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| Report by Reno Savoya |
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The C-netic crew worked 4month straight to rebuild the track and allow us to race with the best drivers in the worlds on the best track ever! Using molasses on the original dusty surface from last year, the track became super high grip with more traction, and tire wear! The average runtime with a set of tires before being bald was 30minutes! Sweep tires showed great quality and consistency, having the lowest wear and best durability ever!
Everything starting great for me, with a fantastic welcome from Indonesian Xray team. Like last year, I flew to Surabaya on Tuesday and we could practice until Friday and Saturday for starting the qualifications.
We tested many solutions for shocks, diffs, roll bars, tires in order to get the best out of the XRAY/ORION/SWEEP package! Since the first practices, I was pleased to re-discover the layout with the new car.
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I could compare the feeling I had with this one compared to last year! Huge improvement, especially for traction and landing the jumps! Even handling on high grip sections was easy, super easy! I used 7-10-5 oils in my diffs, and 8 holes pistons 1,2 with 900 and 800.
Practices went on, and I was always in the top 3 fastest laptimes.
Q1 went awesome as I cruised the 10minutes run without crashing. It allowed me to TQ.
In Q2, I did the same and missed TQ for 0,4 sec! Then, as the semi was already secured, I tried different tyre combinations for the main, and checking the wear and laptimes with bald tires. Even in those conditions, I could get TQ runs, but some crashes forced me to get with the 2nd spot overall after qualifications.
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For the mains, I went with stiffer shock springs and heavier shock oil, as the temperature was even higher on Sunday. We fought for the first part of the race with Jared Tebo, then I took a comfortable lead in order to win my semi, setting the fastest time over 30minutes! I would start the main final with number 1 on the grid, with the fastest laptimes of the semis of 48.9!
Unfortunately, the main started pretty bad as I crashed in the first corner, being too much inside. Then I lost a lot of time with slower drivers in the pack, and I was 25 seconds back from the lead after the first 5 minutes. Then, I started to push harder, and I was 0.2second per lap faster than the leaders, and closing the gap consistently. At the 45minutes mark, I was 3rd and lapping 4th place. I exchanged position with Atsushi Hara for a while, then I refueled and crashed. I was very close to the lead 5 minutes to go when my throttle servo overheated and died. We temped it over 100°C! Very hard conditions for cars, engines and electronics!
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Once again, I was really pleased to race with the best drivers in the world and feel good to be back fighting for the win, thanks to all my sponsors and all the good work we made with XRAY since I joined the team back in 2011.
Looking forward to 2 more successful years with you guys!
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