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News  Racing
T4 2nd at 2013 NSW State Titles, Australia |
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| Race report by Antoni Caretti |
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The 2013 Ride NSW state titles were held in Illawarra, located an hour from Sydney. The weather conditions where hot all weekend, with wind speeds reaching 50km/h at times. Most of Australiaâ™s top driverâ™s in the modified class where in attendance, so racing was always going to be close.
During practice my car was pretty good from the moment I put it on the track, using my basic setup from my local track. I made some changes to esc settings, wheelbase, springs and played around with additive on the Friday to get the car to where I liked. I was trying to find a good balance between speed and drivability. Body shell decision was a very hard choice on this track, with both the Protoform LTC-R and Mazda Speed 6 offering similar lap times, with a slightly different feeling on the track for most drivers.
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I had one more practice run with each shell on the Saturday morning, after fitting the car with some new parts overnight. I decided to go with the LTC-R into the first round of Qualifying as it was smoother and easier to drive for me. I ended up tqâ™ing the first round, all be it very luckily as my esc fan died causing it to thermal, luckily I was the only car to make an extra lap when the car stopped. The second round I finished 2nd, the car struggling at the start of the run, so I decided to play with additives for the following rounds. I tried a new additive in q3, which did not work very well, finishing 4th that round. For q4, I reverted back to the old additive and played with the timing of the additive, also fitting my second of three new sets of tyres, I again tqâ™d this round by .2 of a second. In the last round of the day, I fitted my last new set of tyres, as they worked well on my car, with others struggling on new tyres. The wind had picked up for this round and my car was not good, suffering from oversteer on the sweeper from the high speed tail winds, I ended up 4th once again. Bringing an end to Saturday, tq position was up for grabs between 3 drivers, and who ever would win the Sundayâ™s last round would claim top spot, with the best 4 out of 6 results to count.
For q6 on the Sunday I again changed my additive prep, this time it worked very well. I was in front from the beginning of the run, maintaining a 1 sec lead, but unfortunately my rear belt stripped a minute and a half into the race, meaning I would end up qualifying 3rd on count back.
Qualifying:
1. Simon Nicholson
2. Craig Mcphee
3. Antoni Caretti â“ XRAY T4
4. Ryan Maker
5. Corey Broadstock
6. Jordan Cullis
7. Brad Vercoe
8. Keith Chui
9. Nathan Reese â“ XRAY T4
10. Lionel Saunders
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| Going into finals I knew racing was going to be very close, and getting a clean start on the small track was going to be important. Just as the finals started, the wind speed picked up to the fastest all day, making driving conditions hard as the cars were being pushed around. In the first final I made a decent start, maintaining my position but being held up at the start, until my car spun out coming onto the front straight due to the wind. I fell back to almost last place and was going to pull off, then quickly realizing that everyone else would also have to drive to the tricky conditions. I ended up just driving around, trying not to make any mistakes, and worked my way back up to 3rd. |
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In the second final, I decided to change to a Mazda shell, as I noticed the front runners using this where not getting affected by the wind quite so much. Instantly it felt better and I could push the car much harder. I again made a good start, but that quickly disappeared as I got a body tuck, which took three marshalls to remove! I had already been lapped by the time I had completed my first lap, but still decided to keep driving. I managed to just follow the leaders, and un-lap myself from second and third place while setting the fastest lap of the final. So this gave me some more confidence going into the last final, unfortunately my body shell was too badly damaged from the rear body tuck, so I put the LTC-R back on.
The championship was already sewn up, so there was a bit less pressure, but I knew I needed a good result to make the podium. I made a great start and managed to pass both first and second place cars on the first lap, and led the rest of the race giving me the leg win, and second place overall
Final results:
1. Simon Nicholson
2. Antoni Caretti â“ XRAY T4
3. Ryan Maker
4. Craig Mcphee
5. Jordan Cullis
6. Corey Broadstock
7. Keith Chui
8. Brad Vercoe
9. Lionel Saunders
10. Nathan Reese â“ XRAY T4
Thanks to Team XRAY, HEI International, Team Hobbywing, Pro Amp batteries and Smokem Racing for the support!
Credit to Dan Maher for the photoâ™s.
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