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| Race report by Alexander Hagberg |
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| The 2014 IFMAR World Championships for 1/10 IC cars was held at the Huge RC Circuit located in Bangkok, Thailand. This very high grip, indoor asphalt track would prove a tough challenge to master for all competitors due to its different nature as a result of being covered. The XRAY team was represented by myself, Martin Hudy, Bruno Coelho and Singaporean Nicholas Lee among a few others. We felt that we had a good base from the pre-worlds to start with and thus, a good opportunity to do well at the WC. |
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| There was a new IFMAR rule in place this time, which didn't allow drivers who had previously been running on the track for the last 12 months, to practice during the first two "IPD" days. I am not sure whether it was an advantage or not to have come to the pre-worlds, watching the progress of the the other drivers during the first two days. I was worried that the track conditions would change a lot, and be a lot different to the pre-worlds. I was right, as the first day of practice turned out very difficult for me. The traction was drastically higher than the pre-worlds, which meant I had to move to a setup more close to that of Martin Hudy, who was practicing for the first two days. My car was decent at the end of the first day, as I did everything to take away steering, to limit traction rolling. |
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| Bruno Coelho and Nicholas Lee from our team were putting down very competitive lap times as well. I knew that they would be quick in the upcoming qualifiers. |
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| I started off day 2 by setting the quickest single lap time. I knew from that point that I got my stuff pretty dialed, and that I had a good feeling going around the track, which seems to suit my driving style well. Even though the track changed a lot for the next few days, I was never really worried as I was always putting in consistent laptimes with very few mistakes, compared to other drivers. Going into qualifying, I started as number 1 in the second fastest group. This turned things around as it was actually drivers from that qualifying group who would end up going fastest in qualifying! As the drivers from the last group, who dominated practice, would find it hard to put together clean runs. |
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| Basically qualifying came down to the last round between myself and Dominic Greiner. I knew that I could have TQ'ed already if I didn't make a mistake in Q4 when in the lead in that run. Because I would have had a 1-1-2-2 string of results already. I ended up loosing the TQ on a tie break to Dominic as he did a faster overall time than me in Q6 which he TQ'ed. I wasn't too concerned about qualifying 2nd as I knew that it could be and advantage to run the semi, in preparation for the main final. Later it would turn out that my assumption was right. I knew that I had a very consistent car in qualifying, not necessarily the fastest, but with a very good feeling. Nicholas Lee qualified 3rd for XRAY with an impressive performance. Bruno Coelho also made the semi final with his 12th position. |
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| The semi went fairly well for me as I did a clean 30 minutes to finish 2nd to Jilles, who won over me thanks to his 6 minute fuel strategy. Judging from the results of the two semis, it seemed that myself, Jilles and Meen would be able to give Dominic a good match in the final as we all showed great form. I was a bit concerned at this point though as the track felt very different to qualifying. My car felt more twitchy, and had more traction than before, making it quite hard to handle during some parts of the track, especially as the tires became smaller a the end of the run. Knowing that I had to do the same thing in the final, but for 60 minues instead of 30, I decided to change to a more safe setup. I reduced the front camber by 0.5 per side, as well as the front caster by a 0.5mm clip. Last but not least I changed back to the 500K front diff that I had used in qualifying as the new one I had fitted for the semi seemed a bit too hard. The rest of the team suffered some bad luck in the semis, where eventually Martin would be the closest to bump up, finishing on a 12th position overall in the end. |
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As the final commenced I first thought that I had went wrong with the setup as the car felt a little pushy up front. As the race progressed, I knew that the car was fast enough though, and it actually proved to be the right change as the car was super easy to drive with no tendencies to traction roll for the duration of the 60 minutes. I could push as hard as I wanted to without the fear of the car doing anything strange. At first, I was following Jilles who was difficult to pass.
After the first two fuel stops, I found myself in the lead as I ran both faster and more consistent than Jilles and Dominic. I would then battle closely with Jilles for the next 40 minutes. Due to us having a different fuel strategies, him refueling at 6 and me at 5:20, the leaderboard would swap back and forth. By the 35 minute mark, I thought that I had made up the time for the extra pit stop, and was clearly in the lead, even after having a very scary moment with the mechanic of JJ Wang stepping on the front of my car while I exited the pit lane, which made me lose 2-3 seconds. Luckily the car was intact, and I could continue running. Around the 45 minute mark, Jilles suffered a flameout. This definitely gave me some breathing room as I now had an almost 2 lap lead. For the rest of the race I just tried to control the pace, and bring the car to the finish line. The car handled well for the entire final and I could just focus on driving it. The final endured without problems for me with fast pitstops all throughout.
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| At the closing stages I was just counting the minutes until the end. I crossed the finish line almost a lap in front of the Sahashi, the runner up. I can not fully express the joy and satisfaction that comes out of this win as it is a result of years of hard work not only by myself but our entire team. I want to send out my best thanks to my mechanic Bertram Kessler, my second mechanic Per-Ola Hard. Thank you to the Hudy family for sponsoring me for the last 10 years. Without you I would not be where I am now. Thank you to all other sponsors as well. Thank you Bruno and Cesar Coelho and Nicholas Lee for making up the best team - the world championship winning team! |
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| Fial result podium: |
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1. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY NT1 2014
2. Yuya Sahashi
3. Dominic Greiner
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