October is really overbooked in my calendar! Coming back from Argentina, just a few hours at home then I was hitting the airport already to go to Korea! Then one week at home and already back to Asia for C-netic challenge in Surabaya, Indonesia.
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I arrived in Seoul early on Thursday morning, first day of practices. No problem at customs this time! Just a few hours more to travel by ETX express train to hit the track area. I travelled with Sweep manager Ryan Lee who organized the race and Xray indonesia team Jason&Micheal Nugroho!
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I took the most of this 2 days of practices to try many tire combinations and prototypes. 130 drivers were attending, mostly from Korea but also from Insonesia and Malaisia. Many Korean drivers were pretty fast on this small red clay US style layout, I've been told some did practice more than 800 laps before my venue!
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Unfortunately for the organizers, we lost some time during the first qualification day as the loop was damaged. I TQed all the rounds but unfortunately the 1st one didn't count as the loop wasn't working. The format was A,B,C...mains with 8 drivers direct to the A main and 4 bump ups. As the main would be raced at night time, I decided to go with 5 000 in my front diff in order to get ore grip for the moisturised track conditions of night race.
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I had a terrible start and 10 first minutes as I crashed too many times and got problems with traffic. It allow Dani Choi to take a big gap. Every lap I was pushing and coming back, to take over the lead on the 20 minutes mark. Thanks to a 10 minutes pit strategy, I could keep the lead untill the end of the 40minutes main final, very close from lapping 2nd finisher. Great result for young indonesian star Jason Nugroho driving with Xray for the first season, and getting really fast with his XB9 placing 5th overall!
On Monday I visited the Sweep factory and made more tyre tests with the Sweep racing team, it was great!
Now time to rest a little!;-) Next stop: Asian tour step 2: Indonesia!
