The world championship warm-up race was held at the HUGE R/C facilities in Bangkok, Thailand. The race saw some 50 entries, where mostly Asian but also a few European top drivers joined the race. We soon found that the very difficult conditions of the HUGE track was going to make car setup and driving a real challenge throughout the week. As the track is covered with a roof, traction stays consistent and very sticky which means that traction rolling is a problem, even with the very hard controlled tire used for the event. Basically we had conditions at the opposite side of the scale in comparison with the recent Euros in Valencia - where everyone was struggling to find grip - whereas now, everyone did what they could to remove grip especially from the front end of the car.
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After many tests and setup changes in the days leading up to the event, myself and Singaporean team driver Nicholas Lee both felt that we were on pace as the race started on Friday afternoon. I was probably the most consistent driver throughout qualifying as I managed to TQ one round, and never finishing lower than 3rd, which awarded me the 2nd place after qualifications.
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The semi final went quite smoothly for me as I managed to win it with a big margin, even though, suffering a couple of scary rolls throughout the 30 minute long encounter.
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In the Final I decided to go with a safer set-up. The changes seemed to work well as my car was really good at the start of the final. I was able to take the lead already from the start, and pulling away from the others until the 20 minute mark. At that point my car started to feel weird as it was starting to spin out in right hand corners. It started to become really tricky to drive as the tires also decreased in diameter. I had problems to stay up front and dropped down to 3rd. I somehow managed to finish 2nd even though the last 30 minutes were just all about keeping the car on its wheels. I am really happy with my handling of the car until this weird failure happened. I feel pretty confident that the car will work equally well at the worlds in two months time.
Thanks to Surikarn and Pattarapan Chaidajsuriya for your hospitality at HUGE R/C. Also thanks to all XRAY drivers who were present, and best of luck at the upcoming World Championships!
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Final result:
1. Jilles Groskamp 2. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY NT1
3. Mongkolpan Lomrose
4. Chavit Sirigupta
5. Shinnosuke Yokoyama
6. Andy Moore
7. Ongsanit Simaraks 8. Suruth Vataniyapramote - XRAY NT1
9. JJ Wang
10. Meen Vejrak
