip levels, I got to a point that I was semi happy with and made do with that. I got back to the Hotel and though nope I am going to take a big risk and change everything, so decided to go from hard all round to super hard setup on the front and a super soft on the rear, It was a risk but from the first qualifier the car was amazing, just as good as I have had it on asphalt, and I only then started lightly playing with droop to further improve the car.
For the first 2 qualifiers I was sitting in 4th overall, then was able to lift and went to second and first in the next two. In the final one Xray stock gun Keith Chui drove brilliant to pip me back to 3rd, I was happy with third as it's the first time I had used foam tires in 8 years.
Come the first final I immediately put pressure on Keith and car One, who ultimately came together and gave me room for a nice pass, I drove a clean race without touching a thing to give me 1st place in the first run. I was quite confident and thought I may be able to win this if I could drive cleanly and not crash as I had unbelievable speed and the car was absolutely dialled.
Come the 2nd A main things weren't meant to be, the buzzer went off and my car didn't move, I got hit pretty bad at the back and a marshall picked the car up and turned it on and off, and the car turned on again, I was under a lot of pressure to try and get a decent run in, I drove an aggressive race and was able to lap from 4th to 10th and give myself a 3rd place finish, This put me in 2nd for the overall victory now.
By the third final, there was 2 of us that could win it, I had a brilliant start and put pressure on 1st and 2nd almost immediately, after the second corner I made a brilliant pass on Keith Chui and had 1st in my sights, 1st Place made a mistake and I was through to umber One, and 2nd and 3rd were at each other the entire race, which gave me a bit of breathing room, although second was coming at me extremely fast and my nerves were really kicking in, however he was driving to aggressive and ended up crashing giving me breathing space and I thought, If I could stop shaking with nerves, I'd be able to win my 1st State Title.
Final results:
1. Nathan Reese XRAY T3'12
2. Andrew Sienniak
3. Scott Griffiths
4. Alan Mazzaroli
5. Bob Death
6. Keith Chui XRAY T3'12
7. Brendon Young
8. Stewart McDermott
9. Matt Barham |
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