| Report from Markus Mobers |
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On sunday the 30th of May the 2nd SM Lauf West in Germany was held in Megadrom Geilenkirchen. Unfortunately Marc Reinhard and Marc Fischer could not attend that race, as they were out for the Reedy Race in California.
Since I will return into the Touring Car scence in the winter season I was there to help out my buddy and teamdriver Martin Hoffend. Martin just switched from Corally motors and batteries to Fantom motors and Fusion cells before that race, and sure he runs a XRAY Factory Kit car.
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Martin was a little nervous, as he did not run since the german carpet Nats in april, so we used the saturday to find a good setup for his car and motors. We first started with Martins setup from the carpet Nats and yes, it was a disaster in his first pack.
First thing we did, we took of the swaybars and changed from white rear springs to green ones and from light blue front springs to white ones, both mounted on the outside position. The car was a lot better now, but he missed steering on power, so we went from 3 degree front caster to 6 degree. Hm, still understeering. Than we changed the position from the rear arms from the lower to the highest position and the car looked much better. For the next pack, we changed two things. We went from a Mazda 6 to a Alfa 2.0 and gave the front axle 2 degree camber instead of 1.5 degree.
Martin was flying now and he was very excited about the way his car performed.
After that we finished our practice session and Martin rebuilded some things for sunday. As I went thru my mind, I knew he was fast, but I was not quite sure if it was enough to win. I told Martin to change his front arms to a 1.5 kick-up position and to shorten his upper front links to the shortest position to get even more steering. He wasnâ™t really sure to do that, as I had not tried it, but he did it. Sunday morning when I was still asleep, he called me on my mobile, yeah thanks Martin, and he was really happy, as he won the first two rounds of qualifying.
I tried to wake up and went to the track, to look what was going on. Martin just was running his 3rd qualifiyer and his car looked superb, he easy could pull away from the others. His best laptime was a 16.3 as the others were running 16.6 seconds.
He also won that qualifier and already took the pole for the mains.
For his last qualifier I rebuild his motor and I glued some new tyres for him. When he went off the line we both knew that this would be fast. His first lap was a 16.2 and his second lap was a 16.12!!!! This was a new track record and it was even faster than me and Marc Reinhard last year. Hm, makes me think??!! Well, he continued running laps lower than 16.5 but after 2 minutes his car started to make funny noises. Oh what a mess, a front tire came loose and it all was my fault. What an amateur.
We took the car off, as we did not want to destroy the set of tires totally. Well, never mind, Martin took ot easy and he still was TQ man in front of Joel VoĂź from XRAY and a bunch of Tamiya and Associated drivers.
For the first main we took an âžoldâś set of tires and Martin won the final easy with a 3 seconds gap. For the next final we reglewed the new set, as most of the others were on new tires.
This time Martin pulled away in great style and won the final with a margin of 8 seconds!!! Martin was the overall winner already and he was really happy to win his first SM-Lauf. We guess it would have been closer when the Marcâ s would have been there, but we are sure it will be interesting next time.
Thanks from us to TeamXray, Fantom Motors and Fusion Batteries!!
See ya,
Markus Mobers |
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