| Race report by Reno Savoya |
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What a great week we had in France for the 33rd European Championship! The club of Reims made everything possible to make this event one of the best ever organized in Europe! Like mentioned on websites, Juraj, Martin and I were using a prototype car for the race. There is no plan for commercialisation for the moment, we are just making tests in order to develop the future with XRAY.
During the week, I mainly worked on diffs, shocks and tires to get the best traction and grip possible. The track of Reims is one of it's kind, we never race in such conditions, in France or anywhere in the world. Everything is new about tires and car setup, and it was really challenging to start with a package we barelly knew. Worst was the track was changing every day from moisturized to dry and dusty, so the grip conditions were always changing. After a few changes, I could pull my way up the classification during qual. I ended up 6th, 3rd and 2 nd after the first day. |
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| Second day would then be testing for the mains. I started with the same setup in Q4 but harder tires and I felt my car was amazing. I made a perfect run and TQ, which gave me a good spot for fighting the TQ overall honors in Q5! However, as the main objective was to finish the race as well as possible, we decided to test 3 stripes springs on the rear and not 2 stripes. The car lost a lot of traction and grip, so I wasn't able to be as fast as I previously was. Coming into the finals, I was really confident. I was leading my semi for a while, then my shock oil became a bit softer due to the temperature and the car was very loose. I kept it on the wheels as much as possible and we worked for the main. We rised 100 on the rear and 50 on the front for more consistency and we changed to medium wheelbase on the rear (previously using short). The first few minutes were just rising to the top spot thru the pack. I knew David Ronnefalk was alone leading the r ace, and there was no time to loose overtaking the other cars. I then took the lead for a long time with a comfortable gap. |
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Unfortunately, I made some mistakes and David took back on me. There was a one to one show on the track as we were switching positions many times. I was then second and car became a little bit loose again. I was cruising as Martin Bayer was pushing hard and closing the gap on me. 4 minutes before the end, Martin crashed and I knew second place was safe. I then pushed to the maximum in order to close on David for the win. The car was so amazing that I could push as much as possible and still had comfortable control over the car which allowed me to get on tail of David in the last laps and finished 0.7sec from the win! It was a great final! I'm really happy to be back and fighting for the win, the car is just amazing!
Thank you XRAY, Orion, Sweep, Highest servos, Futaba, Runnertime, Maugrafix, Ultimate, Avid bearings, Lucky7 Rc, JTQ !!
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| Final results: |
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1. David Ronnefalk
2. Reno Savoya - XRAY XB9â 13
3. Martin Bayer - XRAY XB9â 13
4. Jerome Sartel
5. Robert Battle
6. Lee Martin
7. Elliott Boots
8. Jerome Aigoin
9. Christoffer Svensson
10. Yanick Aigoin |
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